"Madeline L' Engle - A Swiftly Tilting Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Engle Madeleine)

the conference he was attending in London, where he was-perhaps at this very
minute-giving a paper on the immunological system of chordates.
"It's a tremendous honor for him, isn't it, Sis?" Sandy asked.
"Enormous."
"And how about you, Mrs. O'Keefe?" Dennys smiled at her. "Still seems strange
to
call you Mrs. O'Keefe."
"Strange to me, too." Meg looked over at the rocker by the fireplace, where
her
mother-in-law was sitting, staring into the flames; she was the one who was
Mrs.
O'Keefe to Meg. "I'm fine," she replied to Sandy. "Absolutely fine."
Dennys, already very much the doctor, had taken his stethoscope, of which he
was
enormously proud, and put it against Meg's burgeoning belly, beaming with
pleasure as he heard the strong heartbeat of the baby within. "You are fine,
indeed."
She returned the smile, then looked across the room to her youngest brother,
Charles Wallace, and to their father, who were deep in concentration, bent
over
the model they were building of a tesseract: the square squared, and squared
again: a construction of the dimension of time. It was a beautiful and
complicated creation of steel wires and ball bearings and Lucite, parts of it
revolving, parts swinging like pendulums.
Charles Wallace was small for his fifteen years; a stranger might have
guessed
him to be no more than twelve; but the expression in his light blue eyes as he
55
watched his father alter one small rod on the model was mature and highly
intelligent. He had been silent all day, she thought. He seldom talked much,
but
his silence on this Thanksgiving day, as the approaching storm moaned around
the
house and clapped the shingles on the roof, was different from his usual lack
of
chatter.
Meg's mother-in-law was also silent, but that was not surprising. What was
surprising was that she had agreed to come to them for Thanksgiving dinner.
Mrs.
O'Keefe must have been no more than a few years older than Mrs. Murry, but
she
looked like an old woman. She had lost most of her teeth, and her hair was
yellowish and unkempt, and looked as if it had been cut with a blunt knife.
Her
habitual expression was one of resentment. Life had not been kind to her, and
she was angry with the world, especially with the Murrys. They had not
expected
her to accept the invitation, particularly with Calvin in London. None of
Calvin's family responded to the Murrys' friendly overtures. Calvin was, as
he