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# Growing Up (Vorse)

Growing Up
Growing Up
By Mary Heaton Vorse Author of "The Prestons"
Copyright 1920 By Boni & Liveright Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
To Mary Ellen
Growing Up
* Prologue
* Chapter 1
* Chapter 2
* Chapter 3
* Chapter 4
* Chapter 5
* Chapter 6
* Chapter 7
* Chapter 8
* Chapter 9
* Chapter 10
* Chapter 11
* Chapter 12
* Chapter 13
* Chapter 14
* Chapter 15
* Chapter 16
* Chapter 17
* Chapter 18
* Chapter 19
* Chapter 20
* Chapter 21
* Chapter 22
* Chapter 23
* Chapter 24
* Chapter 25
* Chapter 26
* Chapter 27
* Chapter 28
* Chapter 29
* Chapter 30
* Chapter 31
* Chapter 32
* Chapter 33
* Chapter 34
* Chapter 35
* Chapter 36
* Chapter 37
* Chapter 38
* Chapter 39
* Chapter 40
* Chapter 41
* Chapter 42
* Chapter 43
* Chapter 44
* Chapter 45
* Chapter 46
* Chapter 47
* Chapter 48
* Chapter 49
* Chapter 50
* Chapter 51
* Chapter 52
* Chapter 53
* Chapter 54
* Chapter 55
* Chapter 56
* Chapter 57
* Chapter 58
* Chapter 59
* Chapter 60
* Chapter 61
* Chapter 62
* Chapter 63
* Chapter 64
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1966, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 57 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 3

WHAT are you to do with a child who measures the thing it wishes to do with punishment, and finding the price of punishment small deliberately makes his choice? There's not much to be done, is there? Tom got out of it this way:
"If we spank him he will look upon our punishment as revenge." And when Alice asked: "Well, if he wants to do something that will hurt him, what are you going to do then?" Tom answered with a finality that did not hide the weakness of his position:
"We shall find some better way of reasoning with him. This steadfastness of his, is a splendid thing if rightly directed."
When Alice asked how he proposed to direct it rightly he left for the office. Meanwhile Robert sat smiling serenely. His calm mouth was shut with a firmness that must always have been there and that Alice had never before noticed. He had an unshakable quality, a determination that defied them. Nothing but annihilation could subdue him. He was tiny, but he was stronger than they, for he knew exactly what he ought to do in life, and they, poor things, were uncertain.
Because of such trivial things as his Grandma's goldfish, Robert had already shown them that when it came to a show-down he held the trump card of independence.
The complacent look went from their faces. They no longer talked evenings of how badly other people brought up their children. For they began to realize ​the truth on which all the wisdom of parenthood is built, that the supreme thing which matters in the bringing up of your children is not following this theory or that. The thing of deepest importance is for you to try and find out as soon as possible who your baby is, for if you do not do it yourself he will make you. But it takes more than one child to teach this lesson, just as it takes more than one child to give a parent humility.
# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 7

