Time Is Noon by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page A

were before her.
    “Sorry, Miz Bradley,” Mr. Billings would roar, cheerful and bloody among his carcasses, “Miz Winter’s just been and got my kidneys today. How about a bit of liver? My liver’s extra fresh this morning.”
    But Mrs. Bradley would not be consoled by liver. “Martin doesn’t like liver so well,” she replied coldly and chose a chop. If she met Mrs. Winters on the way home she would be cool. She would be cool until she was successful again. If for several days she failed she grew bitter. Then she would revenge herself on Mr. Billings and Martin must bring her something from the city. She boasted among the villagers, “I declare, it’s getting so I can’t get anything I want at Mr. Billings’. He don’t run near so good a place as he did. Martin brings home the meat from the city as often as not.”
    “Joan—Joan!” her mother’s voice called suddenly from an upstairs window.
    “Coming!” she sang back. She lingered lazily. It would be fun to see what happened today to Mrs. Bradley. But her mother would not wait. “Joan!” she called again.
    So she put aside Mrs. Bradley and ran to her mother.
    In the big upstairs bedroom her mother moved swiftly and competently. She had made each movement exactly the same each day of each year for many years, and now her hands knew the quickest direction, her feet the sparest step. She squared the corner of the bed tightly, the large double bed where she had slept with the children’s father since the night they had come home from their honeymoon. It was all as familiar to her as her own hands and feet. She finished as Joan came in and sat down in the rocking chair. Joan was used to her there. In this chair of worn brown wood, with its strip of brown cotton quilting lining in it, her mother had always sat to darn and patch, and on the sagging carpet-covered hassock at its foot each child had sat in turn to recite the psalms and hymns and catechism they must learn by heart. It was always noisy downstairs in the family sitting room and the parlor was not to be thought of. But here was quiet. As a little girl Joan had looked out of the low window over the roofs of the village to the rolling hills where the sheep grazed, and had chanted, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” and here she had stammered over “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” How did one enjoy God? She asked her mother, and listened and never understood. Her mother never could make it clear. Here in this room, too, her mother had talked to them when they were in fault and here set upon them her rare punishments. Once, Joan remembered suddenly at this moment, she had thrown herself down upon the bed with a wail of sorrow because she had told a lie—she could not remember about what. She remembered only that she could not go to the Sunday school picnic because she had lied. Their mother could not endure lies. She might waver and delay judgment in anything else, but her voice came down as hard and bright as a sword after a lie.
    “Don’t tell me a lie!” she would cry. There was no patience in her then.
    Now here she sat in the rocking chair and looked at her daughter straightly and shyly, with an unaccustomed pleading. “Joan,” she said, “I’ve been waiting until you were home a few days to tell you something. I haven’t wanted to spoil your graduation and coming home. But today I’ve got to tell you because I just don’t feel equal to the missionary meeting this afternoon. Miss Kinney’s going to speak on Africa and I want you to go instead of me.”
    “Mother!” she cried, astonished, sinking on the firm square bed. Why, her mother had never been ill! She was a little thinner, perhaps—She searched her mother’s face. “Why haven’t you told us?”
    “I’ve wanted to keep up,” her mother said wearily. “I’ve always felt I ought to keep up before the children. Trouble comes soon enough. Children oughtn’t to share their