The Silent Boy Read Free Page A

not wanting to be left out. I had already helped Mother tidy the little bedroom Peggy would have on the third floor, and I watched to see if she would appreciate the quilt I had chosen for her bed, a pink and white one that matched the colors in the flowered curtains. I could see that Peggy liked her room. Mother went downstairs, but I stayed and watched while she opened her bag and put her things away. She didn't have a lot. She hung two dresses in the old wardrobe and put a Bible and a hairbrush on the dresser.
    "Look through the window," I told her. "See over there? The next house?"
    She looked where I was pointing.
    "That's the Bishops' house. And your sister's room is there, through the maple tree. When the leaves are gone you'll be able to see Nell's window."
    "Really? I'll see Nellie's window?" Peggy smiled at the thought. "My sister and me, we had a room together at home, till she left."
    "Did you miss her when she went?"
    Peggy nodded. "But she was wild to go. She wanted desperately to be in town. She wanted to go to the pictures."
    "The pictures!" I started to giggle. "Have you ever been?"
    Peggy said no. "But Nell did. A fellow took her once. She saw Mary Pickford. She tried to fix her hair like that. She rolled it up in rags and it made curls, but they didn't last. My mother said she was foolish."
    I thought of Nell's hair, thick and flame-bright, always pinned back as she did the housework but somehow untidy still.
    "She uses rouge sometimes," Peggy confided. "And she plans to change her name to Evangeline Emerson. You need a fancy name for moving pictures. She wants to be in pictures someday."
    "Do you?"
    "Oh my, no! I never! I'll save my money and help my parents, and someday I'll find a nice steady fellow and get married."
    "Maybe someday we'll go to the pictures and see Nellie," I told her. "She'll be famous! She'll have lots of beaus."
    Peggy smiled. She peered into the looking glass over the dresser and smoothed her hair. I noticed the scratch on her hand again.
    "Will you miss your kitten?" I asked her. "Even if it scratched?"
    She smiled and said no. "We have a barn full of kittens," she said. "There are always new ones."
    "Oh,IwishIcouldhaveone.Mothersaysadog is enough. Did you meet our dog when you came in? He won't come up here because he's very old and his hips hurt."
    "He greeted me at the door, remember?" Peggy said. "What was his name?"
    "Pepper. My favorite book right now is called
The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.
It's about a family whose father is dead, and they live in a little brown house and it is so hard for them to pay the rent; they are
always
worried. And guess what they eat for breakfast!"
    Peggy, arranging things in a drawer, thought for moment. "Oatmeal," she suggested.
    "No, you'll never guess.
Cold potatoes
.Isn tit awful? But it's all they have, poor things. They are so needy! But always cheerful. Mother is reading me a chapter each night. Do you have a favorite book?"
    Peggy glanced at the Bible on the table but then shook her head. "I've never had books," she said.
    "Now you will! We have a whole bookcase full, and you can read whatever you want! We can go to the library, too."
    "What's in there?" Peggy asked, and she pointed to the door across the hall from her bedroom as we started down the stairs.
    "The attic! Want to see? It's scary. There are mice."
    Peggy laughed. "Mice are nothing to be scared of. But maybe you
do
need a cat."
    I opened the door to the unfinished part of the third floor and let Peggy peek in. There were windows, so it wasn't dark. But it was rough, with cobwebbed beams across the top, and dust everywhere. We could see the shape of trunks, and stacked boxes.
    "My own baby clothes are in that trunk there in the corner," I told Peggy, and pointed. "Mother let me have a few things for my doll, but we're saving all the nice clothes because maybe someday we will have another baby."
    Peggy smiled.
    "And see there? The trunk with the curved top? My