SARA was more openwork. You got all sorts of glimpses about what she was up to, especially if you took the trouble to listen to the tuneless chants which she was forever singing. She sang to herself hours at a time things like:
"My mama, oh, she's bee-yu-ti-ful; oh, she's bee-yu-ti-ful. She's got gold teeth. Big long dangly golds in her ears." (Spoken colloquially.) "You know, like John the peanut man's wife." (Sung.) "Two, free times as long, my mama. An' wouldn't y' like to go out ridin' all day in the trolley? My papa he rides around all day, for he's a trolley man. He takes me along. Oh, my mama's got gold, gold teeth." (Spoken defiantly.) "And when I grow up, Robert Marcey, all my teeth's goin' to be gold, too."
It used to make Alice quite ashamed that in real life she had no long ear-rings and not so much as one gold tooth, and that Tom was a mere business man.
So Sara chanted to herself continually. She would chant:
"Robert's a bad, bad boy. They ought to spank 'm good. He's gone off with Uncle Zotsby! Old Uncle Zotsby-hotsby. Old Hotsby Totsby." At this Robert would cry:
"Shut up!" This chant of hers disturbed and embarrassed him. "Leave Uncle Zotsby alone," he would cry savagely. "He'll set his dog on you!" Serious altercations occurred over Sara's treatment of Uncle ​Zotsby. Robert, usually serene, usually the one to do the teasing, was here most vulnerable. But why the name of Uncle Zotsby should be so crucial Alice could not find out. When she would ask Robert:
"Who's Uncle Zotsby?" he would blush furiously. If she asked Sara, Sara would turn the subject with ingenuity. Turning the subject was one of Sara's talents and she loved to display it. Alice had to take Zotsby or leave Zotsby, but she couldn't find out who Zotsby was. She had never even so much as heard the name in her life until it came into her nursery, bringing warfare and destruction in its train. She got to the point that when she heard a certain sort of scuffle occurring she would call out, "You children stop fighting about Uncle Zotsby at once," or "I won't have Zotsby's dog bothering Sara." It was very humiliating to a mother to have the peace of her home disturbed by a name, and especially a name like Zotsby.
# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 9

EVEN Alice had to admit that when Evelyn Dearie fell sick with measles and elected for her bed of pain the library table, life became well night unendurable. Tom told Sara sternly that Evelyn would have to go up to the nursery. Alice would take her up to the nursery, but all in vain. Evelyn would be back in the library again and with her Sara with her professional:
"Hush, you'll disturb Evelyn Dearie; she's very sick. They make too much noise up in the nursery," she explained to her father; "she can't ever get well up there." Indeed, during these last days William Travers Jenkins had been often to the house, and the chuff-chuffing noise was even more audible.
"I can't keep the boys quiet, they won't stay quiet," said Sara stamping her foot, "and Zotsby's horrid dog is all over the place." But she could keep visitors quiet. She hushed them alarmingly, and a report went over the town that Jamie was having surreptitious measles. When Tom went to business this report assailed him on all sides. He came home angry.
"This nonsense has got to stop," he told Alice and Sara. "Evelyn Dearie has got to stay in the nursery."
It was Alice with her own hands who took Evelyn there amid the sobs and protests of Sara. A loud chuff-chuffing came from the nursery. It was stilled on Alice's entrance.
"You boys have got to keep quiet," Alice told them. ​"Evelyn will be well in a day or two. Until then we've got to have quiet."
"I wasn't making any noise," said Robert.
"I wasn't," said William Travers.
"I heard you," said Alice, but here one of Sara's tropical tempests raged through the nursery. She stamped her feet.
"You take your old Uncle Zotsby away," she said, "him and his dog! I won't have him here with Evelyn Dearie. He's not my Uncle Zotsby, he's only your Uncle Zotsby! He's got steam engines inside him instead of real insides like us. He tells William and Robert how the world's made. Take him away." But here Robert cried in fury:
"You stop, you stop, you shut up!"
He might have even committed the crime of striking his sister had not his mother intervened. She knew what an outrage it was against his spiritual modesty. She knew that face to face and hostile stood her children's playmates from The Other Side. It was a critical moment.
Into the silence Robert said, "Now you'll never know the name of Uncle Zotsby's dog!"
"I'm going to take you out to walk with me," Alice said quietly to Sara.
"Who'll take care of Evelyn Dearie?" asked Sara.
"Your father," answered Alice brazenly. She paid no attention to Robert's scarlet face. She might not have heard anything of Uncle Zotsby or his dog, but just the same her heart was bleeding for Robert.
"We're going out," she told her husband, "and you'll have to take care of Evelyn while we're gone." Tom was so acquiescent as to arouse his wife's suspicions. But Sara was relieved. With father she felt ​that all was well. When they returned Tom met them with a long face.
"I'm sorry to tell you," he said, "that while you were gone Evelyn Dearie died. She died very quietly. There's no use crying about it, Sara, it couldn't be helped. You shouldn't have let her have the measles."
# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 10

