"Sorensen, Virginia - Plain Girl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sorensen Virginia)

meeting in his buggy. Or if he did, whether Sarah would approve.

For a while before Daniel went away, he not only prayed in silence with the others, but ate in silence too. Before that he had talked and laughed, even
when his mouth was full.

But in the fields, when he was working behind the horses, he tossed his head in the sun like a young colt. He often stopped plowing and looked at the sky.

One day she asked him, shyly, whether he was looking for mockingbirds. But he laughed and said, "No, Esther, of course not. Those birds live only where
it is always warm. The year around, in some places," he added, "it is warm! Can you imagine such a thing?"

Of course she couldn't. But one day he showed her pictures of it, in a book he brought from school.

It was during the last few weeks he was at home, in mid-summer, over a year ago now, that she saw him in the middle of the day, simply lying at the edge
of the field where the brook ran. He was chewing grass, pulling the sweet tips off with his teeth and throwing the heads away.

When he saw her coming, he said, "Esther, I'm lazy today. Nobody should work in such weather."

"It should be Sunday," Esther said, and looked at

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the blue sky. For a weekday, it was working weather, the best working weather in the world.

Dan shook his head. "No. On Sunday it's harder work than ever, and all indoors." She knew he meant when the meetings were at their house, in their turn,
and benches had to be carried in and out and tables set up. Esther had never thought of those things as work. Never before Dan said it. Afterward she knew
it was part of the trouble. Singing those gay songs was the beginning. Father was right when he tried to stop it with the first song about the mockingbirds.

If that song had never come on John's radio, maybe Dan would never have gone away. Esther felt sure that Dan had, after that, a new feeling about the air.
Not just the air going up and up but the air going on and on, around the world, blowing songs from one place to another. Far away, people were singing.
Different people. Different songs. Once you thought about it you were already almost on your way.

Esther thought about it once because of Dan. It was like being a bird and she felt dizzy and came down quick and tried never to let the feeling come back.
When the feeling started, she began quickly to think of things on the ground, of things like dishes to do or bread to mix or seeds to plant. A thought
like that one about the air could be put away. It was possible to

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put something in front of it in your mind, like a platter in front of the sugar bowl.

One day she had been coming from a neighbor's house along the road. Dan had been at school all day. It was early spring, over a year ago. An automobile
came behind her and she looked at the ground and moved far to the side to let it pass.

It did not pass. It stopped beside her and she looked up in surprise.

"Hello, Esther!" It was Dan getting out of the car. He said to the driver, "Thank you for giving me a ride. This is Esther, my sister."

It was a little rattling black car and Esther looked at it as it went on down the road. Two boys were in it, and one of them turned and looked at her with
the same expression people had in town when they turned their heads to stare.

One of the boys in the car waved good-by. Dan waved back.