Page:The Eleventh Virgin.pdf/13

teresting but which June felt that she ought not to know. There was an agreeable excitement in listening to Sadie, excitement akin to that stomach-aching thrill when one was going to the circus.

But Sadie died from eating an Easter egg which had served as a parlor ornament for ten years. It was made of sugar and by squinting through one end, June could see a cow and a milk-maid and green trees. Sadie’s death, June felt, was the result of delving too deeply into life’s secrets. . .

There was a brook running through the vacant lot across the street, and June and her sister Adele used to sit on the stones and try to turn hairs from a horse’s tail into water-snakes, holding the long hairs patiently in the water, waiting for heads to grow on them as you were told they did. Concentration made Adele dizzy and she fell in the water and went home howling. June was whipped for it because, Mother Grace argued, June was two years older and should have known better. That was one of the disadvantages of playing with one's sister.

June was slapped for many things. For going to the ice-box and dipping her fingers into the condensed milk can. Two fingers could scoop up a lot. . .

At the end of the summer the weeds in the lot grew so high that June could tunnel her way