Laura-PA

A TALE OF TWO MOTHERS

FICTION

Alan Wright and his mother were sitting around the breakfast table finishing up a leisurely meal one Saturday morning. It was early spring with no school for Alan and no need for his mother to go to the city's largest department store where she was head buyer for the women's department. They were both in their night clothes and robes, and Alan was carrying on a monologue over the difficulties he was experiencing making friends during his first year at high school. He was rather retiring by nature, although a naturally friendly boy, and missed the companionship he sought. There was one boy in particular that he much wanted to cultivate, a Richard Moore who was in the same class and of the same age. Although Richard appeared friendly, and being almost next door neighbors, they often walked home together from school, but this was as far as the relationship went. Further overtures on the part of Alan had been rebuffed, although not unkindly. Mrs. Wright listened with but half an ear and made no comment as she had heard all this before, and really had no solution to offer. What made the situation more difficult to understand was that at the same time she and Richard's mother had struck up quite a friendship during the past year. Both being widows and more or less in the same field of work, as Mrs. Moore was also a buyer, but in children's clothes and at a smaller store. Mrs. Moore had made it a practice to drop in on Saturday and Sunday mornings for a cup of coffee and gossip, but oddly enough had never invited Mrs. Wright to visit her house in return. The gardens of the two houses being back to back made it easy for Mrs. Moore to drop in without the necessity of going around by road.

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