Time passed. She heard sounds downstairs, Maizie going out to play in the yard with Peter; her mother singing the baby to sleep, and still Suzanna sat near the window, and still her small heart beat resentfully.
Later, she heard her father's voice. Perhaps he cared for her. But even of this she was not sure. Then she sat up very straight. Someone was coming up the stairs.
It was Maizie. The little girl slowly opened the bedroom door, peeped cautiously in, and then on tiptoes approached Suzanna. "Mother says," she began, "that you're to come down to lunch."
"I don't want any lunch," said Suzanna. The bright color still stained her cheek. "You can just go downstairs and eat up everything in the house, and be sure and tell mother I said so."
Maizie looked her awe at this defiant sister. Downstairs she returned to deliver verbatim Suzanna's message.
Suzanna sat on. From bitter disillusion felt against everything in her world her mind chilled to analysis. Her mother loved her, she believed, and yet—she did not complete her swift thought; indeed, she looked quickly about in fear of her disloyalty. She had once thought that mothers were perfect, rare beings removed worlds from other mere mortals. Hadn't she, when a very small girl of four, been quite unable to comprehend that mother was a mere human being? "Mother is just mother," she had said in her baby way, and that sentence spelled all the devotion and admiration of a pure little heart for one enshrined within it.
And now mother had fallen short. Mother had disappointed that desperately loving, intense soul. The tears started to her eyes. It was as though on this second tucked-in day an epoch had come marking the day for all time, placing it by itself as containing an experience never to be forgotten.
After a time she realized she was hungry. So she went quietly to the top of the stairs, but no sound came up from below.
Some clock struck one, and then Suzanna heard running footsteps mounting the stairs. She sat straight and gazed out of the window. She knew the moment her mother entered the room, but she did not turn her head.
Mrs. Procter approached until she stood close to Suzanna. She looked down into the mutinous little face. She had come intending to scold, but something electric about the child kept hasty words back.