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

would have been!
"You'd better check the milk," Charles Wallace said to Meg now, his diction clearer and
cleaner than that of most five-year-olds. "You know you don't like it when it gets a skin on top."
"You put in more than twice enough milk." Meg peered into the saucepan.
Charles Wallace nodded serenely. "I thought Mother might like some."
"I might like what?" a voice said, and there was their mother standing in the doorway.
"Cocoa," Charles Wallace said. "Would you like a liver- wurst-and-cream-cheese sandwich? IтАЩll
be happy to make you one."
That would be lovely," Mrs. Murry said, "but I can make it myself if you're busy."
"No trouble at all." Charles Wallace slid down from his chair and trotted over to the
refrigerator, his pajamaed feet padding softly as a kitten's. "How about you, Meg?" he asked.
"Sandwich?"
"Yes, please," she said. "But not liverwurst. Do we have any tomatoes?"
Charles Wallace peered into the crisper. "One. All right if I use it on Meg, Mother?"
"To what better use could it be put?" Mrs. Murry smiled. "But not so loud, please, Charles.
That is, unless you want the twins downstairs, too."
"LetтАЩs be exclusive," Charles Wallace said. "That's my new word for the day. Impressive, isn't
it?"
"Prodigious," Mrs. Murry said. "Meg, come let me look at that bruise."
Meg knelt at her mother's feet. The warmth and light of the kitchen had relaxed her so that
her attic fears were gone. The cocoa steamed fragrantly in the saucepan; geraniums bloomed on the
window sills and there was a bouquet of tiny yellow chrysanthemums in the center of the table. The
curtains, red, with a blue and green geometrical pattern, were drawn, and seemed to reflect their
cheerfulness throughout the room. The furnace purred like a great, sleepy animal; the lights
glowed with steady radiance; outside, alone in the dark, the wind still battered against the
house, but the angry power that had frightened Meg while she was alone in the attic was subdued by
the familiar comfort of the kitchen. Underneath Mrs. Murry's chair Fortinbras let out a contented
sigh.
Mrs. Murry gently touched Meg's bruised cheek. Meg looked up at her mother, half in loving
admiration, half in sullen resentment. It was not an advantage to have a mother who was a
scientist and a beauty as well. Mrs. Murry's flaming red hair, creamy skin, and violet eyes with
long dark lashes, seemed even more spectacular in comparison with Meg's outrageous plainness.
Meg's hair had been passable as long as she wore it tidily in braids. When she went into high
school it was cut, and now she and her mother struggled with putting it up, but one side would
come out curly and the other straight, so that she looked even plainer than before.
"You don't know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling?" Mrs. Murry asked. "A happy
medium is something I wonder if you'll ever learn. That's a nasty bruise the Henderson boy gave
you. By the way, shortly after you'd gone to bed his mother called up to complain about how badly
you'd hurt him. I told her that since he's a year older and at least twenty-five pounds heavier
than you are, I thought I was the one who ought to be doing the complaining. But she seemed to
think it was all your fault."
"I suppose that depends on how you look at it," Meg said. "Usually no matter what happens
people think it's my fault, even if I have nothing to do with it at all. But I'm sorry I tried to
fight him. It's just been an awful week. And I'm full of bad feeling."
Mrs. Murry stroked Meg's shaggy head. "Do you know why?"


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