Free Time Is Noon by Pearl S. Buck

it. “Oh, I don’t mean I don’t want to work. I’ve always enjoyed every kind of work. When I was a girl I used to think I didn’t like sweeping. But I’ve learned to like it, too, now, through having to do it so much. One might as well enjoy what one has to do. I like now to feel a room grow clean under a strong broom. … There comes Mrs. Billings. I daresay she wants me to tell her what to talk about at Ladies’ Aid tomorrow. She is a good soul—but stupid. Darling, would you mind calling Rose and having her slip this dress on? You have such a good eye for style, and I want her dresses to look right when she goes away. I’ll try to get rid of Mrs. Billings, quickly.” Her mother was up swiftly and with energy, calling as she went, “Rose—Rose, come and try on your dress—”
    Joan, shaking out the flowery folds, waited while Rose took off her dress. Then she dropped down the fluffy stuff over Rose’s head and over the smooth round shoulders and met Rose’s eyes in the mirror. “Oh, Rose, you’re pretty,” she cried in honest praise. “I’m glad it’s your turn for the new things.”
    The small multicolored flowers upon the pink background suited the round pale face, the dark eyes. But Rose was composed. She smiled a little and said nothing. Joan cried at her again. “Don’t you care, Rose? Don’t you want to be pretty? When I was your age I was so frightened I’d never be pretty. You’re so much prettier than I was then. I’m too big—bony big—and my mouth is awful. I try to think it isn’t, but I know it is.”
    Rose hesitated. “I don’t want to think of such things,” she replied.
    “But you are really pretty,” Joan said laughing. “Silly little saint!” She shook the pretty shoulders lightly. Funny Rose, always afraid of sin! She began to sing carelessly, her mouth full of pins, fitting the dress here and there, letting it into a little more fullness at the breast—Rose’s breasts were rounder than her own—tightening it at the waist. She felt her sister’s body soft and warm under the lawn, a girlish shape. Here and there her fingers touched the fine skin. She saw the little yellow-brown curls soft upon the bent white neck. Tenderness flowed up in her for her sister. She did not often feel near to Rose like this. The touch of Rose’s flesh brought her near, the service she did her brought her near. She felt warm toward the young girl, warm as a mother might, full of generous love for her.
    “Little, little saint,” she murmured and smiled intimately and kindly into Rose’s eyes in the mirror. She was so much bigger than Rose. She would always take care of Rose.
    Then abruptly one day the house was empty without Rose. Until now when each summer ended it had been she, Joan, who had gone away to fresh faces and new life; she who when she came back again made complete the family. Now she stood with her father and her mother and watched Rose’s face at the train window with secret dismay. Her own safe years, years when she knew clearly what to do, were now so quickly gone. Slow in passing, now that they were gone, they were so swiftly gone.
    When they walked home together in the early sunlight of a September morning she felt very grave. Her holiday was over. Even though she walked to her home and between these two who had always given her shelter, she was no longer sheltered. She must push out from between them, go out from her home. She must begin something for herself if she were to live at the pitch of delight. But she wanted and feared this independence. She wanted to live for herself, and yet she wanted this warm home about her at night.
    Her mother looked at her and smiled. “I felt lost when you went away as Rose is doing today. I never get used to any of you going away. The first time you went away I went home and cried.”
    “Did you, Mother?” said Joan, astonished, staring. Such a thing had not occurred to her. She had gone away that first morning four years