The Patriot Read Online Free PDF

perfume?”
    “Forever,” she said pertly, “and forever—because I like it. Don’t study any more! You must be finished. It is time you went to bed.”
    “You know nothing about what I have to do,” he said.
    “If you are not yet finished, then you are stupid,” she retorted. She touched his cheek with her soft and scented palm. “And I know you are not stupid,” she said.
    He felt his heart beat suddenly once, twice, and he was disturbed. For years they had been playmates. He knew, and she knew, too, that she was a bondmaid and allowed in the house to be more than that only because they were all fond of her and had petted her, especially since his sisters died. But indeed between the two of them there had been something like being brother and sister. They never spoke of her being a bondmaid. He did not think of it because he was so used to her and she did not speak of it. But for the last few months something else was beginning between them, something he wanted and hated. It was this way she had of putting her hand on his shoulder and her cheek on his hair. Some night he would stretch out his own arm and put it around her, though he did not want to do it. He had never done it, but he had thought of it, and he was ashamed. If he had not belonged to the band he would have done it, perhaps.
    Besides, he did not want to be like I-ko. I-ko was forever teasing Peony, touching her cheek and seizing her hand and putting his arm about her. Whenever he did this, Peony flung herself away from him. Once she had scratched him, four long scratches down both his cheeks, so that for several days he could not go out because everyone knows that when a man has four long parallel scratches down both his cheeks, a woman’s two hands have done it. There was trouble in the house because of it. Madame Wu spoke alone to Peony, and his father spoke to I-ko. And Peony came into I-wan’s room and cried and said, “I hate your brother I-ko! He has always been wicked.”
    I-wan did not ask how I-ko was wicked. He did not want to know. He had felt a faint prickling in his spine and he had said solemnly, “I will never be wicked to you, Peony.”
    She had sobbed awhile, and sighed, and then she looked up at him and smiled.
    “You don’t know how to be wicked,” she had said….
    So now he was ashamed when he felt pleased at her touch on him, and he drew away from her.
    “You don’t like me any more now that you are grown up,” she murmured.
    “Yes, I do,” he said loudly, “exactly as I always have.”
    “I’m so lonely,” she whispered.
    He rose, slamming his composition book shut.
    “You go away,” he said. “I don’t want you here any more when I am going to bed, Peony.”
    He made his voice surly because he was afraid of her. He was afraid she would cry or be angry with him because she had always helped him get ready for bed and then had drawn the bed curtains and put out the light.
    “Open the windows,” he had always commanded her.
    In summer she obeyed, but in winter she begged him, “ Not tonight—it’s so cold.”
    “If you don’t open them, I’ll get up myself after you are gone,” he called out of the quilts.
    So she had to open them, summer and winter…. He turned his back to her now so he need not see her face when it was hurt. But he heard her laugh, and he turned around quickly. She was not hurt at all. She was smiling, her eyes teasing, her voice gay.
    “You are too big,” she said, “you are a man now—so you don’t want me here any more, little I-wan! A big grown man!”
    He rushed at her and pushed her to the door and she clung to his hands, laughing and laughing. He pushed her out of the door at last, though her soft hands clung to his like something sticky. There, he had her off! He pulled the door sharply shut and turned the key. Then he stood and listened. There was not a sound. He put his hand to the key to turn it back and see if she were there. Then he drew away. Of course she was