The New Mother

Lucy Clifford

Description

“The New Mother” is an 1882 short story by Lucy Clifford. The story centres around two young girls who live with their mother and baby sibling in the woods. One day they happen across strange girl who promises to show them a tiny man and woman who live in her guitar if they are naughty enough. Excited by this offer, they return home and try to be as badly behaved as possible, to which their mother responds with threats of leaving and the arrival of a new mother with “glass eyes and a wooden tail” . Three times the strange girl tells them they haven't been naughty enough, and three times they return home to behave more badly than the day before. Finally, the girl tells them that they shall never be naughty enough to see the miniature couple and they return home to find that their mother really has gone. When the new mother arrives, they run away into the woods to live on berries. Lucy Clifford (1846–1929) Clifford, also known as Mrs. W. K. Clifford, was an English journalist, novelist, and wife of notable philosopher and mathematician William Kingdon Clifford. Other works by this author include: “Mrs. Keith's Crime” (1885), “The Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise” (1882), and “Aunt Anne” (1892). Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this classic collection of children's short stories now complete with an introductory poem by Lola Ridge.

Sujets

• Paperback
• Caroline

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 08 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528791311
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE NEW MOTHER
By
LUCY CLIFFORD
WITH A POEM BY LOLA RIDGE

First published in 1882



Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Classics
This edition is published by Read & Co. Classics, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk




Contents
MOTHER By Lola Ridge
THE NEW MOTHER
I
II


Illustrations
The She Kissed Them
“It Really is a Most Beautiful Thing, is a Peardrum”


MOTHER
By Lola Ridge
Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors . . .
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.

You are less an image in my mind
than a luster
I see you in gleams
pale as star-light on a gray wall . . .
evanescent as the reflection of a white swan
shimmering in broken water.


THE NEW MOTHER
I
The children were always called Blue-Eyes and the Turkey, and they came by the names in this manner. The elder one was like her dear father who was far away at sea, and when the mother looked up she would often say, “Child, you have taken the pattern of your father’s eyes,” for the father had the bluest of Blue-Eyes, and so gradually his little girl came to be called after them. The younger one had once, while she was still almost a baby, cried bitterly because a turkey that lived near to the cottage, and sometimes wandered into the forest, suddenly vanished in the middle of the winter; and to console her she had been called by its name.
Now the mother and Blue-Eyes and the Turkey and the baby all lived in a lonely cottage on the edge of the forest. The forest was so near that the garden at the back seemed a part of it, and the tall fir-trees were so close that their big black arms stretched over the little thatched roof, and when the moon shone upon them their tangled shadows were all over the white-washed walls.
It was a long way to the village, nearly a mile and a half, and the mother had to work hard and had not time to go often herself to see if there was a letter at the post-office from the dear father, and so very often in the afternoon she used to send the two children. They were very proud of being able to go alone, and often ran half the way to the post office. When they came back tired with the long walk, there would be the mother waiting and watching for them, and the tea would be ready, and the baby crowing with delight; and if by any chance there was a letter from the sea, then they were happy indeed. The cottage room was so cosy: the walls were as white as snow inside as well as out, and against them hung the cake-tin and the baking dish, and the lid of a large saucepan that had been worn out long before the children could remember, and the fish-slice, all polished and shining as bright as silver.