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

at the bits of cup at her feet. Uncle Harold took the flail from her limp hands and hung it back up.
"It's a bit damaging to civilization," he commented. Bruce closed his mouth. He held out a letter.
"I cameтАФI just came down to give you this. The postman gave it to me this morning so he wouldn't
have to bother climbing the hill." His voice shook and he stopped. Carol raised her head. Her eyes
glittered with tears.
"I'm so sorryтАФ" she whispered.
"Never you mind," Uncle Harold said. Aunt Catherine leaned over the side of her chair, a suspicious
pucker at the sides of her mouth.
"Soon as I finish this row I'll sweep it up. Don't cry. Mrs. Brewster has dozens of bone-china cups."
Carol sniffed. Her face, half-hidden from them in the fall of her hair, had flushed red. A tear trickled
down to the edge of her chin. Aunt Catherine dropped her scarf. She put an arm around Carol and led
her to the kitchen.
"She'll never miss them."
"It's one of those days when everything goes wrongтАФ"
"I suspect you need a hot bath and a good sleep."
"I don't think that's going to help." She wiped her face on a dishtowel while Aunt Catherine took a bottle
of milk out of the refrigerator. "I don't know if this house will be able to stand me for a month."
"It's stood all kinds of people for more than three centuries," Aunt Catherine said. She shook the milk
bottle and poured half of it into a pan. "The first thing I broke in this house was a hideous Victorian vase
shaped like a green Chinese dragon. Harold accused me of doing it deliberately, and I think he may have
been right." She smiled as Carol laughed in the middle of a sniff. "Why don't you go up and get ready
for bed, and I'll make you some hot chocolate to take to bed with you."
Half an hour later Carol sat in bed drinking chocolate and listening to the house creak around her as it

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settled in the night air. Through the open curtains she
could see patterns of stars above the swaying graveyard trees. She reached down once and tucked the
covers more securely around her feet. The wind, still through the long twilight, had risen again, fresh
and chill. The church bells tolled a quarter hour half-muffled by it. Carol finished her chocolate and lay
back. The events of the long day ran in a kaleidoscopic stream through her mind. She rolled over,
drawing the covers in a hood over her head and shifting her feet to find a warm spot between the cold
sheets. The wind whispered through the eaves, shook the window, then turned and sighed away through
the trees. A floorboard cracked somewhere in the house. Carol rolled over again. She sat up finally and
drew her knees under her chin and rubbed her feet. They were icy. She sat for a moment, holding them.
Then she reached for her robe and went quietly downstairs, sliding down the banister.
She took the bed-warmer and the hearth shovel from the fireplace and brought them into the kitchen.
She found the coals in the stove behind a small door on the side. The thick heat pushed against her face
as she shoveled coals into the bed-warmer. She added a few more to the stove from the half-empty coal
bucket, closed the door, and replaced the shovel. Then she found thick dishtowels in a kitchen drawer
and wrapped them around the pan. The warmth melted through them to her hands as she carried it down
the cold hall, up the stairs. She put the pan between the bed sheets and lay down, resting her feet on top
of it. She drifted
to sleep lulled by the night wind and the soft pulse of heat slowly thawing her feet.
Aunt Catherine's cry jerked her upright in the morning almost before she could open her eyes. She heard
doors opening and rolled out of bed, kicking the bed-warmer open. A stream of ash fluttered to the rug.
She struggled into her robe and ran into the hall, nearly bumping into Uncle Harold, who was leaning
over the banister with a razor in his hand. There was a trickle of blood in the lather on his face.
"Catherine," he said. Bruce's door opened. He came out tying his robe, his hair sticking up.