Read "The Mother" by Pearl S. Buck online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The next day came gray and still with unfinished rain of summer and the sky pressed low over the valley heavy with its burden of the rain, and the hills were hidden. But the mother rose early and made ready to take the girl to the town. She could not wait a day more to do what she could for this child of hers. She had waited all these many days and even let them stretch out into years, but now in her new motherhood, washed clean by tears, she could not be too tender or too quick for her own heart.
As for the young girl, she trembled with excitement while she combed her long hair and braided it freshly with a pink cord, and she put on a clean blue coat flowered with white, for she never in all her life had been away from this small hamlet, and as she made ready she said wistfully to them all, "I wish my eyes were clear today so I could see the strange sights in the town."