



Produced by Col Choat.  HTML version by Al Haines.









The Getting of Wisdom


by

Henry Handel Richardson




  TO MY
  UNNAMED
  LITTLE COLLABORATOR



  Wisdom is the principal thing;
  therefore get wisdom: and with
  all thy getting get understanding.

Proverbs, iv, 7



I.


The four children were lying on the grass.

"... and the Prince went further and further into the forest," said the
elder girl, "till he came to a beautiful glade--a glade, you know, is a
place in the forest that is open and green and lovely. And there he saw
a lady, a beautiful lady, in a long white dress that hung down to her
ankles, with a golden belt and a golden crown. She was lying on the
sward--a sward, you know, is grass as smooth as velvet, just like green
velvet--and the Prince saw the marks of travel on her garments. The
bottom of the lovely silk dress was all dirty----"

"Wondrous Fair, if you don't mind you'll make that sheet dirty, too,"
said Pin.

"Shut up, will you!" answered her sister who, carried away by her
narrative, had approached her boots to some linen that was bleaching.

"Yes, but you know Sarah'll be awfly cross if she has to wash it
again," said Pin, who was practical.

"You'll put me out altogether," cried Laura angrily.--"Well, as I said,
the edge of her robe was all muddy--no, I don't think I will say that;
it sounds prettier if it's clean. So it hung in long, straight
beautiful folds to her ankles, and the Prince saw two little feet in
golden sandals peeping out from under the hem of the silken gown,
and----"

"But what about the marks of travel?" asked Leppie.

"Donkey! haven't I said they weren't there? If I say they weren't, then
they weren't. She hadn't travelled at all."

"Oh, parrakeets!" cried little Frank.

Four pairs of eyes went up to the bright green flock that was passing
over the garden.

"Now you've all interrupted, and I shan't tell any more," said Laura in
a proud voice.

"Oh, yes, please do, Wondrous Fair! Tell what happened next," begged
Pin and Leppie.

"No, not another word. You can only think of sheets and parrakeets."

"Please, Wondrous Fair," begged little Frank.

"No, I can't now.--Another thing: I don't mind if you call me Laura
to-day, as it's the last day."

She lay back on the grass, her hands clasped under her head. A voice
was heard, loud, imperative.

"Laura, I want you. Come here."

"That's mother calling," said Pin.

Laura kicked her heels. The two little boys laughed approval.

"Go on, Laura," coaxed Pin. "Mother'll be angry. I'll come, too."

Laura raised herself with a grumble. "It's to try on that horrid dress."

In very fact Mother was standing, already somewhat impatient, with the
dress in her hand. Laura wriggled out of the one she had on, and stood
stiffly and ungraciously, with her arms held like pokers from her
sides, while Mother on her knees arranged the length.

"Don't put on a face like that, miss!" she said sharply on seeing
Laura's air. "Do you think I'm making it for my own pleasure?" She had
sewn at it all day, and was hot and tired.

"It's too short," said Laura, looking down.

"It's nothing of the kind," said Mother, with her mouth full of pins.

"It is, it's much too short."

Mother gave her a slight shake. "Don't you contradict ME! Do you want
to tell me I don't know what length you're to wear your dresses?"

"I won't wear it at all if you don't make it longer," said Laura
defiantly.

Pin's chubby, featureless little face lengthened with apprehension.

"Do let her have it just a tiny bit longer, mother dear, dear!" she
pleaded.

"Now, Pin, what have you got to do with it I'd like to know!" said
Mother, on the verge of losing her temper over the back folds, which
WOULD not hang.

"I'm going to school to-morrow, and it's a shame," said Laura in the
low, passionate tone that never failed to exasperate Mother, so
different was it from her own hearty fashion of venting displeasure.
Pin began to sniff, in sheer nervous anxiety.

"Very well then, I won't do another stitch to it!" and Mother, now
angry in earnest, got up and bounced out of the room.

"Laura, how can you?" said Pin, dissolving. "It's only you who make her
so cross."

"I don't care," said Laura rebelliously, though she was not far off
tears herself. "It IS a shame. All the other girls will have dresses
down to the tops of their boots, and they'll laugh at me, and call me a
[P.4] baby;" and touched by the thought of what lay before her, she,
too, began to sniffle. She did not fail, however, to roll the dress up
and to throw it unto a corner of the room. She also kicked the ewer,
which fell over and flooded the floor. Pin cried more loudly, and ran
to fetch Sarah.

Laura returned to the garden. The two little boys came up to her; but
she waved them back.

"Let me alone, children. I want to think."

She stood in a becoming attitude by the garden-gate, her brothers
hovering in the background.--Then Mother called once more.

"Laura, where are you?"

"Here, mother. What is it?"

"Did you knock this jug over or did Pin?"

"I did, mother."

"Did you do it on purpose?"

"Yes."

"Come here to me."

She went, with lagging steps. But Mother's anger had passed: she was at
work on the dress again, and by squinting her eyes Laura could see that
a piece was being added to the skirt. She was penitent at once; and
when Mother in a sorry voice said: "I'm ashamed of you, Laura. And on
your last day, too," her throat grew narrow.

"I didn't mean it, mother."

"If only you would ask properly for things, you would get them."

Laura knew this; knew indeed that, did she coax, Mother could refuse
her nothing. But coaxing came hard to her; something within her forbade
it. Sarah called her "high-stomached", to the delight of the other
children and her own indignation; she had explained to them again and
again what Sarah really meant.

