Sylvia watched her mother
with wondering gratitude. She wasn't going to ask! She was going to
let Sylvia shut that ghastly recollection into the dark once for
all. She wasn't going by a look or a gesture to force her helplessly
responsive child to give, by words, weight and substance to a black,
shapeless horror from which Sylvia with a vivid impulse of sanity
averted her eyes.
She got out of bed and put her arms around her mother's neck. "Say,
Mother, you are _great_!" she said in an unsteady voice. Mrs. Marshall
patted her on the back.
"You'd better go and take your bath, and have your breakfast," she
said calmly. "Judith and Lawrence have gone skating."
When Sylvia, tingling with the tonic shock of cold water and rough
toweling, and rosy in her old blue sailor-suit, came downstairs, she
found her mother frying pancakes for her in the kitchen blue with
smoke from the hot fat. She was touched, almost shocked by this
strange lapse from the tradition of self-help of the house, and said
with rough self-accusation: "My goodness! The idea of _your_ waiting
on _me_!" She snatched away the handle of the frying-pan and turned
the cakes deftly. Then, on a sudden impulse, she spoke to her mother,
standing by the sink. "I came back because I found I didn't like Jerry
Fiske as much as I thought I did. I found I didn't like him at all,"
she said, her eyes on the frying-pan.
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