The Silent Boy Read Online Free PDF

pondered for a moment, deciding how to feel about this. "Like when I step on ants, I suppose," I said at last. "They don't even know. Do you think it's the same, Peggy?"
    "I guess. We don't need to think about it. Look! Naomi made pancakes!"
    But I did think about it. I thought about the
touched boy, his soft look the day that he had held apples to our horses mouths, and his gentle hands making the rhythm of the great grindstone against his thin, denim-covered thighs. I thought about his holding newborn kittens, so tiny, touching their fur with his fingers, and then lowering them into the creek and holding them under. The kindest thing, Peggy had said.
    Â 
    One morning late in November I found the Sears Roebuck catalogue open on Mother's desk in the parlor. I hoped she was planning to have a new dress made for me. Jessie Wood had a new one of black-and-white checks, with a sailor collar and red trim on the cuffs. She wore it to school, and I was jealous.
    Usually Mother just looked at the pictures in the catalogue. Then she would have Miss Abbott, the seamstress, come. Miss Abbott would measure me all over while I stood on a stool. Mother would show her a picture and give her the fabric she had bought at Whittaker's store. Miss Abbott would study the picture and cut out a paper pattern, holding it up to me to be sure it was the right size. Then she would go away, to her own small house down on Vine Street, near the dairy, and when she came back, she would have the dress partly made, all basted together.
    This was the part I liked. I would put on the basted dress, very carefully so the stitches wouldn't break, and Mother would stand me on the kitchen table. Then Miss Abbott would carefully mark the hem with her little tool that puffed chalk in a line when she squeezed the bulb. I liked how the white line appeared all the way around the bottom of my dress. Then she would take it away again and do the final stitching, and soon it would look just like the dress in the picture Mother had chosen.
    When I found the catalogue there, I turned the pages until I found one that showed little girls, and in my mind I chose the dress I wanted, though I knew Mother would say no. It was too fancy. Carefully I sounded out the words that described it: "White lawn trimmed with lace," it said below the picture. "Neat belt of silk ribbon with rosette in front." I didn't know the word
rosette,
but I could tell from the picture that it was a wonderful bunched thing like a flower, maybe a peony not quite in bloom.
    "Look!" I told Peggy, when she came into the parlor with a dust cloth. I pointed to the picture. "Do you think Mother would ask Miss Abbott to make me this? It has a rosette. I know it's too elegant for school, but I certainly could wear it to birthday parties.
    "If I ever have a birthday party," I added,
grumbling. My eighth birthday party the month before had been canceled because of my chicken pox.
    Peggy studied the picture and smiled.
    "Jessie's birthday is next month," I told her. "I'm older than she is, but she was a Christmas baby, which is nice, don't you think? I could wear it to Jessie's birthday party."
    "It's pretty," Peggy agreed, "but you'd better turn the pages back to where your mother had it open. She's going to have some clothes made for herself."
    "For herself? She doesn't need new clothes! I do! I've grown three inches this year!" Grumpily I flipped the pages away from the little girls in their lace-trimmed party dresses. "I don't remember which page it was on," I told Peggy.
    "She'll be needing new clothes soon," Peggy said, and took the catalogue from me. "Here. This is the page." She laid it open again on Mother's desk.
    "
Those
aren't very pretty." I peered at the drawing of ladies posing in their ordinary dresses. "What's this word, Peggy? I can't read it." I pointed with my finger to a word I'd never seen before and that didn't sound itself out easily.
    Peggy looked. "'Stylish,'" she read. "It's a hard word