"Robin McKinley - Water" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

fine thoroughbred mare her parents had bought her when she outgrew the last of the ponies. Her mother
had to forbid her to stay in the kitchen through the harvest feast, where she would have gone on bottling
plums and cherries from their orchards with her mother and the two serving-women till all the dancing
was over; and at the next fair her mother sent her on a series of errands to all the stalls where the young
people would be working for their parents. But Jenny only spoke to them as much as she had to, and
came away again.
Her parents had hoped that she would outgrow her shyness, as she had grown into it, but by the time
she was eighteen, they had begun to fear that this would not happen. They worried, because they
тАЬwanted her to find a husband, that she might be as happy with him as they had been with each other;
and they hoped to leave their farm in their daughterтАЩs hands, to be cared for by her and her husband as
lovingly as they had cared for it, and given on to her children in the proper time. They worried that even a
young man who would suit her well would not notice her, for she made herself un-noticeable; and they
feared that it was only they who knew that, when she smiled, her face lit up with gentleness and humour
and intelligence.
They decided that they would take her to the city for a season, and that perhaps so drastic a change
in her usual way of life might bring her to herself. They had relatives in the city, and this could be done
without discomfort. They told her of their plan, and she would have protested, but they told her that they
were her parents, and they knew best.
But because of her knowledge that she was to go away, she carried herself with more of an air during
the next weeksтАФit was an air of tension, but it made her eyes sparkle and her back straight. She looked
around her at her familiar circumstances with more attention than she had done for years, as if this trip to
the city were going to change her life forever. And she knew well enough that her parents hoped that it
would, that they hoped to find her an acceptable suitor: and what could change her life more thoroughly
than marriage?
They were going to the city a little after the final harvest fair of the year, when the farm could be left
to look after itself for a while, with none but the hired workers to keep an eye on it; and when, as well,
the best parties in the city were held, after the heat of the summer was over. The letters were written, and
the relatives had pronounced themselves delighted to have Jenny for a season and her parents for as
much as they felt they could stay of it. Her parents permitted themselves to feel hopeful; even the
possibility that Jenny would fall in love with some city boy who loathed the very idea of farming seemed
worth the risk.
But things did not turn out as JennyтАЩs parents had planned. For at the harvest fair she caught the eye
of a young man.
This young man lived in a neighbouring village, and was one of four sons, third from the eldest. His
family too held a good farm, like hers, but they had four sons to think of. The first was a hard worker,
and he would have the farm. The second was clever, and was to be apprenticed to his uncle, who was a
clever businessman in the city. The fourth was grave and thoughtful, and would go into the priesthood.
The third was beautiful. His name was Robert.
He knew he was beautiful, and all the girls knew it. Jenny knew it too. She had loved him for four
and a half years, almost since the day that the blood that made her a woman first flowed, and her mother
had explained to her what this meant, and what would happen to her on her wedding night. When she
had understood, she had blushed fierily, and tried to forget. It had only been three days before that she
had seen Robert for the first time, and had wondered at her own inability to think of anything else since,
for such a thing had never happened to her before; boys were just boys, and their differences from girls
had never been terribly intriguing. It seemed to her that her mother had just explained this too, and rather
than feeling pleased and excited, she felt it was all too much, and was frightened. None of this she told
her mother, who might have been able to reassure her; and she never told anyone of her feelings for
Robert.
So she knew she loved this young man, but she had never done anything to draw his attention to her.
But she was now eighteen, and he twenty, and he was beginning to realise that he could not go on merely