"What makes you act so strange, child?" And to that, of course, I answered
nothing, for what I had to say would not, I felt, be understood.
One morning in June I left home with my resentment burning fiercely within
me. I had not cared for the things we had for breakfast, for I was half-ill with
fretting and with the closeness of the day, but my lack of appetite had been
passed by with the remark that any one was likely not to have an appetite
on such a close day. But I was so languid, and so averse to taking up the
usual round of things, that I begged mother to let me stay at home. She
shook her head decidedly.
"You've been out of school too many days already this term," she said. "Run
along now, or you'll be late!"
"Please—" I began, for my head really was whirling, although, quite as
much, perhaps, from my perversity as from any other cause. Mother turned
on me one of her "last-word" glances.
"Go to school without another word," she said, quietly.
I knew that quiet tone, and I went. And now I was sure that all was over
between my parents and myself. I began to wonder if I need really wait till I
was grown up before leaving home. So miserably absorbed was I in thinking
of this, and in pitying myself with a consuming pity, that everything at
school seemed to pass like the shadow of a dream. I blundered in whatever I
tried to do, was sharply scolded for not hearing the teacher until she had
spoken my name three times, and was holding on to myself desperately in
my effort to keep back a flood of tears, when I became aware that something
was happening.
There suddenly was a perfect silence in the room—the sort of silence that
makes the heart beat too fast. The mist swimming before me did not, I
perceived, come from my own eyes, but from the changing colour of the air, the usual transparency of which was being tinged with yellow. The
sultriness of the day was deepening, and seemed to carry a threat with it.
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