The Comet of 1812
They paused halfway up the staircase, and the nurse drew aside the heavy red velvet curtains. She lifted the small boy up in her arms.
‘Look - you can see the comet’, she said.
The boy peered out at the darkening twilight - and, yes, there it was, bright as the brightest stars, and with a long tail stretching across the sky.
‘See, it’s like a grain of barley’, the nurse continued, ‘that means we’re going to have a good harvest’.
‘I don’t care about the harvest’, answered the boy decidedly, ‘but does it mean that my father will be coming home?’
‘Yes - well, maybe it means that too’.
Every night as she took the boy to bed, the nurse would stop for a moment beside that staircase window, pull aside the curtains, and let the boy stare at the dark sky. If it was cloudy he would ask to go straight on to bed. But if it was clear, he would stay there for as long as the nurse would let him, looking at that mysterious comet, and noticing how it had changed its position since the last time. And then he would always ask, ‘When will father come back?’
‘I’m not sure’, the nurse would reply, ‘but it will be a good harvest’.
Yet it turned out that the harvest was no more than average. And the comet faded, and the father didn’t return.
Page(s) 21
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