"Duncan,.Lois.-.A.Gift.Of.Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Lois)

"How could Madame Vilar have given the Fairy part to that stringy girl!" Nancy exclaimed without even bothering to lower her voice. "She's crazy, that's what she is! You're a much better dancer!"
"Hush, Nance." Kirby glanced quickly around to see if her sister had been overheard. "You can't say things like that even if you think them. Madame has her reasons for the things she does. She has to make the whole show balance right."
"Oh, pooh," Nancy said. "You always think that Madame is perfect, no matter what. That White girl looks like a piece of string."
"She dances like a wind-up toy," Brendon said surprisingly. It was not a Brendon-like comment, and he had never seemed to notice much about dancing before.
They both grumbled about it all the way home, and their mother, who was attending the evening performance with Mr. Duncan, said, "Don't ruin the whole thing for me, children. If Kirby isn't upset, I don't know why we should be."
The evening performance was primarily for adults, and they did not go backstage, but waited out front in the entrance hall. Kirby changed out of her costume and hung it on a rack in the dressing room. Then she took the package containing the glass swan and left it on the desk in the little front room which was Madame's office. By the time she reached the hall where her mother was waiting many of the other parents had already left.
Elizabeth Garrett and Tom Duncan were standing together over by the doorway. They were so engrossed in conversation that they did not see Kirby when she entered the room. Elizabeth was wearing a new red dress in honor of the season. The color was reflected in her cheeks, and her eyes were shining. She was talking gaily and animatedly, and Thomas Duncan was gazing down at her, smiling. His face held a look that Kirby could read half a room away.
Why, he's in love with her, she thought. Mr. Duncan is in love with Mother!
So that was why Nancy had never been able to like him! She had sensed the emotion there from the very beginning. "There's a different feeling about him!" she had cried on that first night he had come to their home.
And Mother, Kirby thought, does Mother feel it? She looks so special tonight, so bright and sparklyЧ
And with the thought, Elizabeth looked up and saw her, and broke off what she was saying.
"Darling!" she cried, holding out her arms to Kirby. "You were wonderful, just wonderful! You were a beautiful Snow Queen, and I was so proud of you!" Hurrying forward, she caught her daughter in a tight hug.
"She's right, Kirby. You were excellent." Mr. Duncan held out his hand. "Congratulations. I had no idea you were so accomplished."
"Thank you, sir," Kirby said as she took his hand. Then she raised her eyes and looked for a long moment at his face. It was a pleasant face, not handsome, but nice to look at. A nice, ordinary type of face with sandy hair and light eyes, true and a little shy behind horn-rimmed glasses.
She pictured her father with his great laugh roaring up out of the depths of him, the force of his personality shooting out like sparklers in all directions.
Poor Mr. Duncan, she thought. It's not fair. It really isn't.
Because now that she was with them she could see that the glow on her mother's face was for Christmas and for friendship, and for her pride in a daughter who had danced the Snow Queen. If the potential for love was there, Elizabeth still did not know it, and with Nancy so determinedly against it there was little chance that she would ever find out.


9

Brendon was the first one awake on Christmas morning. He was relieved when he opened his eyes to see that it was morning; he had been waking up once an hour all night just to check, and he had almost decided that some crazy thing had happened to the sun and night was going to last forever.
Now, however, he could see the furniture in his room, dim shapes in the faint dawn light, and he got up and went downstairs in his pajamas to see if he was right about what would be waiting there.
He had guessed it first when he saw the long flat box in the back of his mother's car. It was the kind of box that things came in when they had not yet been put together. Then when Mr. Duncan had come over on Christmas Eve and Brendon had been sent up to bed early, he had been almost sure.
They had not even allowed him out of his room long enough to get a drink of water.
"How is Santa Claus ever going to come if you keep wandering around like that?" his mother asked. Elizabeth still pretended to believe in Santa Claus, and Brendon had never had the heart to tell her that he had outgrown the fantasy.
Later in the evening, when the girls had gone to their room and could not tell on him, Brendon came out into the upstairs hall to listen. His mother and Mr. Duncan were in the living room, and he could tell by their voices that they were struggling hard to put the thing together.
"I think those screws go here," Mr. Duncan was saying, and his mother asked, "Then what do we use to attach this piece to the handlebar?"
I hope they got it right, Brendon thought as he hurried down the stairs. I'd hate to have to spend all Christmas morning reassembling it.
The bicycle was there in the living room just as he had anticipated. It was a three-speed with a hand brake and a gearshift and a banana seat. Brendon examined it carefully and sighed in relief. Everything seemed to be connected correctly except for the kick stand, and he could fix that easily.
With a grin of delight he rushed back up the stairs to wake up the family.
He bounded into the girls' room and bounced onto the foot of Nancy's bed.
"Hey, wake up, you lazy dopes!" he shouted. "Santa Claus was here!"
"Oh, you nut," Kirby said good-naturedly and rolled over and opened her eyes. Kirby always came awake quickly as though she had never been sleeping at all.
"Oh, honestly, Bren," she said as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, "it's not even daytime yet. I bet the sun isn't even up."
Nancy groaned and pulled a pillow over her head.
"For rats' sake!" Brendon told her. "You can sleep any old time! Today is Christmas!" He reached under the covers and gave her a good hard pinch, and she screamed and came up out of the pillow. Brendon leaped off the bed just in time.
Hitting the wall switch so that the overhead light would keep them from going to sleep again, he ran down the hall to his mother's room.
"Hey, Mom!" he yelled. "Merry Christmas!"
"Is it morning already?" Elizabeth blinked the sleep from her eyes and smiled drowsily at her son. Her hair was soft and mussed across the pillow, and her face, without makeup, looked too young to belong to a mother.
"We must have sat up talking too long last night," she said. "It feels as though I just came to bed two minutes ago."
"Santa's been here," Brendon told her. "I looked down the stairway and I could see the stockings by the fireplace. They've all been filled!"
"Then it must be Christmas!" Elizabeth sat up in bed and looked around for her bathrobe. On the little table beside the bed there was a small white box. She glanced over at it, and Brendon, following her gaze, said, "Is that for me?"
"It certainly isn't," his mother said firmly. She reached over and lifted the lid. The box was lined with cotton, and lying against it was a little gold heart on a chain. Elizabeth removed it from the box and raised her arms to fasten the clasp around her neck.
"Mr. Duncan gave it to me last night," she said. "Isn't it lovely? It's exactly like one I used to have a long time ago."
"It's pretty," Brendon said politely, but his whole mind was downstairs with the bicycle. "Let's go down and see what Santa brought!"
It took them over an hour to open all the presents. Brendon had been so concerned with his inspection of the bicycle that he had not really looked past it to the piles of other gifts that all but buried the lower branches of the tree.
"We've never had this big a Christmas!" Kirby said, gasping in delight over the framed reproduction of a Degas painting of a whirling ballerina who looked almost like Kirby herself. "We've always done nice things on ChristmasЧgone to a play or concert or somethingЧbut we've never had masses of presents."
"We were never able to," her mother told her. "With all the traveling around we couldn't carry a lot of possessions with us. Now that we're settled, I think it's time to buy some of the nice things that make a place homelike."
There were pictures for each of their rooms and books for the bookshelves. There were pink-and-white curtains for the girls' room and blue-and-green ones for Brendon's. The girls got clothes, package after package of them, blouses and sweaters and stockings and scarves. Each of them received a book from Mr. Duncan and their father had sent Swiss watches for all of them, tiny, delicate, gold ones for the girls and a husky, waterproof, shock-resistant one which could be used as a stop watch to time races for Brendon.