Mary Olivier: a Life. Sinclair May

garden flowers stood still, straight up in the grey earth. They were as tall as you were. You could look at them a long time without being tired.

      The garden flowers were not like the animals. The cat Sarah bumped her sleek head under your chin; you could feel her purr throbbing under her ribs and crackling in her throat. The white rabbit pushed out his nose to you and drew it in again, quivering, and breathed his sweet breath into your mouth.

      The garden flowers wouldn't let you love them. They stood still in their beauty, quiet, arrogant, reproachful. They put you in the wrong. When you stroked them they shook and swayed from you; when you held them tight their heads dropped, their backs broke, they shrivelled up in your hands. All the flowers in the garden were Mamma's; they were sacred and holy.

      You loved best the flowers that you stooped down to look at and the flowers that were not Mamma's: the small crumpled poppy by the edge of the field, and the ears of the wild rye that ran up your sleeve and tickled you, and the speedwell, striped like the blue eyes of Meta, the wax doll.

      When you smelt mignonette you thought of Mamma.

      It was her birthday. Mark had given her a little sumach tree in a red pot. They took it out of the pot and dug a hole by the front door steps outside the pantry window and planted it there.

      Papa came out on to the steps and watched them.

      "I suppose," he said, "you think it'll grow?"

      Mamma never turned to look at him. She smiled because it was her birthday. She said, "Of course it'll grow."

      She spread out its roots and pressed it down and padded up the earth about it with her hands. It held out its tiny branches, stiffly, like a toy tree, standing no higher than the mignonette. Papa looked at Mamma and Mark, busy and happy with their heads together, taking no notice of him. He laughed out of his big beard and went back into the house suddenly and slammed the door. You knew that he disliked the sumach tree and that he was angry with Mark for giving it to Mamma.

      When you smelt mignonette you thought of Mamma and Mark and the sumach tree, and Papa standing on the steps, and the queer laugh that came out of his beard.

      When it rained you were naughty and unhappy because you couldn't go out of doors. Then Mamma stood at the window and looked into the front garden. She smiled at the rain. She said, "It will be good for my sumach tree."

      Every day you went out on to the steps to see if the sumach tree had grown.

      VIII.

      The white lamb stood on the table beside her cot.

      Mamma put it there every night so that she could see it first thing in the morning when she woke.

      She had had a birthday. Suddenly in the middle of the night she was five years old.

      She had kept on waking up with the excitement of it. Then, in the dark twilight of the room, she had seen a bulky thing inside the cot, leaning up against the rail. It stuck out queerly and its weight dragged the counterpane tight over her feet.

      The birthday present. What she saw was not its real shape. When she poked it, stiff paper bent in and crackled; and she could feel something big and solid underneath. She lay quiet and happy, trying to guess what it could be, and fell asleep again.

      It was the white lamb. It stood on a green stand. It smelt of dried hay and gum and paint like the other toy animals, but its white coat had a dull, woolly smell, and that was the real smell of the lamb. Its large, slanting eyes stared off over its ears into the far corners of the room, so that it never looked at you. This made her feel sometimes that the lamb didn't love her, and sometimes that it was frightened and wanted to be comforted.

      She trembled when first she stroked it and held it to her face, and sniffed its lamby smell.

      Papa looked down at her. He was smiling; and when she looked up at him she was not afraid. She had the same feeling that came sometimes when she sat in Mamma's lap and Mamma talked about God and Jesus. Papa was sacred and holy.

      He had given her the lamb.

      It was the end of her birthday; Mamma and Jenny were putting her to bed. She felt weak and tired, and sad because it was all over.

      "Come to that," said Jenny, "your birthday was over at five minutes past twelve this morning."

      "When will it come again?"

      "Not for a whole year," said Mamma.

      "I wish it would come to-morrow."

      Mamma shook her head at her. "You want to be spoiled and petted every day."

      "No. No. I want—I want—"

      "She doesn't know what she wants," said Jenny.

      "Yes. I do. I do."

      "Well—"

      "I want to love Papa every day. 'Cause he gave me my lamb."

      "Oh," said Mamma, "if you only love people because they give you birthday presents—"

      "But I don't—I don't—really and truly—"

      "You didn't ought to have no more birthdays," said Jenny, "if they make you cry."

      Why couldn't they see that crying meant that she wanted Papa to be sacred and holy every day?

      The day after the birthday when Papa went about the same as ever, looking big and frightening, when he "Baa'd" into her face and called out, "Mary had a little lamb!" and "Mary, Mary, quite contrary," she looked after him sorrowfully and thought: "Papa gave me my lamb."

      IX.

      One day Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella came over from Chadwell Grange. They were talking to Mamma a long time in the drawing-room, and when she came in they stopped and whispered.

      Roddy told her the secret. Uncle Edward was going to give her a live lamb.

      Mark and Dank said it couldn't be true. Uncle Edward was not a real uncle; he was only Aunt Bella's husband, and he never gave you anything. And anyhow the lamb wasn't born yet and couldn't come for weeks and weeks.

      Every morning she asked, "Has my new lamb come? When is it coming? Do you think it will come to-day?"

      She could keep on sitting still quite a long time by merely thinking about the new lamb. It would run beside her when she played in the garden. It would eat grass out of her hand. She would tie a ribbon round its neck and lead it up and down the lane. At these moments she forgot the toy lamb. It stood on the chest of drawers in the nursery, looking off into the corners of the room, neglected.

      By the time Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella sent for her to come and see the lamb, she knew exactly what it would be like and what would happen. She saw it looking like the lambs in the Bible Picture Book, fat, and covered with thick, pure white wool. She saw Uncle Edward, with his yellow face and big nose and black whiskers, coming to her across the lawn at Chadwell Grange, carrying the lamb over his shoulder like Jesus.

      It was a cold morning. They drove a long time in Uncle Edward's carriage, over the hard, loud roads, between fields white with frost, and Uncle Edward was not on his lawn.

      Aunt Bella stood in the big hall, waiting for them. She looked much larger and more important than Mamma.

      "Aunt Bella, have you got my new lamb?"

      She tried not to shriek it out, because Aunt Bella was nearly always poorly, and Mamma told her that if you shrieked at her she would be ill.

      Mamma said "Sh-sh-sh!" And Aunt Bella whispered something and she heard

       Mamma answer, "Better not."

      "If she sees it," said Aunt Bella, "she'll understand."

      Mamma shook her head at Aunt Bella.

      "Edward