The Bent Twig | Page 5

it means something perfectly horrid, doesn't it?"
Mother was still laughing. "No, no, child, what in the world makes you
think that?"
"Oh, if you'd heard Aunt Victoria say it!" cried Sylvia with conviction.

Father came out on the veranda, saying to Mother, "Isn't that crescendo
superb?" To Sylvia he said, as though sure of her comprehension,
"Didn't you like the ending, dear--where it sounded like the Argonauts
all striking the oars into the water at once and shouting?"
Sylvia had been taught above everything to tell the truth. Moreover
(perhaps a stronger reason for frankness), Mother was there, who
would know whether she told the truth or not. "I didn't hear the end."
Father looked quickly from Sylvia's face to her mother's. "What's the
matter?" he asked.
"Sylvia was so concerned because her Aunt Victoria had called our life
idyllic that she couldn't think of anything else," explained Mother
briefly, still smiling. Father did not smile. He sat down by Sylvia and
had her repeat to him what she had said to her mother. When she had
finished he looked grave and said: "You mustn't mind what your Aunt
Victoria says, dear. Her ideas are very different from ours."
Sylvia's mother cried out, "Why, a child of Sylvia's age couldn't have
taken in the significance of--"
"I'm afraid," said Father, "that Sylvia's very quick to take in such a
significance."
Sylvia remained silent, uncomfortable at being discussed, vaguely
ashamed of herself, but comforted that Father had not laughed, had
understood. As happened so frequently, it was Father who understood
and Mother who did the right thing. She suddenly made an enigmatic,
emphatic exclamation, "Goodness gracious!" and reaching out her long
arms, pulled Sylvia up on her lap, holding her close. The last thought of
that remembered time for Sylvia was that Mother's arms were very
strong, and her breast very soft. The little girl laid her head down on it
with a contented sigh, watching the slow, silent procession of the stars.
CHAPTER II
THE MARSHALLS' FRIENDS

Any one of the more sophisticated members of the faculty of the State
University at La Chance would have stated without hesitation that the
Marshalls had not the slightest part in the social activities of the
University; but no one could have called their life either isolated or
solitary. Sylvia, in her memories of childhood, always heard the low,
brown house ringing with music or echoing to the laughter and talk of
many voices. To begin with, a good many of Professor Marshall's
students came and went familiarly through the plainly furnished rooms,
although there was, of course, in each year's class, a little circle of
young people with a taste for social distinctions who held aloof from
the very unselect and heterogeneous gatherings at the Marshall house.
These young aristocrats were, for the most part, students from the town
itself, from La Chance's "best families," who through parental tyranny
or temporary financial depression were not allowed to go East to a
well-known college with a sizable matriculation fee, but were forced to
endure four years of the promiscuous, swarming, gratuitous education
of the State University. All these august victims of family despotism
associated as little as possible with the common rabble of their
fellow-students, and accepted invitations only from such faculty
families as were recognized by the inner circle of the town society.
The Marshalls were not among this select circle. Indeed, no faculty
family was farther from it. Every detail of the Marshalls' life was in
contradiction not only to the standards and ideals of the exclusive
"town set," but to those of their own colleagues. They did not live in
the right part of town. They did not live in the right sort of a house.
They did not live in the right sort of a way. And consequently, although
no family had more visitors, they were not the right sort of visitors.
This was, of course, not apparent to the children for a good many years.
Home was home, as it is to children. It did not seem strange to them
that instead of living in a small rented house on a closely built-up street
near the campus in the section of the city occupied by the other faculty
families, they lived in a rambling, large-roomed old farmhouse with
five acres of land around it, on the edge of the West Side. They did not
know how heartily this land-owning stability was condemned as folly

by the rent-paying professors, perching on the bough with calculated
impermanence so that they might be free to accept at any moment the
always anticipated call to a larger salary. They did not know, not even
Sylvia, for many years, that the West Side was the quite unfashionable
part of town. It did not seem strange