Rabble Starkey by Lois Lowry Page B

it's in a lot of pieces," Veronica told her, "but Rabble and I can work at it, and maybe—"
    Millie Bellows squinted over at me. "Just what kind of name is that, anyway?"
    "Elmer's," I said. "It's just a name for glue."
    "
Your
name is what I mean."
    "My name? Rabble? Well, that's short for Parable, Mrs. Bellows. It's a Bible name."
    She grabbed up another brownie. "A Bible name is
Ruth,
" she said. "Or Rebecca. Now those are good Bible names. I don't know what your mother was thinking of, to give you a name like that."
    Of course it wasn't my mother at all who gave me my name. It was Gnomie. But I didn't see that it was any of Millie Bellows's beeswax. And shoot, I can't see as how
Millie
is such a wonderful name. Or that it was good manners to be shoving brownies into your mouth that way, and talking while they was still there, not even chewed. I thought all of that, but I didn't say nothing.
    "Mr. and Mrs. Leland Norton lived in that big yellow house up on High Street," she was saying. "The one that's a funeral parlor now. In the old days it was the most elegant house in Highriver. When my mother was married in 1890, the reception was held at the Riverfront Hotel, which no longer exists, and the guest list numbered in the hundreds. They served chicken a la king in patty shells. Somewhere here I have the news clipping from the wedding."
    She began to peer around the room. There was stuff everywhere: books and magazines and old photograph albums, all of it somewhat haphazard on top of
unmatched tables and chairs. Old lamps was everyplace, and vases, and framed photographs of people from the old days: ladies with their hair all swept up, and men looking stern, with pointed mustaches.
    "I believe I won't look for it today," she announced suddenly, and lay back down. "See that you wash up these cups."
    Veronica picked up the tray. "And shall we try to glue the pitcher for you?" she asked.
    Millie Bellows waved her hand in the air and shook her head. Her eyes was closed. "It's ruined," she said. "Just clean up and then go home."
    So we did.

    When Sweet-Ho came to bed that night I was still awake, reading. I watched while she put her nightgown on and began to brush her hair.
    "You're so pretty, Sweet-Ho," I said to her. "I believe you're as pretty as a movie star."
    It was true. Her hair was long and thick, and it curled at the ends. She was wearing a blue flannel nightgown that matched her eyes, and it had a high neck with lace around the edge, so that she looked old-fashioned like the ladies in Millie Bellows's photographs, but softer and sweeter, not nervous and serious like the photograph people.
    Our room at the Bigelows' house was pretty, too. It had pale yellow wallpaper the color of a winter sunset, with tiny pink flowers scattered about. We hadn't put up any of our old wall stuff from the garage, because Sweet-Ho said that thumbtacks or tape would mess the walls. But there was a little picture hanging between the beds, a watercolor of a garden, and it made me think of Gnomie's garden back at Collyer's Run, full of pink roses and tall blue delphiniums. Back before Gnomie got sick, she used to tend her flowers every day in summer, talking to them, telling them to stand up straight and proud.
    "Millie Bellows really liked your brownies," I said, "but her manners is atrocious. She gobbled, and talked with her mouth full."
    "She's old, that's all."
    "Old doesn't excuse rude."
    Sweet-Ho got into her bed and sat with her knees up and her chin resting in her hands. "She's lonely, too, I expect. If you live alone, you forget about the need to make other people feel comfortable. And that's all that good manners is: making other people feel comfortable."
    I never thought about that before. But Sweet-Ho was right, I decided. Please and thank you and excuse me and not talking with your mouth full and all that, it's for the other person. And Millie Bellows, she didn't care none about me and Veronica.
    "I'm going to try to