The Getting of Wisdom | Page 5

The two little boys came up to her; but
she waved them back.
"Let me alone, children. I want to think."
She stood in a becoming attitude by the garden-gate, her brothers
hovering in the background.--Then Mother called once more.
"Laura, where are you?"
"Here, mother. What is it?"
"Did you knock this jug over or did Pin?"
"I did, mother."
"Did you do it on purpose?"
"Yes."
"Come here to me."
She went, with lagging steps. But Mother's anger had passed: she was
at work on the dress again, and by squinting her eyes Laura could see
that a piece was being added to the skirt. She was penitent at once; and
when Mother in a sorry voice said: "I'm ashamed of you, Laura. And on
your last day, too," her throat grew narrow.
"I didn't mean it, mother."
"If only you would ask properly for things, you would get them."
Laura knew this; knew indeed that, did she coax, Mother could refuse
her nothing. But coaxing came hard to her; something within her
forbade it. Sarah called her "high-stomached", to the delight of the

other children and her own indignation; she had explained to them
again and again what Sarah really meant.
On leaving the house she went straight to the flower-beds: she would
give Mother, who liked flowers very well but had no time to gather
them, a bouquet the size of a cabbage. Pin and the boys were
summoned to help her, and when their hands were full, Laura led the
way to a secluded part of the garden on the farther side of the detached
brick kitchen. In this strip, which was filled with greenery, little sun fell:
two thick fir trees and a monstrous blue-gum stood there; high bushes
screened the fence; jessamine climbed the wall of the house and
encircled the bedroom windows; and on the damp and shady ground
only violets grew. Yet, with the love children bear to the limited and
compact, the four had chosen their own little plots here rather than in
the big garden at the back of the house; and many were the times they
had all begun anew to dig and to rake. But if Laura's energy did not
fizzle out as quickly as usual--she was the model for the rest--Mother
was sure to discover that it was too cramped and dark for them in there,
and send Sarah to drive them off.
Here, safely screened from sight, Laura sat on a bench and made up her
bouquet. When it was finished--red and white in the centre with a
darker border, the whole surrounded by a ring of violet leaves--she
looked about for something to tie it up with. Sarah, applied to, was
busy ironing, and had no string in the kitchen, so Pin ran to get a reel of
cotton. But while she was away Laura had an idea. Bidding Leppie
hold the flowers tight in both his sticky little hands, she climbed in at
her bedroom window, or rather, by lying on the sill with her legs
waving in the air, she managed to grab, without losing her balance, a
pair of scissors from the chest of drawers. With these between her teeth
she emerged, to the excited interest of the boys who watched her
open-mouthed.
Laura had dark curls, Pin fair, and both wore them flapping at their
backs, the only difference being that Laura, who was now twelve years
old, had for the past year been allowed to bind hers together with a
ribbon, while Pin's bobbed as they chose. Every morning early, Mother
brushed and twisted, with a kind of grim pride, these silky ringlets
round her finger. Although the five odd minutes the curling occupied
were durance vile to Laura, the child was proud of her hair in her own

way; and when in the street she heard some one say: "Look--what
pretty curls!" she would give her head a toss and send them all
a-rippling. In addition to this, there was a crowning glory connected
with them: one hot December morning, when they had been tangled
and Mother had kept her standing too long, she had fainted, pulling the
whole dressing-table down about her ears; and ever since, she had been
marked off in some mysterious fashion from the other children. Mother
would not let her go out at midday in summer: Sarah would say: "Let
that be, can't you!" did she try to lift something that was too heavy for
her; and the younger children were to be quelled by a threat to faint on
the spot, if they did not do as she wished. "Laura's faint" had become a
byword in the family; and Laura herself held it for so important a fact
in her life that she had