文档介绍：MOTHER
MOTHER
By OWEN WISTER
TO MY FAVOURITE BROKER WITH THE EARNEST
ASSURANCE THAT MR. BEVERLY IS NOT MEANT FOR HIM
1
MOTHER
When handsome young Richard Field--he was very handsome and
very young-- announced to our pany that if his turn should
e to tell us a story, the story should be no invention of his fancy,
but a page of truth, a chapter from his own life, in which himself was the
hero and a lovely, innocent girl was the heroine, his wife at once looked
extremely fortable. She changed the reclining position in which she
had been leaning back in her chair, and she sat erect, with a hand closed
upon each arm of the chair.
"Richard," she said. "do you think that it is right of you to tell any one,
even friends, anything that you have never yet confessed to me?"
"Ethel," replied Richard, "although I cannot promise that you will be
entirely proud of my conduct when you have heard this episode of my past,
I do say that there is nothing in it to hurt the trust you have placed in me
since I have been your husband. Only," he added, "I hope that I shall not
have to tell any story at all."
"Oh, yes you will!" we all exclaimed together; and the men looked
eager while the women sighed.
The rest of us were much older than Richard, we were middle-aged, in
fact; and human nature is so constructed, that when it is at the age when
making love keeps it busy, it does not care so much to listen to tales of
others' love-making; but the more it recedes from that period of
exuberance, and ceases to have love adventures of its own, the greater
e its hunger and thirst to hear about this delicious business which it
can no longer personally practice with the fluency of yore. It was for this
reason that we all yearned in our middle-aged way for the tale of love
which we expected from young Richard. He, on his part, repeated the hope
that by the time his turn to tell a story was reached we should be tired of
stories and prefer to spend the evening