SARA'S lip quivered. Great tears came to her eyes.
"Dead?" she quavered.
"Dead!" said Tom.
"My Evelyn Dearie dead?" she cried, her voice pierced with anguish.
In a voice of less assurance: "I am sorry, but it is so," Tom agreed.
"My child, my Evelyn Dearie!" answered Sara. "Where is she? Show her to me."
Tom indicated the library table.
"Oh, my Evelyn Dearie!" cried Sara. "My Evelyn Dearie!" She threw herself face down on the floor and burst into sobs. "Oh, Evelyn Dearie; oh, Evelyn Dearie, what made me leave you!"
It was a disconcerting moment. Tom felt like a murderer.
"Well," he said apologetically to Alice, "I couldn't have her on the library table forever, could I? The library table is no place for an invisible child to be sick with measles. Something had to be done."
"Something's got to be done now," said Alice. "Look at Sara. She's going to break a blood vessel."
"Sara," said Tom. "Sara dear." But from Sara came only the long shuddering, "Oo-oo" of a mother mourning her dead child. "Sara, we'll have to do something about Evelyn; we'll have to take her off the table," said Tom. Sara kept on sobbing. "When people are dead you have to bury them," Tom told her.
​Sara sat up. Her face was blotched with tears. "Bury them up?" she inquired cheerfully. "Can I have a funeral?" A light of interest shone in her tear-dimmed eyes.
"Certainly a funeral," said Tom.
"Hearse?" she said. "Carriages?"
"Hearses with plumes on them," said Tom. "Black ostrich feathers." There is no limit to such things when they exist only in the invisible world.
Sara jumped up. "Jamie!" she called. "Jamie! Robert! Come on! Evelyn's dead and we're going to have a funeral."
From out behind the house came a careful "Shuff Shuff; Chugg Chugg." It was Uncle Zotsby telling William Travers Jenkins and Robert how the world was made.
"Robert, don't you want to come? You can bring Uncle Zotsby."
A voice that Alice didn't recognize replied, "I can't come, and Robert can't come, and Bill can't come, but I'll send Uncle Zotsby's dog. He'll dig the grave for you—dogs dig fine graves."
# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 24

TOM'S Mother was the immediate cause of what happened, and Sara was the next cause, and Alice's being human was the next cause, and Robert's being a boy was the final cause.
Alice had had just about enough of dirty faces for that day. It was undoubtedly that and the association of ideas which made her greet Robert in that unpleasant way that mothers have with:
"Why, Robert, what have you been doing? Go and wash right away; it's almost supper time."
This was not a happy greeting, as any one will realize who can think back to his childhood. Very few people can think back definitely, but those who can remember cautious homecomings by back ways, careful avoidance of mothers and fathers, knowing that the first word that they would speak would be one of disapproval. What with torn clothes and dirty hands, and coming in late, the return of the child can be a trying ordeal.
Robert disappeared into the bathroom and presently emerged again.
"Did you wash your face," Alice inquired coldly, "while you were in there?" He flushed under tan and dirt. Boys eight years old resent sarcasm as they do nothing else.
"Isn't it clean?" he asked innocently.
"Clean?" echoed Alice. "Clean!" Again he went in. One standing near the door could hear the sound of careful washing, that is, careful in the sense of not covering too great an area of his perishable and possibly ​soluble face with water. Avoidance and not the eradication of dirt was Robert's method. Once more he came out.
"You're dirtier than ever," cried Alice unjustly. "I shall go with you." He said nothing. "Don't hump your shoulders at me in that impertinent way," Alice advised. At this he turned on her with, "I wasn't humping!"
"Supper's ready! Supper's ready! Supper's ready!" Sara chanted monotonously.
"Come, come," said Alice in a cheerful grown-up tone, "wash your face, Robert." He looked at her.
"What am I doing?" he asked gloomily, and continued washing, one single finger under his barely dampened face cloth. He turned three drops of water on the wash rag. With this moistened rag he barely touched the soap. Both water and soap might have been something poisonous. He then, with one finger beneath the cloth, lightly passed it around his cheeks. As though with deep reluctance he again let three drops of water fall upon the rag. A small black spot appeared there where it had been in contact with his cheek. Again he rubbed it as though either he was perishable or water poisonous. He circled around his eyes, leaving a round dark area, with great care as though washing egg shells. He washed his forehead leaving a black ring near the hair. He ignored altogether the unchartered tracks behind the ears. It was a maddening process for a mother to watch.
# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 25

