Roses for Mama Read Free Page A

had done her work properly.
    “Oh yes. Her fuss didn’t last long—then she was sweet as can be. But—well—it just troubles me. What are we going to do if she decides she doesn’t want to do our bidding? I mean—if Papa was here—he required obedience with one stern look. But what if—?”
    “She hasn’t done this before, has she?”
    “No. But I’m just scared that it might be the first of many. She is growing up, you know—and she has always—well—had a mind of her own.”
    “You want me to talk to her?”
    “Oh no.”
    “Do you want me to punish her? Give her an extra chore or—”
    “Oh my, no,” cut in Angela quickly. “She doesn’t need more punishment. She’s already lost her mama.”
    After a moment of silence, Thomas answered through the spreading darkness, “We have all lost our mama.”
    “I—I know,” Angela said with a trembling voice, “but I think it is harder on the younger ones.”
    There was another short silence, and Thomas, again, was the one to break it. “It has been three years,” he said softly. “They should be sorta—well—getting used to it now.”
    “That’s what frightens me,” Angela admitted. “I always—we always thought it would get easier—with the passing of time and all. But it hasn’t. I mean, when they were little it was just a case of feeding them and looking after their clothes and—and loving them a lot. Now—now I have a feeling that all those years without Mama to guide them—to show them how to be ladies, to teach them how to treat others, how to show respect and obedience—that’s what they’ve missed, Thomas.”
    “You’ve been giving them that,” Thomas assured Angela. “Why, at the last church picnic I heard some of the ladies talking about what fine kids they are and what good manners they have and—” Angela was pleased to hear the comment, but she knew that much more than ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ was involved in properly raising children.
    “They have proper conduct—on the outside. At least I think they have,” Angela agreed. “But on the inside? All the things Mama taught—about thinking of others—about not letting little hurts make one into a snob or complainer—about seeing beauty in simple things—about—about so many things. I’m afraid I haven’t been getting some of those lessons across to the girls. I—I’m not even sure how Mama did it. I just know that those thoughts—those feelings are there—deep inside of me—and they came from Mama.”
    Angela laid a quivering hand over her heart and blinked away tears that wanted to fall. At length she was able to go on.
    “I was old enough to understand—to remember those lessons—but I’m afraid Louise and Sara won’t remember. Mama was too sick those last months to be able to—to—”
    Angela could go no further. Thomas touched her hand briefly in the darkness. They sat silently together, listening to the croaking of the frogs in the pond beyond the barn. An owl hooted into the night. Then a cow bawled somewhere off in the distance and another replied somewhere beyond.
    “You’re doing a fine job, Angela,” Thomas said hoarsely. “I’m proud of the girls and of Derek.”
    “I am, too,” Angela admitted. “But I worry. I want so much for them to grow up to be—to be the children Mama would have been proud of.”
    “They will,” said Thomas with confidence. “They will.”
    Angela made no reply but her brow still puckered with concern. Would they? Louise was already showing defiance. True, her little bit of fuss hadn’t lasted for more than a few minutes, but what would come next? Would she again be telling Angela that she didn’t have to accept her authority?
    And what of Sara? She was such a carefree, sweet little darling. But she was about as wild and uncontrolled as a prairie mustang. Mama had always wanted her daughters to be little ladies, with clean pinafores, carefully manicured fingernails, neatly braided hair, skirts