Then, in that school as in every school, there was the sinister minority, always huddling in corners, full of mean silences and furtive leering. And their half-heard words, half-understood phrases,--a gesture, a look that silenced and perplexed her--these the child brought also to her mother, sitting at her feet, face against her knees.
For a month or two her mother had not been very well, and the doctor who had brought Athalie into the world stopped in once or twice a week. When he was with her mother the children were forbidden the room.
One evening in particular Athalie remembered. She had been running her legs off playing hounds-and-hares across country from the salt-hay stacks to the chestnut ridge, and she had come in after sunset to find her mother sewing in her own bedroom, her brother and sisters studying their lessons in the sitting-room where her father also sat reading the local evening paper.
Supper was over, but Athalie went to the kitchen and presently returned to her mother"s room carrying a bowl of bread and milk and half a pie.
Here on the faded carpet at her mother"s feet, full in the lamplight she sat her down and ate in hungry silence while her mother sewed.
Athalie seldom studied. A glance at her books seemed to be enough for her. And she pa.s.sed examinations without effort under circ.u.mstances where plodders would have courted disaster.
Rare questions from her mother, brief replies marked the meal. When she had satisfied her hunger she jumped up, ran downstairs with the empty dishes, and came slowly back again,--a slender, supple figure with tangled hair curling below her shoulders, dirty shirt-waist, soiled features and hands, and the ragged blue skirt of a sailor suit hanging to her knees.
"Your other sailor suit is washed and mended," said her mother, smiling at her child in tatters.
Athalie, her gaze remote, nodded absently. After a moment she lifted her steady dark blue eyes:
"A boy kissed me, mamma," she remarked, dropping cross-legged at her mother"s feet.
"Don"t kiss strange boys," said her mother quietly.
"I didn"t. But why not?"
"It is not considered proper."
"Why?"
Her mother said: "Kissing is a common and vulgar practice except in the intimacy of one"s own family."
"I thought so," nodded Athalie; "I soaked him for doing it."
"Who was he?"
"Oh, it was that fresh Harry Eldon. I told him if he ever tried to get fresh with me again I"d kill him.... Mamma?"
"Yes?"
"All that about poor old Mr. Manners isn"t true, is it?"
Her mother smiled. The children had been taught to leave a morsel on their plates "for manners"; and to impress it upon them their mother had invented a story about a poor old man named Manners who depended upon what they left, and who crept in to eat it after they had retired from table.
So leaving something "for Manners" had been thoroughly and successfully inculcated, until the habit was formed. And now Athalie was the last of the children to discover the gentle fraud practised upon her.
"I"m glad, anyway," concluded the child. "I never thought we left him enough to eat."
Her mother said: "I shall tell you only truths after this. You are old enough to understand reason, now, and to reason a little yourself."
"I do.... But I am not yet perfectly sure where babies come from. You said you would tell me _that_ some day. I"d really like to know, mamma."
Her mother continued to sew for a while, then, pa.s.sing the needle through the hem she looked down at her daughter.
"Have you formed any opinion of your own?"
"Yes," said the child honestly.
"Then I"d better tell you the truth," said her mother tranquilly, "because the truth is very wonderful and beautiful--and interesting."
So she related to the child, very simply and clearly all that need be told concerning the mystery of life in its beginnings; and Athalie listened, enchanted.
And mostly it thrilled the child to realise that in her, too, lay latent a capability for the creation of life.
Another hour with her mother she remembered in after years.
Mrs. Greensleeve had not been as well: the doctor came oftener.
Frequently Athalie returning from school discovered her mother lying on the bed. That evening the child was sitting on the floor at her mother"s feet as usual, just inside the circle of lamplight, playing solitaire with an ancient pack of cards.
Presently something near the door attracted her attention and she lifted her head and sat looking at it, mildly interested, until, suddenly, she felt her mother"s eyes on her, flushed hotly, and turned her head away.
"_What_ were you looking at?" asked her mother in a low voice.
"Nothing, mamma."
"Athalie!"
"What, mamma?"
"_What_ were you looking at?"
The child hung her head: "Nothing--" she began; but her mother checked her: "Don"t lie, Athalie. I"ll try to understand you. Now tell me what you were--what you thought you were looking at over there near the door."
The child turned and glanced back at the door over her shoulder.
"There is nothing there--now," she muttered.
"Was there anything?"
Athalie sat silent for a while, then she laid her clasped hands across her mother"s knees and rested her cheek on them.
"There was a woman there," she said.
"Where?"
"Over by the door."
"You saw her, Athalie?"