One Last Look

I see Father walking in the garden, waiting — waiting. He is looking at the flowers, and each flower is a miracle to eyes that all these months of Spring and Summer have seen only flagstones and gravel and a little grudging grass. But his eyes keep turning towards the house. And presently he leaves the garden and goes to stand outside the nearest door. It is the back door, and across the yard the swallows are circling. They are getting ready to fly away from cold winds and keen frost to the land where it is always summer. They are the same swallows that the children built the little clay nests for.

Now the house door opens. Bobbie’s voice calls:—

“Come in, Daddy; come in!”

He goes in and the door is shut. I think we will not open the door or follow him. I think that just now we are not wanted there. I think it will be best for us to go quickly and quietly away. At the end of the field, among the thin gold spikes of grass and the harebells and Gipsy roses and St John’s Wort, we may just take one last look, over our shoulders, at the white house where neither we nor anyone else is wanted now.

Précis
While Roberta was indoors, her father wandered about the yard with its pretty flowers, a far cry from the desolate prison yard that had been his home for so long. At length, Roberta reappeared, and called him in for a meeting both sad and merry. But this time, said author Edith Nesbit, we could not expect to follow him in.
Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate her ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

In Edith Nesbit’s opinion, why should we need seek to follow Roberta’s father into the house?

Suggestion

Because this family reunion must be private.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

Roberta’s father was jailed. She always believed he was innocent. This meant a lot to him.

See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.

IFaith. IIGuilty. IIISustain.

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