The Time Is Noon
Pearl S. Buck
Language: English
Pages: 314
ISBN: 0671781065
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The absorbing story of a woman's painful journey toward maturity.
die, for Paul was alive. In the darkness she went to his crib and listened. He was breathing steadily, soundly. She felt his hand. It was warm and lax. She had done everything she could think of to do. She went and laid herself down in her bed and let agony fall upon her, unchecked at last. But how could one live in agony day and night while a year passed, and then another and another? She would sleep a little and wake in the morning stifled, as one might wake in a dense smoke, or under a heavy
into a small mirror, rouging her already scarlet mouth. Joan hesitated. Then she said firmly, “No, he’s not all right—there’s something wrong.” Fanny lowered her mirror. Her face warmed with pity. “That’s too bad! My children’s all healthy. But I know a girl with a puny baby. She took her to a gospel meeting, and the preacher put his hand on her and she’s better—at least her ma says she’s better. Come on, Frankie—Lem’ll be mad, waiting for us!” She had to let him go now. She rose and stood
the square carved center table, and he had given the first piece to Rose, and Rose had eaten a little of it and tied the rest in her handkerchief and had taken it home. That was the difference between Rose and herself. Joan always ate her cake immediately. Rose said, “I knew there’d be ice cream and things I couldn’t take home, so I saved the cake and two pieces of candy.” But she couldn’t think ahead like that. Rose had worn a pink dress, and she a yellow one. Mrs. Winters came in suddenly. She
frightened. No one contradicted Mr. Pegler, for once. Any day now, any one of them—Miss Kinney was staring down at the coffin, bewildered, as though she had not seen it before. The sexton was beginning to shovel in the earth. “Why, we are all getting old, aren’t we?” Miss Kinney cried. She looked down upon them, one and another, her small face frightened. “Come along now,” said Dr. Crabbe, taking her fragile arm in his hand. “I’ll take you home. Your mother will be wanting you.” “Yes, of
There must be something for hands and feet to do, a question to be heard and answered, or else she was empty and in the emptiness was Martin. So when her father talked she listened, her upper surface hearing, answering what she scarcely heard. He said, not talking to her, but speaking aloud to himself as he often did riding along the country roads, speaking aloud to himself or to God, “I must enlarge the chapel at South End. I am grieved continually that in that village of several hundred souls