Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle Read Free Book Online Page B

a new girl in a new school,” Daddy said. “Maybe that was all she had to brag about.”
    â€œI don’t think Vic or I would,” John said. “If anything happened to you or Mother I don’t think we’d go around talking about it to people.”
    â€œNow, wait a minute, John,” Daddy said. “I was just about Maggy’s age when my mother died when Uncle Douglas was born. And it was inconceivable to me that everybody in the world didn’t know about it, that anybody could be unaware that my mother was dead. And when the paper boy came by our house that night, he didn’t know, and he called out to me just as usual, as though nothing at all had happened, and I was embarrassed for him, that he shouldn’t know about an event
that must surely rock the foundations of the universe. And I told him that my mother was dead, and I’m sure I felt more a sense of importance than grief.”
    â€œGrief for the big things takes a long time to come,” Mother said. “You know how, when you cut yourself badly, you don’t feel it at all for a long time? It doesn’t hurt till the numbness wears off? Grief is like that.”
    â€œYeah, I think I see,” John said slowly.
    â€œOn the other hand,” Mother went on, “I don’t think Maggy’s reactions to her tragedy are quite the same as yours were, Wallace, or as our children’s would be. For one thing, she’d only been with her father for a month when the accident happened. She’d never known him at all before then.”
    â€œNever known her father! But—” I started.
    â€œOkay, Vicky,” Daddy said, “let’s let Mother tell you a little something about Maggy’s background. I think it will help you to understand why she is the way she is. We must all try very hard to understand, because we can’t have any one child, no matter how tragic her circumstances, disrupting an entire family.”
    â€œShe’s made a good start,” John said.
    â€œSuppose you’d never known what it was like to be loved?” Mother asked him. “Suppose you never saw Daddy, and I spent all my time going to parties and on cruises and left you with nurses and governesses and did my best to forget I had any children?”
    â€œI’m glad you don’t,” John said.
    â€œBut that’s what it was like for Maggy,” Mother told us. “All the toys and clothes in the world and not one moment of
spontaneous family love. None of the easy security you children take for granted. She had dinner with her grandfather every Sunday. That was as close to family life as she got.”
    â€œDid her grandfather love her?” I asked.
    â€œIn his way, I think he did, very much. But he’s evidently not a bit like our darling Grandfather, Vic, if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s solitary and strict and stern. And he’d had a bad heart attack just at the time of Maggy’s mother’s death, which was why she went to her father at that time.”
    â€œHow … how did her mother die?” John asked.
    â€œOf pneumonia, while she was traveling in Spain.”
    â€œAll this help you to understand a little?” Daddy asked.
    â€œYes,” I said.
    â€œBut how come she’s living with us?” John asked. “And for how long?”
    â€œHer grandfather is still ill,” Daddy said, “so we’ll just have to take things as they come, from day to day. Dick Hamilton was overjoyed when his little girl came to live with him, just a month before he died. And he had no idea how to handle her at all, except to give in to her completely, to give her whatever she wanted the minute she wanted it. At least he gave her love, real love, which was something she’d never had before, and Elena feels sure that, given time, things would have worked out, that he’d realize he was spoiling her just as she’d