ENOUGH of this!" cried Alice. "Give that face cloth to me. If you are not old enough to wash your face I shall wash it for you!"
His face was set. He tried to wriggle out of her grasp. She held him firmly; firmly she washed his face—one might almost have said violently. Certainly she did a thorough piece of work. When she got through he was crying bitterly. He wrenched himself away from her and ran up-stairs to the sheltering darkness. Alice could hear him sobbing, and she was so blind,—so angry at Robert, that she didn't know why he was crying.
The real matter was his manly dignity had been wounded. Robert had not been allowed to wash his own face. He had been washed like a baby. His dignity was outraged and, worse and worse, he couldn't keep from crying. Manly dignity is a terrible burden at Robert's age.
Alice knew she shouldn't have done it. She knew she had wounded him in some vulnerable spot, for he rarely cried. She couldn't dismiss it lightly when Robert's father asked her what the matter was with Robert by saying,
"Oh, he's just been a naughty little boy!" That's the advantage that children have over you. Alice felt naughty and Robert didn't. The Distressing Doubt was back again. She tried in vain to placate her conscience and her self-reproaches with the specious consolation:
"Well, he should have washed his face quicker." And conscience only demanded of her "Why?" So ​this was the reason that she was so lenient to the loud dispute that was heard the next morning. What it was all about one couldn't gather; one only knew that it was between Laurie and Robert. When Alice appeared upon the scene of action they spoke at once. Laurie said:
"He won't put his necktie on, ma'am."
"She chokes me," grumbled Robert.
"I don't, then," replied Laurie.
"I can do it myself," said Robert.
"You cannot, then," promptly contradicted Laurie. "And he threw himself down on the floor, ma'am, like Jamie for all the world, in a tantrum."
Next day he appeared at breakfast with a necktie whose knot was about at the middle of his stomach.
"What ails your tie, son?" Tom asked.
"He tied it himself," said Sara.
"Go and fix your tie," suggested Tom. Robert returned without any.
"Is that what you call fixing your tie?" Tom asked him.
"Yes," replied Robert, brazenly.
"What's the matter with you?" Tom inquired. There was an edge of curiosity in his tone as he looked at Robert. He saw vaguely that it wasn't just naughtiness. Then Robert broke through the inarticulateness of childhood.
"I won't be tweaked and pinched and pulled!" said irritable manly pride, speaking for itself. With a "this won't do" look, Robert was told to fetch his necktie. His father tied it tight; he tied it with emphasis. Tom left the house a little after his son and in a moment Tom returned. In his hand was a noose of blue silk; it was the necktie. He had found it on the door-step.
"Can you beat it?" was his comment.
# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 30

