Free The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson Page A

deep, slow voice. "You're a weekly boarder."
    Laura had the wish to be very pleasant, in return for the pencil. So she drew a sigh, and said, with over-emphasis: "How nice for your mother to have you home every week!"
    Bertha only laughed at this, in a teasing way: "Yes, isn't it?" But Inez leaned across behind her and gave Laura a poke.
    "Shut up!" she telegraphed.
    "Who's talking down there?" came the governess's cry. "Here you, the new girl, Laura what's—your-name, come up to the map."
    A huge map of England had been slung over an easel; Laura was required to take the pointer and show where Stafford lay. With the long stick in her hand, she stood stupid and confused. In this exigency, it did not help her that she knew, from hear-say, just how England looked; that she could see, in fancy, its ever-green grass, thick hedges, and spreading trees; its never-dry rivers; its hoary old cathedrals; its fogs, and sea-mists, and over-populous cities. She stood face to face with the most puzzling map in the world—a map seared and scored with boundary-lines, black and bristling with names. She could not have laid her finger on London at this moment, and as for Stafford, it might have been in the moon.
    While the class straggled along the verandah at the end of the hour, Inez came up to Laura's side.
    "I say, you shouldn't have said that about her mother." She nodded mysteriously.
    "Why not?" asked Laura, and coloured at the thought that she had again, without knowing it, been guilty of a FAUX PAS.
    Inez looked round to see that Bertha was not within hearing, then put her lips to Laura's ear.
    "She drinks."
    Laura gaped incredulous at the girl, her young eyes full of horror. From actual experience, she hardly knew what drunkenness meant; she had hitherto associated it only with the lowest class of Irish agricultural labourer, or with those dreadful white women who lived, by choice, in Chinese Camps. That there could exist a mother who drank was unthinkable . . . outside the bounds of nature.
    "Oh, how awful!" she gasped, and turned pale with excitement. Inez could not help giggling at the effect produced by her words—the new girl was a 'rum stick' and no mistake—but as Laura's consternation persisted, she veered about
    "Oh, well, I don't know for certain if that's it. But there's something awfully queer about her."
    "Oh, HOW do you know?" asked her breathless listener, mastered by a morbid curiosity.
    "I've been there—at Vaucluse—from a Saturday till Monday. She came in to lunch, and she only talked to herself, not to us. She tried to eat mustard with her pudding too, and her meat was cut up in little pieces for her. I guess if she'd had a knife she'd have cut our throats."
    "Oh!" was all Laura could get out.
    "I was so frightened my mother said I shouldn't go again."
    "Oh, I hope she won't ask me. What shall I do if she does?"
    "Look out, here she comes! Don't say a word. Bertha's awfully ashamed of it," said Inez, and Laura had just time to give a hasty promise.
    "Hullo, you two, what are you gassing about?" cried Bertha, and dealt out a couple of her rough and friendly punches.—"I say, who's on for a race up the garden?"
    They raced, all three, with flying plaits and curls, much kicking-up of long black legs, and a frank display of frills and tuckers. Laura won; for Inez's wind gave out half way, and Bertha was heavy of foot. Leaning against the palings Laura watched the latter come puffing up to join her—Bertha with the shameful secret in the background, of a mother who was not like other mothers.

VIII.

    Laura had been, for some six weeks or more, a listless and unsuccessful pupil, when one morning she received an invitation from Godmother to spend the coming monthly holiday—from Saturday till Monday—at Prahran. The month before, she had been one of the few girls who had nowhere to go; she had been forced to pretend that she liked staying in, did it in fact by preference.—Now her spirits rose.
    Marina,