Thrush Green Read Online Free PDF

that led into Nod and, in later life, Paul never smelled that sharp breath-taking sweetness of the wild rose without remembering the languor and warm happiness of those golden afternoons with Molly Piggott.
    She was the perfect companion for a little boy, placid, good-tempered and ready to answer endless questions.
    "Why can't I fly, Molly?"
    "Would you be terribly, terribly sad if I died, Molly?"
    "Why don't all animals have horns?"
    These were a few of the simpler questions that Molly faced daily. When Paul started to attend Sunday school at Saint Andrew's and, later still, listened to Miss Watson's Scripture lessons at the village school, the queries grew more difficult.
    "Did John the Baptist always have a headache?" he asked at teatime one day.
    "Never knew he had one," said Molly equably, spreading jam for him.
    "Well, he said he wasn't fit to stoop down and tie up shoelaces," pointed out Paul reasonably, cutting the bread and butter energetically. And later on, as Molly tucked him into bed he had asked:
    "Who is the Holy Ghost, Molly?"
    Molly pushed her hair back from her forehead, screwing up her eyes in an effort to solve this teaser.
    "I don't rightly know, Paul," she answered slowly, "but he was a friend of Jesus's."
    "What I thought," answered the child, butting his head into the pillow and, satisfied, he was asleep in two minutes.
    When Paul was five and had started school Molly feared that her services might not be needed at the house on Thrush Green, but Joan Bassett had reassured her. The two had been together in the big kitchen, one December afternoon, Molly with her mending and Joan icing the Christmas cake, while Paul rested upstairs.
    "You know that Paul starts school in the New Year," Joan had said, intent on her sugar rosettes, "but we all hope you will stay with us for as long as you want to."

    Molly had kept her head bent above her sewing but her heart leaped at the news.
    "He ends school at half past three each day, so that you can have tea with us as you've always done and help with the linen and run a few errands...."
    Joan paused as she negotiated a tricky edge with her icing tool. Molly said nothing, speechless with relief. Joan wondered if the girl might have other plans and began again with some diffidence.
    "Of course I know you'll want something with more scope now that you're getting older, and we'd never stand in your way, Molly. You must feel quite free to go to any other post if you are offered one."
    "Oh no!" Molly exclaimed from a full heart, "I don't ever want to leave here!"
    And, at that moment, she really meant it.

    And so the winter months had slipped by, with Paul bursting from school at half past three and running home across the green bearing a paper mat woven erratically from bright strips, or a wallpaper bookmark still damp from the paste brush, as a souvenir of his day's labors.
    He was ecstatically happy at the little school. Both teachers he had known from babyhood. Miss Watson he saw but little, for she took the older children, and after morning prayers and a Scripture story she retired to her own classroom and was seen no more by Paul. But Miss Fogerty, the infants' teacher, he adored, and she began to share Molly's place in his heart. She had been teaching at Thrush Green school as long as the Bassett girls could remember and had not changed a scrap in all the years. Small and mousy, with very bright eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles, she darted about the classroom and playground still wearing the silver pencil on a long chain about her neck that Joan remembered from her own childhood glimpses of Miss Fogerty.
    Molly missed the companionship of the child on the afternoon walks. She often ran an errand nowadays for Joan at the time when she had formerly taken out Paul. She was a reliable shopper and Joan found that she could give her increasing responsibility in choosing food and drapery from the shops in Lulling. By Eastertime Molly was doing a large part of the