"Madeline L' Engle - Time Quartet 01 - A Wrinkle in Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Engle Madeleine)

"Not during a hurricane, it isn't a privilege," she said aloud. She tossed the quilt down on
the foot of the bed, and stood up. The kitten stretched luxuriously, and looked up at her with
huge, innocent eyes.
"Go back to sleep," Meg said. "Just be glad you're a kitten and not a monster like me." She
looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror and made a horrible face, baring a mouthful of teeth
covered with braces. Automatically she pushed her glasses into position, ran her fingers through
her mouse-brown hair, so that it stood wildly on end, and let out a sigh almost as noisy as the
wind.
The wide wooden floorboards were cold against her feet. Wind blew in the crevices about the
window frame, in spite of the protection the storm sash was supposed to offer. She could hear wind
howling in the chimneys. From all the way downstairs she could hear Fortinbras, the big black dog,
starting to bark. He must be frightened, too. What was he barking at? Fortinbras never barked
without reason.


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Suddenly she remembered that when she had gone to the post office to pick up the mail she'd
heard about a tramp who was supposed to have stolen twelve sheets from Mrs. Buncombe, the
constable's wife. They hadn't caught him, and maybe he was heading for the Murry's house right
now, isolated on a back road as it was; and this time maybe he'd be after more than sheets. Meg
hadn't paid much attention to the talk about the tramp at the time, because the postmistress, with
a sugary smile, had asked if she'd heard from her father lately.
She left her little room and made her way through the shadows of the main attic, bumping
against the ping-pong table. тАФNow I'll have a bruise on my hip on top of everything else, she
thought.


Next she walked into her old dolls' house, Charles Wallace's rocking horse, the twins'
electric trains. "Why must everything happen to me?" She demanded of a large teddy bear.
At the foot of the attic stairs she stood still and listened. Not a sound from Charles
Wallace's room on the right. On the left, in her parents' room, not a rustle from her mother
sleeping alone in the great double bed. She tiptoed down the hall and into the twins' room,
pushing again at her glasses as though they could help her to see better in the dark. Dennys was
snoring. Sandy murmured something about baseball and subsided. The twins didn't have any problems.
They weren't great students, but they weren't bad ones, either. They were perfectly content with a
succession of B's and an occasional A or C. They were strong and fast runners and good at games,
and when cracks were made about anybody in the Murry family, they weren't made about Sandy and
Dennys.
She left the twins' room and went on downstairs, avoiding the creaking seventh step.
Fortinbras had stopped barking. It wasn't the tramp this time, then. Fort would go On barking if
anybody was around.
тАФBut suppose the tramp does come? Suppose he has a knife? Nobody lives near enough to hear if
we screamed and screamed and screamed. Nobody'd care, anyhow.
тАФIтАЩll make myself some cocoa, she decided. тАФThat'll cheer me up, and if the roof blows off at
least I won't go off with it.
In the kitchen a light was already on, and Charles Wallace was sitting at the table drinking
milk and eating bread and jam. He looked very small and vulnerable sitting there alone in the big
old-fashioned kitchen, a blond little boy in faded blue Dr. Dentons, his feet swinging a good six