Show Boat by Edna Ferber Page B

whom the make-believe villainies, heroics, loves, adventures of the drama were so real as sometimes to cause the
Cotton Blossom
troupe actual embarrassment. Often quality folk came to the show boat. The perfume and silks and broadcloth of the Big House took frequent possession of the lower boxes and the front seats.
    That first summer was, to Magnolia, a dream of pure delight. Nothing could mar it except that haunting spectre of autumn when she would have to return to Thebes and to the ordinary routine of a little girl in a second-best pinafore that was donned for school in the morning and thriftily replaced by a less important pinafore on her return from school in the late afternoon. But throughout those summer months Magnolia was afairy princess. She was Cinderella at the ball. She shut her mind to the horrid certainty that the clock would inevitably strike twelve.
    Year by year, as the spell of the river grew stronger and the easy indolence of the life took firmer hold, Mrs. Hawks and the child spent longer and longer periods on the show boat; less and less time in the humdrum security of the cottage ashore. Usually the boat started in April. But sometimes, when the season was mild, it was March. Mrs. Hawks would announce with a good deal of firmness that Magnolia must finish the school term, which ended in June. Later she and the child would join the boat wherever it happened to be showing at the time.
    “Couple of months missed won’t hurt her,” Captain Andy would argue, loath as always to be separated from his daughter. “May’s the grandest month on the rivers—and April. Everything coming out fresh. Outdoors all day. Do her good.”
    “I may not know much, but this I do know, Andy Hawks: No child of mine is going to grow up an ignoramus just because her father has nothing better to do than go galumphing around the country with a lot of riff-raff.”
    But in the end, when the show boat started its leisurely journey, there was Mrs. Hawks hanging fresh dimity curtains; bickering with Queenie; preventing, by her acid presence, the possibility of a too-saccharine existence for the members of the
Cotton Blossom
troupe. In her old capacity as school teacher, Parthy undertook the task of carrying on Magnolia’s education duringthese truant spring months. It was an acrimonious and painful business ending, almost invariably, in temper, tears, disobedience, upbraidings. Unconsciously Andy Hawks had done much for the youth of New England when he ended Parthy’s public teaching career.
    “Nine times seven, I said.… No, it isn’t! Just because fifty-six was the right answer last time it isn’t right every time. That was seven times eight and I’ll thank you to look at the book and not out of the window. I declare, Maggie Hawks, sometimes I think you’re downright simple.”
    Magnolia’s under lip would come out. Her brow was lowering. She somehow always looked her plainest and sallowest during these sessions with her mother. “I don’t care what nine times seven is. Elly doesn’t know, either. I asked her and she said she never had nine of anything, much less nine times seven of anything; and Elly’s the most beautiful person in the world, except Julie sometimes—and me when I smile. And my name isn’t Maggie Hawks, either.”
    “I’d like to know what it is if it isn’t. And if you talk to me like that again, young lady, I’ll smack you just as sure as I’m sitting here.”
    “It’s Magnolia—Magnolia—uh—something beautiful—I don’t know what. But not Hawks. Magnolia—uh——” a gesture with her right hand meant to convey some idea of the exquisiteness of her real name.
    Mrs. Hawks clapped a maternal hand to her daughter’s somewhat bulging brow, decided that she was feverish, needed a physic, and promptly administered one.
    As for geography, if Magnolia did not learn it, she lived it. She came to know her country by travelling up and down its waterways. She learned its people by meeting