"Jones, Diana Wynne - Chrestomanci 3 - 1982 - Witch Week" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

Witch Week



EDITOR'S NOTE
Late one night in 1605, a soldier named Guy Fawkes was caught with some two tons
of gunpowder that he had smuggled into a cellar beneath the Houses of Parliament
in London. Fawkes was arrested, tried, and executed for his part in the
Gunpowder PlotЧa failed conspiracy to blow up King James I and most of his
government the very next day, November 5. Centuries later, English people still
set off fireworks, light bonfires, and burn "Guys" in effigy to celebrate
November 5 as Guy Fawkes Day.



1
The note said: SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH. It was written in capital
letters in ordinary blue ballpoint, and it had appeared between two of the
geography books Mr. Crossley was marking. Anyone could have written it. Mr.
Crossley rubbed his ginger moustache unhappily. He looked out over the bowed
heads of Class 6B and wondered what to do about it.
He decided not to take the note to the headmistress. It was possibly just a
joke, and Miss Cadwallader had no sense of humor to speak of. The person to take
it to was the deputy head, Mr. Wentworth. But the difficulty there was that Mr.
Wentworth's son was a member of 6BЧthe small boy near the back who looked
younger than the rest was Brian Wentworth. No. Mr. Crossley decided to ask the
writer of the note to own up. He would explain just what a serious accusation it
was and leave the rest to the person's conscience.
Mr. Crossley cleared his throat to speak. Some of 6B looked up hopefully but Mr.
Crossley had changed his mind then. It was journal time, and journal time was
only to be interrupted for a serious emergency. Larwood House was very strict
about that rule. Larwood House was very strict about a lot of things, because it
was a boarding school run by the government for witch-orphans and children with
other problems. The journals were to help the children with their problems. They
were supposed to be strictly private. Every day, for half an hour, every pupil
had to confide his or her private thoughts to their journals, and nothing else
was done until everyone had. Mr. Crossley admired the idea heartily.
But the real reason that Mr. Crossley changed his mind was the awful thought
that the note might be true. Someone in 6B could easily be a witch. Only Miss
Cadwallader knew who exactly in 6B was a witch-orphan, but Mr. Crossley
suspected that a lot of them were. Other classes had given Mr. Crossley feelings
of pride and pleasure in being a schoolmaster; 6B never did. Only two of them
gave him any pride at all: Theresa Mullett and Simon Silverson. They were both
model pupils. The rest of the girls tailed dismally off until you came to empty
chatterers like Estelle Green, or that dumpy girl, Nan Pilgrim, who was
definitely the odd one out. The boys were divided into groups. Some had the
sense to follow Simon Silverson's example, but quite as many clustered around
that bad boy Dan Smith, and others again admired that tall Indian boy Nirupam
Singh. Or they were loners like Brian Wentworth and that unpleasant boy Charles
Morgan.