The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry Page B

that they were wrong, or even secret, but they seemed private. "I've seen him with our horses, Peggy. It's almost as if he can speak their special language."
    "He does have a way with animals," Peggy agreed. "But a farm is more than animals. There's the crops. The planting and the harvest. Taking care of the plow and the harnesses. Buying the seed. My pa has to go to the feed store and bargain and trade.
    "And the butchering, too," she added. "It troubles my pa that Jacob runs and hides at butchering time. He feels them animals to be his friends. He can't be there when their time comes, and it angers Pa."
    "But the kittens, Peggy! You told me about the kittens, when there are too many. You said Jacob is the one who—" I just couldn't say the rest.
    She folded the ironed sheet and laid it on the pile. "Want to do your father's hanky?" she asked, picking up the small damp cloth from the basket.
    So I took the hot iron and guided it across the square of linen. The iron was heavy, and it was not as easy as it looked, to get the handkerchief flattened perfectly and dry. Peggy helped me with her strong hand on mine.
    "New kittens," she explained, "aren't the same as the kind you like to play with, all whiskers and fur and jumping around. Newborn, they don't seem like nothing lovable yet. Jacob does it quick and then forgets it, and even the mother cat don't seem to care.
    "My land, look there in the corner of the hanky," she said, and ran her finger across the embroidered HWT. "His initials. I see that every time I iron, and think how wonderful it is to have your name be so important."
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    We heard a knock at the front door, and then Mother called from the hall.
    "Katy! Jessie's here and wants to play!"
    "Don't bring her in here, Katy," Peggy whispered. "She gets into everything and her hands are always dirty."
    I laughed because it was true. Jessie Wood was my best girlfriend, but she was always a source of trouble. Mischief, sometimes, though I tried to steer her from it; and even if she wasn 't into
mischief, Jessie stumbled into things, dropped them, broke them, dirtied them. I left Peggy to the ironing and took Jessie up to my bedroom, where we could play with our paper dolls. Mother had given us last year's Sears Roebuck catalogue, and Jessie and I had made us a fine set of families from it. Now we were furnishing houses for them, choosing the furniture from the pages and making a life for our paper families. Jessie's was grand, with the most expensive suites and fancy wallpapers. But I had decided on a plainer life for mine, maybe on a farm, and I set about choosing overalls forthefather,andaplow.Igavethelittleboy—I had cut him out the last time we had played—a pair of overalls, too; now I chose some sturdy shoes for him, so that when he roamed, as I thought he might, he would be warm and comfortable.
    I made Jessie wipe her feet because it was thawing now, as February turned to March, and muddy in places where the snow was gone on the path. Then I made her wash her hands before we got the paper dolls out. Last time we played, I hadn't, and she got dirt smears on a fine Summer Leghorn Hat of Real Japanese Silk that she wanted for the lady in her paper doll family.
    Jessie washed her hands, but she said our bathroom smelled peculiar.
    And it was true. Peggy had taken Father's
clothes away, the ones he had worn all night at the hospital, but the smell from them remained. Peggy told me later it was the smell of burned people on him; she opened the window wide, though it was cold outside, and scrubbed the bathroom with carbolic acid.
    It was only one week later that we heard the terrible, terrible news from New York. Peggy gasped and made a sound like "Oh!" when she heard at first, because her sister Nellie had been talking lately about New York, about going there to work and earn some money and maybe make her way into the pictures.
    It was young girls like Nellie, and some even younger, who were working there