"Patricia A. McKillip - The House on Parchment Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

unorthodox. And a bit dangerousтАж . Catherine, I need a very, very strong cup of tea." "I need another
stove," Aunt Catherine said.
Carol wandered outside after breakfast. She climbed an apple tree in the back garden and sat in it awhile,
looking far out over the green fields that dissolved into a mist at the horizon. The church bells tolled ten
o'clock, clear in the windless morning. She jumped down, threaded her way carefully between neat bean
rows, and went toward the front gate. She looked out; the road was empty. She crossed it and found a
path on the other side that ran in front of Emily Raison's house into the graveyard.
The great grey church stood at the end of the path. On each side of it were rows of high rounded stones,
tilted and sunken with age. Long grass grew up their faces, covering worn letters. A cat napped,
balancing delicately on one of the stones, its paws tucked under its breast. Beneath it, a little round
woman in high boots knelt washing the face of the stone.
Carol leaned against the railing, watching. The cat, splashed with color like a patchwork quilt, yawned
and settled itself. It opened both eyes at the sudden movement by the railing as Carol hoisted herself up.
She landed on her knees on a grave, and the cat made a startled leap off the stone. The old woman
straightened as Carol rose, dusting her jeans.
"Bless me." She sat back on her heels, looking a little
uneasy. Then she smiled, and her face wrinkled like a sun-dried apple. "Hello, my dear. You must be

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Catherine's niece."
Carol squatted down beside her. "How did you know?"
"Oh, she showed me a picture of you and said you were coming. You look different from the picture,
else I would have recognized you straight away."
"That was my mother. She made me look nice. What are you doing?"
"I'm washing gravestones. This one belongs to my cousin Harriet. If I didn't wash them, they'd get all
dirty and mossy. I cut the grass round them too, else they'd be overgrown with weeds. That one over
there is my uncle'sтАФthat one with the beautiful fat cherub."
"Are you Emily Raison? Why do you live in a graveyard?"
Emily Raison dipped her cloth in her bucket and cleaned the dirt out of Harriet's name. "I was a maid in
Mrs. Brewster's house when I was a young girl. I went to this church all my life, and this is where I
belong. So I saved my money, and when I had enough, I rented the little house from Mrs. Brewster. Do
you like the big house, then?"
Carol looked down the path to the high wall and the rise of the big house behind it. She touched her hair.
"I think so. I'm not used to things being so old. тАж I don't know how to treat old things. And the house is
so quiet, and it creaks."
"It was a great noisy thing in Mrs. Brewster's day when she was a young girl, and her father had people
in and out. I was always busy."
Carol rested her chin in her hands. "I wish I was," she said. The cat returned unexpectedly to rub its face
against her knee. Emily Raison rinsed her cloth and wrung it out.
"I expect you're homesick."
Carol looked at her. "I expect I am," she said, surprised. Emily Raison heaved herself to her feet.
"You come with me, my dear, and we'll have a nice cup of tea. Come along, Geraldine. That's Geraldine,
my cat. Don't they look nicer, now? So much brighter, because they have someone to look after them."
"Don't the other ones?"
"Most of them are too old. Hundreds of years old."
She picked up the bucket and led Carol to her gate. Someone passed them: a young, fair-haired priest in
a black cassock who called as he went by,
"Good morning, Miss Emily. Have you been washing your relatives?"