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

a dozen suppers. They had not made puddings at all, as she knew, but apple pies for which no eggs were needed.

Somebody must be at the house just now, somebody Mother did not want her to see.

4

As always, whenever anything out-of-the-way happened, a question jumped into Esther's mind: Was it something about Dan?

Before she was halfway to the chicken coop, she knew at least part of the trouble. An automobile stood by the front gate. Two strange men without any hats
on their heads at all, or any beards on their chins, sat in the seat, looking toward the house. She hurried inside with the hens and closed the door quickly
behind her. But she went at once to the wired opening across the front and looked out.

It was a shining black car with a colored picture painted on the door. There were words too, but she could not read them so far away. They were not huge
words like the ones she saw on cars sometimes when she went to market with Father and Mother, like

POTATO CHIPS, HANDY LAUNDRY, DRINK OBERT's ORANGY

orange! If these two men had something to sell, Esther thought, they'd as well drive away before Father came out of the barn. Father knew exactly what things
he needed and where to get them. Besides, Esther knew, he wasn't going to like an automobile sitting right in front of his own gate.

The barn door opened. Father came out. On Father anger showed very plainly because it almost never happened to him. Now his beard looked so stiff and fierce

5 6 GIRL

that he did not seem like Father at all. Esther stood so quiet inside the coop that the chickens forgot she was there and began to peck about her shoes.
Surely, now those men saw Father looking as he did, they would drive away.

But they did not. Instead, one of them opened the door and leaned out and called, "Mr. Lapp?"

Father nodded. Once. He did not move toward them one single step. It was as if he said, "If they want to speak with me they can do the walking. It isn't
as if I wanted to speak to them."

"Oh, dear," Esther thought. "I wish they would go away." Now Father would not say a single word at supper and so neither would Mother. Aunt Ruth would not
dare to speak, then, and of course a little girl never spoke unless she was spoken to. It would be as bad as it had been right after Dan went away.

But the men did not leave. Instead they both climbed out of the car and came through the. gate and straight toward where Father stood. The first man carried
a paper in one hand, reading as he walked. When he came close to Father, he looked up and said, "I understand you have a daughter, Esther Lapp?"

Esther jumped from the window so quickly that

7

the chickens at her feet flew in every direction, squawking. Then she stood still, against the door.

"Yes," she heard Father say. "I have a daughter Esther."

The man cleared his throat. Now the chickens huddled together, very still under the perches, and Esther crept forward toward the window again.

"From our records, we find that she is almost ten years old," the man said. Esther could see his face quite well now, looking very pink without any beard,
like a young unmarried man. Yet he was old, for his clipped hair was gray over his ears. "Why hasn't she ever been to school?"