Loving Daughters Read Online Free
Author: Olga Masters
their rightful places, and Enid, clicking her tongue at the sight of them, felt immediate remorse, for the isolated, misshapen heap reminded her of the girl herself.
Enid felt remorse again now at the sight of the girlâs misshapen body in her unsuitable dress, and wished she and Una had made her something loose and full to wear. Nellie, if she had lived, would have insisted, in spite of the shame and embarrassment the hurried marriage brought. It was hardly worthwhile now, a waste of good material, and Enid shrewdly suspected the birth was closer than the date given.
The conversation stopped, the expressions on the faces of the Herbert women slipped into a coolness, not quite a frown, not totally a lost smile, but features rearranged as in a schoolroom when a loved lesson is over, and the next one is of a more perplexing kind.
Violet, deciding she would do no more to her dress, jabbed the needle through the cotton on the reel and rolled both together on her lap.
She stroked quite gently for Violet at the blue and white spotted muslin.
âWhere would you rather be confined?â she said, and the girl started at being addressed, certain as usual that she would not be capable of answering a question from a Herbert woman, whatever it was.
âConfined at home or in hospital?â Violet said, now at liberty to frown as deeply as she wanted to.
âAunt Violet is thinking of making her house in Wyndham into a small hospital,â Enid said quite kindly as she saw the terror in the girlâs eyes at the ordeal ahead.
âNot immediately,â Enid said in answer to the wild look the girl sent around the room.
Violet stood and stuffed her sewing into a basket and flung it over a stout arm. Small hospital indeed! And not immediately! But she had time only to pout in Enidâs direction, for there was the rumble of the mail car in the distance and she had to be on the roadside to hail it for a ride home. She tossed her head huffily to the Honeysuckle doorway filled with Enid and Una as she climbed into the car.
Henryâs young wife went off too before Enid and Una had left the doorway. She took the same vague direction Henry had taken earlier, on the pretext of looking at steers in a far paddock. She came upon him prodding with a stick at the edge of a dam and when he saw her with the side of his face, he dropped the stick and picked up some stones and sent them skimming across the water.
âWatch this one,â he said as the girl dropped onto a log, grateful that her presence was known to him. The child thudded and tumbled inside her and she steadied it with one hand and put the other on the space beside her, wishing for him to come and join her. But he turned from the dam after a while and picked up his coat from a stump, checking that his tobacco had not fallen from a pocket and, putting the coat on, lowered his head and walked rapidly off.
She thought he might be having a game with her, that he might turn and run back, but he went on, growing smaller as he went over the first rise, and she saw only his head bobbing in the hollow as if swimming, and he sailed up the next hill like someone clinging to the crest of a wave. The grass all around him was like a sea too, a whitish waving sea soon to swallow him completely.
She put her hand on her stomach for comfort.
âHe will be different when the baby comes,â she whispered. âI know he will.â
5
In the Honeysuckle kitchen Enid stoked the stove and Una, at a corner of the table, sliced carrots and turnips to go with boiled beef for tea.
âIâll make an onion sauce,â Enid said, clearing space at the other end for her work, but distracted by some squeaky giggles from Una. Her face was pink and the hair on her bowed head had slipped heavily onto her forehead and her small white teeth and her small pink chin were shaking as she clenched the vegetable knife with its point among the peelings.
Enid, marshalling her
Enid felt remorse again now at the sight of the girlâs misshapen body in her unsuitable dress, and wished she and Una had made her something loose and full to wear. Nellie, if she had lived, would have insisted, in spite of the shame and embarrassment the hurried marriage brought. It was hardly worthwhile now, a waste of good material, and Enid shrewdly suspected the birth was closer than the date given.
The conversation stopped, the expressions on the faces of the Herbert women slipped into a coolness, not quite a frown, not totally a lost smile, but features rearranged as in a schoolroom when a loved lesson is over, and the next one is of a more perplexing kind.
Violet, deciding she would do no more to her dress, jabbed the needle through the cotton on the reel and rolled both together on her lap.
She stroked quite gently for Violet at the blue and white spotted muslin.
âWhere would you rather be confined?â she said, and the girl started at being addressed, certain as usual that she would not be capable of answering a question from a Herbert woman, whatever it was.
âConfined at home or in hospital?â Violet said, now at liberty to frown as deeply as she wanted to.
âAunt Violet is thinking of making her house in Wyndham into a small hospital,â Enid said quite kindly as she saw the terror in the girlâs eyes at the ordeal ahead.
âNot immediately,â Enid said in answer to the wild look the girl sent around the room.
Violet stood and stuffed her sewing into a basket and flung it over a stout arm. Small hospital indeed! And not immediately! But she had time only to pout in Enidâs direction, for there was the rumble of the mail car in the distance and she had to be on the roadside to hail it for a ride home. She tossed her head huffily to the Honeysuckle doorway filled with Enid and Una as she climbed into the car.
Henryâs young wife went off too before Enid and Una had left the doorway. She took the same vague direction Henry had taken earlier, on the pretext of looking at steers in a far paddock. She came upon him prodding with a stick at the edge of a dam and when he saw her with the side of his face, he dropped the stick and picked up some stones and sent them skimming across the water.
âWatch this one,â he said as the girl dropped onto a log, grateful that her presence was known to him. The child thudded and tumbled inside her and she steadied it with one hand and put the other on the space beside her, wishing for him to come and join her. But he turned from the dam after a while and picked up his coat from a stump, checking that his tobacco had not fallen from a pocket and, putting the coat on, lowered his head and walked rapidly off.
She thought he might be having a game with her, that he might turn and run back, but he went on, growing smaller as he went over the first rise, and she saw only his head bobbing in the hollow as if swimming, and he sailed up the next hill like someone clinging to the crest of a wave. The grass all around him was like a sea too, a whitish waving sea soon to swallow him completely.
She put her hand on her stomach for comfort.
âHe will be different when the baby comes,â she whispered. âI know he will.â
5
In the Honeysuckle kitchen Enid stoked the stove and Una, at a corner of the table, sliced carrots and turnips to go with boiled beef for tea.
âIâll make an onion sauce,â Enid said, clearing space at the other end for her work, but distracted by some squeaky giggles from Una. Her face was pink and the hair on her bowed head had slipped heavily onto her forehead and her small white teeth and her small pink chin were shaking as she clenched the vegetable knife with its point among the peelings.
Enid, marshalling her
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