IT was at this period that Sara, Alice and Tom's mother went shopping in a nearby city. Alice had always marveled at those mothers who took their children shopping for fun. It is bad enough to go to town and shop at the best, and it is hard enough shopping with a child like slippery Sara, even in country towns; but to think of what you want and to keep your eye on a slippery Sara at the same time was one of those heroic tasks that Alice considered fit only for a race of super-women yet unborn.
So when her mother-in-law said she would also join the party Alice felt her cup was more than full. Encumbered with a ponderous elderly relative who shopped with a relentless ferocity and whose mobility was that of the mastodon, one could accomplish but little.
When on the train her grandmother leaned back, opened a hand bag of a size which one might have packed for a week-end, and from that drew out another smaller bag, and from this drew out a magnificent change purse and from this again extracted a two-dollar bill which she presented to Sara, saying:
"Now, Sara dear, this is for you. You may buy whatever you like with it."
When this happened Alice felt that a martyr's crown had been placed upon her head.
"How much do you suppose that is, Sara?" said her grandmother.
"Far too much to give to Sara," interposed Alice. ​"It's awfully kind of you, mother dear, but it's too large a sum for Sara to spend."
"Tut, tut!" replied grandmother. "Children are never too young to learn to buy one good thing in place of a thousand small ones. I want this to be an early lesson to Sara, by which she will learn how one good thing lasts, while money frittered away gives pleasure to no one. How much is this, Sara?"
"More'n half a dollar. Robert told me," Sara replied confidently.
"Four half dollars," her grandmother corrected. "And how much is four half dollars? Each half dollar is fifty cents, and fifty cents is fifty pennies, and if you were to give these two dollars and ask for pennies, they would give you two hundred pennies."
"How many is two hundred pennies?" asked Sara, "as many as this?" She cupped her hands together.
Numbers meant nothing to her. It was always a marvel to her when her mother took her in a shop and with a little silly ten-cent piece purchased not only candy but received bright gilt pennies in exchange as well, and now apparently one could take this uninteresting-looking piece of paper and get pennies for it, handfuls of them. The world was bright.
"That's what I'm going to buy with that," she announced. "Two hundred pennies, bright ones. I'll put them in my bank-bing! I'll put them in Jamie's bank-bing! And then I can buy things and things and things at the five- and ten-cent store. There's a great, big, long five- and ten-cent store where we're going, bigger than ours! I saw it Christmas! Mother took me. If Robert's good I'll give him eleven pennies, seventeen, maybe," she prattled on.
# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 34

ALREADY before school closed its gates upon him, Robert had been growing up, and each day took him away from Sara, who remained hopelessly imbedded in the early innocence of babyhood.
What he thought of Sara he let out one Sunday morning when Sara was first to appear in Sunday school.
"I'm not going to take Sara to Sunday School," he announced, "unless she'll learn who Christ is." He looked at his sister with disapproval. His attitude toward her was that of a sensitive young man of twenty, towards a sister afflicted with the giggles. Silly was what he thought Sara was. "There isn't another child of her age," he went on, "who doesn't know who Christ is. Every child knows—only Sara. She won't learn—she don't care. And why don't she care? It's because she can't stand religion."
"I can too," came from Sara, who was sitting on the floor making a long circus procession from the animals in Jamie's Noah's Ark.
"You don't. You don't even know who Noah was. You play all day with Noah's Ark and you don't even know who Noah is. She's like that," he confided to his mother. "She's just as thick, she's just as dumb."
"Thick! dumb!" thought Alice to herself. Here were the fruits of public school.
"I do know who Noah is," said Sara belligerently.
"Who is he?" said Robert the inquisitor.
"He's the one what the whale et," replied Sara with assurance.
​"There, there, you see? That's the way she goes on! I tell her who Christ is—I tell her time and again. Then what does she say? You tell Mother who Christ is."
"Christ's the Sun-God," lisped Sara.
"That's what she always says when she doesn't call him Crust! Jesus Crust is what she says and you want me to take her to Sunday School! You want I should have five fights on my hands with boys laughing at Sara?"
"Come, come," said Tom, "you nag your sister in the most awful fashion. Sara knows as well as you do that Christ is the Son of God. Why shouldn't she know? She's heard nothing else since she was born."
"Yes, why shouldn't she," echoed Robert gloomily, "and why shouldn't she know who George Washington is; and why shouldn't she know who Christopher Columbus is? Bet you Jamie knows. He knows more than Sara does and he's only three."
"I do know who George Washington is. He's the one who discovered America."
"There! You see? I won't go a place with her before she knows the difference between George Washington, Christopher Columbus, and Jesus Christ. I spend afternoons telling her—yes, and mornings, about which was the father of our country, and which discovered America, but she won't remember."
"And you know why I won't; and you know why I can't 'member, Robert Marcey! It's because those old men are none of 'em interesting."