On leaving the house she went straight to the flower-beds: she would
give Mother, who liked flowers very well but had no time to gather
them, a bouquet the size of a cabbage. Pin and the boys were summoned
to help her, and when their hands were full, Laura led the way to a
secluded part of the garden on the farther side of the detached brick
kitchen. In this strip, which was filled with greenery, little sun
fell: two thick fir trees and a monstrous blue-gum stood there; high
bushes screened the fence; jessamine climbed the wall of the house and
encircled the bedroom windows; and on the damp and shady ground only
violets grew. Yet, with the love children bear to the limited and
compact, the four had chosen their own little plots here rather than in
the big garden at the back of the house; and many were the times they
had all begun anew to dig and to rake. But if Laura's energy did not
fizzle out as quickly as usual--she was the model for the rest--Mother
was sure to discover that it was too cramped and dark for them in
there, and send Sarah to drive them off.

Here, safely screened from sight, Laura sat on a bench and made up her
bouquet. When it was finished--red and white in the centre with a
darker border, the whole surrounded by a ring of violet leaves--she
looked about for something to tie it up with. Sarah, applied to, was
busy ironing, and had no string in the kitchen, so Pin ran to get a
reel of cotton. But while she was away Laura had an idea. Bidding
Leppie hold the flowers tight in both his sticky little hands, she
climbed in at her bedroom window, or rather, by lying on the sill with
her legs waving in the air, she managed to grab, without losing her
balance, a pair of scissors from the chest of drawers. With these
between her teeth she emerged, to the excited interest of the boys who
watched her open-mouthed.

Laura had dark curls, Pin fair, and both wore them flapping at their
backs, the only difference being that Laura, who was now twelve years
old, had for the past year been allowed to bind hers together with a
ribbon, while Pin's bobbed as they chose. Every morning early, Mother
brushed and twisted, with a kind of grim pride, these silky ringlets
round her finger. Although the five odd minutes the curling occupied
were durance vile to Laura, the child was proud of her hair in her own
way; and when in the street she heard some one say: "Look--what pretty
curls!" she would give her head a toss and send them all a-rippling. In
addition to this, there was a crowning glory connected with them: one
hot December morning, when they had been tangled and Mother had kept
her standing too long, she had fainted, pulling the whole
dressing-table down about her ears; and ever since, she had been marked
off in some mysterious fashion from the other children. Mother would
not let her go out at midday in summer: Sarah would say: "Let that be,
can't you!" did she try to lift something that was too heavy for her;
and the younger children were to be quelled by a threat to faint on the
spot, if they did not do as she wished. "Laura's faint" had become a
byword in the family; and Laura herself held it for so important a fact
in her life that she had more than once begun a friendship with the
words: "Have you ever fainted? I have."

From among these long, glossy curls, she now cut one of the longest and
most spiral, cut it off close to the root, and with it bound the
flowers together. Mother should see that she did know how to give up
something she cared for, and was not as selfish as she was usually
supposed to be.

"Oh.. h.. h!" said both little boys in a breath, then doubled up in
noisy mirth. Laura was constantly doing something to set their young
blood in amazement: they looked upon her as the personification of all
that was startling and unexpected. But Pin, returning with the reel of
thread, opened her eyes in a different way.

"Oh, Laura...!" she began, tearful at once.

"Now, res'vor!" retorted Laura scornfully--"res'vor" was Sarah's name
for Pin, on account of her perpetual wateriness. "Be a cry-baby, do."
But she was not damped, she was lost in the pleasure of self-sacrifice.

Pin looked after her as she danced off, then moved submissively in her
wake to be near at hand should intercession be needed. Laura was so
unsuspecting, and Mother would be so cross. In her dim, childish way
Pin longed to see these, her two nearest, at peace; she understood them
both so well, and they had little or no understanding for each
other.--So she crept to the house at her sister's heels.

Laura did not go indoors; hiding against the wall of the flagged
verandah, she threw her bouquet in at the window, meaning it to fall on
Mother's lap.

But Mother had dropped her needle, and was just lifting her face,
flushed with stooping, when the flowers hit her a thwack on the head.
She groped again, impatiently, to find what had struck her, recognised
the peace-offering, and thought of the surprise cake that was to go
into Laura's box on the morrow. Then she saw the curl, and her face
darkened. Was there ever such a tiresome child? What in all the world
would she do next?

"Laura, come here, directly!"

Laura had moved away; she was not expecting recognition. If Mother were
pleased she would call Pin to put the flowers in water for her, and
that would be the end of it. The idea of a word of thanks would have
made Laura feel uncomfortable. Now, however, at the tone of Mother's
voice, her mouth set stubbornly. She went indoors as bidden, but was
already up in arms again.

"You're a very naughty girl indeed!" began Mother as soon she appeared.
"How dare you cut off your hair? Upon my word, if it weren't your last
night I'd send you to bed without any supper!"--an unheard-of threat on
the part of Mother, who punished her children in any way but that of
denying them their food. "It's a very good thing you're leaving home
to-morrow, for you'd soon be setting the others at defiance, too, and I
should have four naughty children on my hands instead of one.-- But I'd
be ashamed to go to school such a fright if I were you. Turn round at
once and let me see you!"

Laura turned, with a sinking heart. Pin cried softly in a corner.

"She thought it would please you, mother," she sobbed.

"I WILL not have you interfering, Pin, when I'm speaking to Laura.
She's old enough by now to know what I like and what I don't," said
Mother, who was vexed at the thought of the child going among strangers
thus disfigured.--"And now get away, and don't let me see you again.
You're a perfect sight."

"Oh, Laura, you do look funny!" said Leppie and Frank in weak chorus,
as she passed them in the passage.

"Well, you 'ave made a guy of yourself this time, Miss Laura, and no
mistake!" said Sarah, who had heard the above.

Laura went into her own room and locked the door, a thing Mother did
