And both were young

by Madeleine L'Engle

Then Miss Tulip spotted Gloria's nightgown. "Really!" she exclaimed. "Gloria Browne, isn't it?"

Gloria echoed Erna and Jackie. "Yes, Miss Tulip, thank you, Miss Tulip."

"That nightgown is most unsuitable," Miss Tulip said disapprovingly. "I trust you have something else more appropriate."

"That depends on what you call appropriate, please, Miss Tulip," Gloria said.

"I will go over your things tomorrow. Report to me after breakfast."

"Yes, Miss Tulip," Gloria said meekly, and winked at Erna.

"Good night, girls. Remember, no talking." And Miss Tulip switched out the light.

Flip lay there in the dark. As her eyes became accustomed to the night she noticed that the lights from the terrace below shone up through the iron railing of the balcony and lay in a delicate pattern on the ceiling. She raised herself on one elbow and she could see out of the window. All down the mountainside to the lake the lights of the villages lay like fallen stars. As she watched, one would flicker out here, another there. Through the open window she could hear the chime of a village church, and then, almost like an echo, the bell from another church and then another. She began to feel the sense of wonderful elation that always came to her when beauty took hold of her and made her forget her fears. Now she saw the lights of the train as it crawled up the mountain, looking like a little luminous dragon. And on the lake was a tiny band of lights from one of the lake boats.

—Oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! she thought. Then she began to long for her father to show the beauty to. She couldn't contain so much beauty just in herself. It had to be shared, and she couldn't whisper to the girls in her room to come and look. She couldn't cry, "Oh, Erna, Jackie, Gloria, come look!" Erna and Jackie must know how beautiful it was, and somehow Flip thought that Gloria would think looking at views was stupid.—Father, she thought.—Oh, Father. What's the matter with me. What is it?

Then she realized. Of course. She was homesick. Every bone in her ached with homesickness as though she were getting 'flu. Only she wasn't homesick for a place, but for a person, for her father. How many months, how many weeks, how many days, hours, minutes, seconds, till Christmas?