Time Is Noon by Pearl S. Buck Page B

away God. She kept him invisible but constantly beside her. “I have the call,” she reiterated with more firmness than she had ever said anything in her life.
    She grew quite wildly firm after a year or two, so that Dr. Crabbe said gruffly, “Let the girl have her own way for once or she’ll have to be put into an asylum.”
    Old Mrs. Kinney wailed aloud, “But what shall we do without her? Her father’s devoted to her. She’s all we have—our only child!”
    “You ought to have had grandchildren ten years ago,” he replied with rudeness.
    “Sarah’s delicate,” said Mrs. Kinney positively. She was old, but she was very pretty and fragile and her house was exquisite. Mrs. Kinney had inherited the house and some money with it, and neither she nor Mr. Kinney had ever needed to do anything.
    So they never did anything, and Mrs. Kinney, who had always been afraid of everything, grew more afraid as the years went on. She would never, she said years ago, ride in one of these new automobiles. It was tempting God, it was suicide. She walked down the street every afternoon a little way, clinging to Mr. Kinney’s arm, and on Sundays they walked the three blocks to church and back. She always explained, “We are both rather delicate. We have to take care of ourselves. Sarah inherits my delicate constitution, I’m sorry to say.”
    But for once Sarah was not delicate. She took ship and made the voyage breathless and arrived at the remote mission in the jungle and plunged intensely into the life. Hardship could not touch her and she was afraid of nothing, although always breathless.
    After five years when she came on a furlough the old pair had her again. They clutched her with their love. They spoke piteously of their age, of their fragility. She heard her father’s cough. She saw her mother’s hand tremble with a palsy. Now they did not speak of her delicateness. Instead they spoke of her strength. They cried, “You are so young and strong and we will soon be gone. You will never miss a year out of your life. It will not be more than a year.”
    She waited year upon year. She served six years’ waiting and her father died. Then her mother, trembling very much and grown as thin as a dried leaf, cried, “Sarah, can you bear to leave me alone? It will not be more than a year. I shall not live the year out.”
    So Sarah Kinney waited a year and two years and then five years and now she was beginning the seventh year of her waiting, and the old woman lived fretfully on, thin to her bones, trembling so that she must be fed and dressed like a child, and each day death was no nearer. Of course Miss Kinney was tender with her and never even in her heart did she allow herself to hope for anything except her mother’s health. Her one self-indulgence was to remember the five years of her own life in Africa, to remember them and hope.
    She stood before the two young girls now, happy because she could remember again, a narrow spare old-maidenly figure, so much taller than everyone else that she had stooped timidly since she was sixteen and first saw how she really looked in the mirror, her hair, now whiter than her mother’s, flaring about her small excited face. “Five blessed years, dear friends,” she began, her voice quivering. “I did God’s work. The African people came to me—the dear people. They were not afraid of me at all. I loved them. When they were ill it was such joy to me—joy to minister to them, I mean—the little babies especially were so sweet. They were not afraid of me, although I know I looked strange to them. You know we do look strange and pale in a country where everybody is black.”
    Her gaze fluttered from one face to the other, all unbelieving because they remembered her as a small sickly child with protruding front teeth, upon Rose, sitting rapt and listening, her eyes downcast, her soft hands folded in her lap, and then she found Joan’s eyes. Joan felt the beseeching eyes like lighted