Little Ships - A Novel Author:Kathleen Norris le jhips e i COP STILT OTTT, IQ25, BY K ATHTlUKEISr - AX. X-JtZOK-rS . ESJER. VJ AT To be Quite Frank, then let me say-That since that first, remembered day THat echoed to your baby screams, JVEy quiet - world, my peaceful schemes Have trembled underneath your sway. 3VIy typewriters Have gone astray, Pencils are broken, paste is grey, And ink es... more »capes in blots and streams, To be quite frank. Yet no one else has quite your STvay. No one may take, try though he may Your place in all your mothers dreams. Though all are dear, none other seemj To be quite Frank, LITTLE SHIPS CHAPTER I IT WAS the last hour of the long three days Retreat in the old Mission Convent of St. Elizabeth, in San Francisco Mollie Cunningham had almost exhausted herself with prayer. She could still kneel, almost sitting on her heels as she did so she could still keep devout eyes upon the sunshine flecked, candle-lighted, smoke-veiled haze of flowers and golden colours that was the chapel altar. But she was weary, smiling dreamily, like a tired child unnoted in the corner of a fathers room. Benediction was in progress. Her final prayer, so accustomed as to rise to her lips auto matically now, was for the children. Mollie had five living children and two angels. Sown in among the joyous healthy cares and joys of her motherhood were the agonies of a double loss. George, taken from her after only a few wailing weeks of life, would be seventeen now. Daisy, a silken-headed blossom of three, had died ten years ago. The world had forgotten everything except that, vaguely, there had been a Cunningham baby or two who had not lived. But Mollie kept Georges and Daisys anniversaries ever green in her heart. I hope they pray for Mama she often said. She turned her thoughts to-day to the others the five sturdy, bold, and black-eyed children who remained. For Tom, twenty-two years old and the first-born, her prayers were filled with fear and pride. Tom had graduated from the Santa Clara College, and was beginning his business career with Pap a, in the big wholesale grocery firm of P. J. Cunningham Co. 2 LITTLE SHIPS Tom was everything that was wonderful, his mother thought handsome, witty, good, with the voice of a seraph. But Mollie was a little afraid just now that he was beginning to fancy his pretty, giddy, penniless cousin, Kate Walsh. Dont let him marry Kate, was her somewhat vague prayer for him. Shes a good enough little thing, and my own half brothers child, but I want that the boy should look higher than that hell be rich some day, and if he could, travel in Europe, and then maybe come home and be his Mamas boy. Cecilia came next in line. Cecilia, just nineteen, was kneeling beside her mother, her slender little back very straight, her white chip hat, wreathed with pink roses, bowed devoutly over her linked fingers. Nineteen Mollie could hardly believe that one of her little girls was nineteen, a grown-up young lady, talk ing about a religious vocation. For Cecilia, in her own angelic little heart, was sure that she wanted to become a nun, right here in the dear old convent where all her happy school days had been spent. Her father was distinctly opposed to this idea, and even Mollie, although she loved the nuns, and had a proud and tender feeling toward the pious aspirations of her good little daughter, was not quite ready to pray that Cecy should enter. . She prayed instead that the child should be guided. If a good marriage should come along, with some fine man, Mollie knew that she would be better pleased. Not a poor struggling feller that had risen up from nothing, like Jawn Kelly, Mollie mused, but perhaps someone who would give the child a taste of better things, society and art, travel. Or at least, thought Mollie, vaguely, if she had, a beau or two, that shed know what shed be doing in offering it all up, and becoming a Sister - Then came Martin, the third of the children, wild, clumsy, dirty, at fifteen the odd member of the little group...« less