The Velvet Bubble — Alice Winter

I was fourteen years old, and for ages every time Mrs. Berkson saw me she said, "My, how she's growing up," but now, because I had just become half an orphan, she came and put her arms around me and muttered, "Poor child, poor child." Women from the church were in the kitchen and relatives were all over the place, and I went out in the back yard, as far away as I could get from the confusion. I dragged the old wicker chair across the lawn to the other side of the spiraea bushes, clear out of sight of the house.