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Show CHAPTER FOUR Father brought spring home with him. Overnight, it seemed, the lilacs bloomed and the peonies in front of the porch swelled their buds. One of the outdoor cats that Mother fed on the back porch had four kittens. I went back to school, told my friends that Father was home and Darby and Emily, two of my best friends, came to see him. Darby's cousin had been killed and we sat on the porch while he told Father about him. He was angry that the war had ended so soon, as he had planned to take up the family's standard once he reached 18. Emily and I told him he was being dumb and Father shook his head. "I saw some boys who looked almost as young as you, Darby," he said. "They lied about their age to enlist. I suspect they are sorry now they took the trouble." "Besides, Darby, you're so blind you'd never aim the gun in the right direction," said Emily. Darby laughed with us but told me later he still was plotting ways to get overseas and wreck vengence on the Germans for the cousin he had met only once. Father went back to county Hospital for a few days and then started to go to St. John's, across town. He took the car as it was too far to walk. Mother went back to her music. She wrote music, stacks of it that lay in tall piles under the piano. Most of it was for the piano, but she also wrote songs, music for poems she especially liked. |