The Magnificent Spinster by May Sarton Read Free Book Online Page A

I’ve ever been, if that’s what you mean.”
    Alix, sitting up in her bed, threw a pillow at her sister and the entity was re-established with a pillow fight that ended only when they were both out of breath, and Snooker turned out the light.
    In the next year Edith entered the Annex at Harvard and Viola married Vyvian. Maurice was firmly entrenched as Jane’s friend, a circumstance Jane took quite for granted, but that was unusual, for the older girls were not allowed out with their beaus without a chaperone. Maurice had been persuasive that his role was that of an uncle, so he was allowed to take Jane to the rink to skate, and four or five times a year to the theater. Those were the gala afternoons, of course. None more memorable than Cyrano de Bergerac , their second outing, when Maurice proved his perfection in an unforgettable way. Jane, of course, was dissolved at the end, and had used up two large linen handkerchiefs by the time the curtain went down. This time she was crying not only because it was so sad, but because it was over. “I can’t bear it to be over, Maurice,” she said. But then he felt in the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out two tickets for the matinee the following week.
    â€œI knew we would have to see it again,” he told her.
    When Snooker was told about that, she shook her head. “I have to admit that that is perfection, dearie.”
    She did not add what she was no doubt thinking, that Jane had such abundance of life in her and responded so swiftly and at such depth to any event that she constantly took herself and everyone else by surprise.
    At school she was always in demand for plays and singing, but did not do as well as Alix in her regular lessons, except in the reciting of poetry. Snooker had puzzled about this from the time she was teaching Jane to read. She was quite slow at learning, and very stubborn. She wanted to do things in her own way … once took the first reader out of Snooker’s hands and went off into a corner with it, determined to work out the words by herself. Sometimes this trait irritated her teachers because Jane, determined to understand, continued to ask questions when the subject had been rather completely covered. In the ninth grade now, she had to write short papers, and they were always handed in late because she put off beginning in time, and then got in very deep, too late to do as good a job as she might have.
    â€œJane is very thorough and works hard, but seems a little slow,” was the comment on one report. “Her emotions are ahead of her intellect at present. She is behind in math partly because she does not enjoy figures.”
    â€œIt’s not that I don’t enjoy math,” she said to Mamma when this report was explained to her. “I just can’t get it through my head. When Miss Rogers explains I can feel my mind going blank right away. My head gets so hot, I think it’s going to burst!”
    â€œMiss Rogers is very violent,” Alix came to the rescue. “She shouts at Jane … she treats any mistake as a sin , Mamma!”
    â€œIt appears to be a collision between two powerful forces,” Pappa murmured from behind the Boston Evening Transcript. “I have an idea you’re getting into your own way. Just pretend it isn’t important.”
    â€œBut it is important,” Jane answered passionately. “I can’t graduate without math.”
    Maurice came to the rescue and for three weeks spent two hours every Saturday afternoon helping Jane with algebra. He discovered that it was at least partly a matter of tempo. Jane simply could not be hurried, but if one had patience and she was allowed to make mistakes and Bounder for a while, the light was apt to dawn.
    â€œOh Maurice, I’ve got it. I see what I did wrong … there!”
    And quite often she had to hug him with the relief of it.
    This was a different girl from the one he took to