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

to the pound of his feet on the stairs, to the slam of the back door. She went down slowly, following the
sound of the phone down the dim hall, into a big cheerful kitchen.
A woman's voice said before she could speak, "Bruce? I tried to call earlier, but you weren't there. Is
Carol there? We can't find her anywhere; we think she might have gotten mislaid between here and
California. Your father is checking on that, and I'm trying to think how to tell Anne that her daughter is
somewhere on earth but we're not sure whereтАФ"
The smile began somewhere inside Carol before it touched her face. "Hello, Aunt Catherine," she said.
She opened the door for them two hours later, and Aunt Catherine hugged her. Then she held Carol at
arm's length to look at her, and Carol, who was taller
than her mother, only came up to Aunt Catherine's eyes.
"Look at that, Harold," Aunt Catherine said. "She's got my hair. Her mother's is black as a stovepipe.
And such lovely green eyes. I wonder where those came from. Have you eaten yet? We stopped for fish
and chips. This is your Uncle Harold."
Carol turned. A tall man with Bruce's dark hair, and smiling eyes, took the pipe out of his mouth and
held out his hand.
"How do you do. Where is Bruce? Have you met him yet?"
Carol nodded. "Yes." She cleared her throat. "I pushed him in the clock."
Uncle Harold's face smoothed. He looked down at her quizzically, the pipe smoke curling upward from
his fingers. "He wasn't rude to you, I hope."
"OhтАФIt wasn't because of that. He couldn't get the door open and I pushed. And he fell in the clock and
it started banging and it wouldn't stop. But it's all right now, I think."
"Well," Aunt Catherine said briskly. "I'm sure that clock has survived worse than Bruce climbing in and
out of it. Where is he?"
Carol's hand crept upward to the top of her head. "Bike riding, I thinkтАж . I'm sorry that you had to go to
London for nothing. My mother told me you were picking me up, but I forgot. Some daysтАФsome days
are like that. I forget to do what I'm supposed to,
and I push people into clocks instead. I can't get coordinated. I usually end up breaking something. So
now you know what you're getting for a month."
They were silent a moment. Uncle Harold said gravely, "I should think it required a definite amount of
coordination to travel halfway across the world by yourself, and still manage to catch the proper train
out of London. What do you think of the house?"
"Bruce said it's three hundred years old. I thought it would be more like a castle."
"It's as cold as one," Aunt Catherine said,
"Houses," Uncle Harold said, "are generally built with some degree of practicality. This used to be a
vicarage, a place where the parish priests lived, and they had neither the need nor the money for a castle.
Parts of it have been rebuilt from time to time, but other parts, like this stone floor and the great broad
beam above the fireplace, suggest that the house was not built three hundred years ago, but rather rebuilt
from an even older foundation."

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Carol looked down at her feet. The worn grey stone swept unbroken toward the kitchen. She curled her
toes. "No wonder it's so cold."
Uncle Harold smiled. "There. I didn't mean to begin a lecture on architecture." He turned to Aunt
Catherine. "Where's the chips?"
"Here," Aunt Catherine said, "under my elbow." She shifted a roll of newspaper that smelled of hot fish
into one hand, and dropped the other hand lightly on
Carol's shoulder. "Come and eat, and tell me how the American side of my family is doing."
They ate fish and chips out of warm greasy newspapers on the kitchen table as they talked. When Aunt