SIMPLE STORIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 191, 19 February 1943, Page 7

SIMPLE STORIES

FATHERLESS HERE was a boy: sensitive, curious, intelligent, and fatherless since the age of two. He didn’t mind that much. He was at a boarding prep. school, where, being keen at games, he held his own and was happy. People were good to him, and he was only a little embarressed when they spoke well of his father, and told the boy that he would have to try to live up to the high example set him by the deceased. He had been curious from an early age. When he was barely eight, he had asked his mother where babies came from, and since she was a_ sensible woman, she had told him gently, but without embroidery.. He had modded . d gone about his business satisfied, It Was fust another small point that had needed clearing up. Lately he had become interested in biology (true refuge for the curious), and the sex life of mammals was to him just part of an absorbing subject. The family doctor, overhauling him before he left prep. school, thought it a duty to give him a little lecture on the facts of life; starting with the flowers, and the bees, and Nature’s plan, The boy thanked him politely. A clergyman came to dinner in the holidays, took him for a walk in the garden and talked of the insects, and the pollen, and the wonderful ways of Nature. The boy thanked him, but that night his dreams were of troubled bees, and clouds of choking yellow pollen, Finally, a nice uncle took him out to lunch; an uncle who usually said "Here’s five bob. Don’t make yourself sick." But this time he began to talk of growing — up. The boy sprang up, white and shouting "No! No! Not any more bloody bees!" And ran from the restaurant. Later, the nice uncle said to his wife, "Tt just shows that the boy needs a father to guide him."