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

were away on holiday, and somehow it made the
place seem even lonelier and more isolated to see the
shutters up, and the door - the old side-door of the
Manor - blankly shut and fastened all day. The
village of Redmanor, with its handful of houses


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The Little Broomstick


clustered round the church and the post-office, was a
full mile away. You got there by a narrow road that
was little more than a country lane; Mary had sometimes
walked that way, and had never met anyone on
the road yet.

In the Manor itself, Great-Aunt Charlotte lived
alone, save for an elderly friend and companion,
Miss Marjoribanks (pronounced Marshbanks), an
elderly Scottish housekeeper called Mrs McLeod
(pronounced Macloud), and an elderly Pekingese
called K'ung Fu-tsze (pronounced Confucius). To be
sure, there was Mrs Banks and her daughter Nancy,
who came in to clean, and there was Zebedee, the old
man who did the garden, but all the same, it was not
a very exciting prospect for Miss Mary Smith, aged
ten, and rather shy.

Miss Mary Smith was critically examining her
tongue in the bedroom mirror.

It looked very healthy. And she felt fine.

She put it in, sighed, then put it out again at her
reflection, and went downstairs to find something to
do.

Miss Marjoribanks was in the drawing-room,
sorting embroidery silks on the wide window seat.
There was a rather poor fire in the grate, and in front
of this sat Confucius, sulking a little and digesting
his lunch. Great-Aunt Charlotte was sitting in her
wing chair to one side of the fire, presumably also


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Poor Mary sat a-weeping