"Mary Stewart - The Little Broomstick" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

14 Home again, home again 138
Author's Note
To

Troy, my resident familiar,

and Johnny, the cat who came in

from the cold
CHAPTER ONE

Poor Mary sat a-weeping

Even her name was plain. Mary Smith. Nothing
could have been more depressing, she thought; to be
plain, to be ten, and to be alone, staring out of her
bedroom window on a grey autumn day, and to be
called Mary Smith.

She was the only plain one in the family. Jenny
had lovely long hair that really was the colour of
gold, and everyone said Jeremy was handsome; they
were older than Mary, cleverer, more attractive in
every way. Moreover, they were twins, and had each
other, while Mary, who was five years their junior,
might as well (she thought dejectedly) have been an
only child. Not that she grudged anything to them; it
had always seemed to her natural that they should get
things that she could not have. As now ...

When the news had come that Daddy would have


1
The Little Broomstick


to go to America for a month towards the end of the
summer holidays, and wanted Mummy to go with
him, it had at first all seemed to work out beautifully.
Jenny and Jeremy went off to stay with one of
Jeremy's school friends who had a farm in Yorkshire,
and Mary was to go to Mummy's sister, Aunt Sue,
who had three children aged eleven, eight, and four,
and who lived within an hour's car ride of the sea.

But then, on the very day that Jenny and Jeremy
had left, came the letter from Aunt Sue, saying that
Uncle Gil and the two elder children were down with
flu, and that consequently Aunt Sue did not feel able