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

digesting her lunch, but looking a great deal more
pleasant about it than Confucius. She was asleep.

Mary tiptoed across to the window seat.

She sat down quietly.

She watched Miss Marjoribanks disentangle a
length of puce silk from a skein of soft rust-red. The
colours were horrible together. Miss Marjoribanks
twisted and shook and tugged, and finally cheated by
cutting both silks with the embroidery scissors. She
began to wind them on little twists of newspaper.

Mary opened her mouth to whisper an offer of
help.

Immediately Miss Marjoribanks fixed her with a
faded pale blue eye. 'Sssh!' she hissed. 'You'll wake
Confucius!' She moved the box of silks a little
further away from Mary. 'And Confucius,' she added
as an afterthought, 'will wake your great-aunt.'

'But --' began Mary.

'Sssh!' said Miss Marjoribanks.

Mary tiptoed out of the drawing-room, and took at
least two and a half minutes to close the door without
a sound.

She found Mrs McLeod in the kitchen, making an
upside-down cake. She was standing at the big
scrubbed table, beating something in a yellow bowl.
She hardly seemed to notice Mary's shy entry; she
was talking to herself, apparently in a foreign
language. Or it could - thought Mary suddenly,


5
The Little Broomstick


looking from Mrs McLeod's gaunt face and skinny
arms to the pan that simmered on the stove - it could
be a spell.

'Twa oz floor,' muttered Mrs McLeod, beating
vigorously, 'an' B.P., a wee puckle o'salt, shoogar aye,
that's a'.'