This Proud Heart by Pearl S. Buck

work.”
    She looked out of the window and did not answer. It had been pleasant, shaving the long even rows of green.
    “I won’t do it again,” she said.
    But today there was no more to do. She went to the window and looked out. She felt restless with nothing to do. Down the street Lucile was wheeling a baby carriage onto the porch and then she went into the house quickly. Susan could hear the screen door bang. It was Lucile’s second baby, born six weeks ago. “I’m furious!” Lucile had cried. “Another baby—and Tommy just getting to where I can take him with me! It isn’t as though Hal could afford me a maid. Men are so selfish!”
    She had not answered Lucile, remembering Hal, docile and always tired. It did not seem possible he could make Lucile do anything she did not want to do.
    Behind her the house was orderly and still. It looked at her when she turned, with the bright and placid look of a well-tended child. Now what should she do? Yesterday she had taken Mary’s new dress to her, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with yellow satin ribbon. She had worked on it every day and she had made it of pale gold metal cloth, buying the stuff out of Mrs. Fontane’s money. She had made it straight and smart. Mary’s eyes had lighted to more warmth than had ever shone in them.
    “It’s lovely, Sue,” she said. And without knowing at all why, Susan felt tears hot against her eyelids.
    “Do you really like it?” She longed to hear Mary say it again. Perhaps someday she and Mary could grow close.
    “I do, I love it,” Mary said.
    “Well, I should think so!” her mother said, sighing. “It’s a handsome dress, Susan. I don’t see how you got it all done.”
    And her father, pausing at the door, put in his head. “Good heavens!” he cried. “I’m not paying for it, I hope!”
    “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” her mother said. “Susan made it.”
    “Did you, Sue?” he said. “You’ve made her look like a daffodil.” His eyes were as mischievous as though there had never been tears in them.
    “They liked it,” she told Mark last night. “Mary looked pretty in it.”
    “Well, they ought to like it,” Mark said. “It was beautiful. I don’t know how you do it, Sue.”
    His voice was tender and his eyes humble as he looked at her, and she shrank a little.
    “It was an easy pattern,” she said, not knowing why she needed defense, except from his humility. She did not want Mark humble before her. No, no, for then it made her different from him….
    Up the street floated the sound of Lucile’s baby girl crying. The baby cried so much. If she had a baby she wouldn’t put it out and let it cry and cry. She turned suddenly and opened the door and walked quickly down the street. She could say she was just going to see Lucile. She ran silently up the steps and looked into the carriage. Why, the poor little thing was all twisted in the net! She put the net back and lifted the baby out and straightened her skirts. The cap strings were stiff organdy and cut the tiny chin and she loosened them. Then she sat hushing the baby softly, rocking back and forth. A huge blind tenderness rushed up in her as she felt the soft helpless body. Holding it like this in her arms, the small body curved again to the shape of the womb. This helplessness was too much—it was sad. How helplessly life began! She looked down into the small face. The baby had stopped crying now and was looking at her, her little mouth moving. If she modeled a baby face, how could she express what was there?—this naked helpless patience, this submissive patience, as though the newly born child already knew the eternal helplessness of its whole life, not only now but forever.
    “Why, Susan!” Lucile’s voice cried sharply. Lucile was at the door. “What on earth—”
    “She was crying so,” Susan said humbly.
    “Well, of all—but she’s supposed to be having a nap!”
    “I’d finished my work, and I thought I would just