brothers nodded and smiled, as though the words of endearment he whispered to her had been addressed to them.
But the farm possessed a lure greater than that offered by the animals and the outbuildings. Kevin had never seen a room like the Minard parlour.
Miss Sarah made him wash his muddy feet before entering the house. He sat on a bench in the porch that she called her laundry room and scrubbed his feet in a gleaming white basin. Then he could come into the kitchen and, if Miss Sarah was in a good mood, into the parlour as well.
Miss Sarah had learned that he liked books, and the parlour contained dozens of them, stacked on the shelves of a shining, varnished book case. Often, he spent an hour or more alone in the room, lying on his belly on the soft, maroon carpet and paging through stiff-backed, leather-bound volumes. In the past year he had read The Sermons of DeWitt Talmadge , The Life of Frances E. Willard , The Prisoner of Zenda , The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come , and â both of these last three times each â The Life of Lord Nelson and A History of the United States written in 1901. But he would have been captivated by the room had it not contained a single book. For to him it seemed the height of grandeur and luxury. It was such a room as he would build in his palace when he became King of Nicaragua, such an office as he would use when he was elected to parliament, such a study as he would possess when he became the wealthiest and most famous doctor in Canada.
The parlour was dark, with the darkness of old, varnished things, and with the darkness of shadows. The floor-length, tasselled window curtains were kept closed because, so Miss Sarah said, the sunlight would warp the furniture and fade the carpet. The darkness of the walls, the darkness of chairs and tables glowed with incredible black luminosity. Everything in the room was odorous with age, redolent of soaps and polishes. And there was another fragrance, ambiguous and haunting, that reminded him vaguely of the scent of dead flowers pressed between the pages of a Bible.
The room drew him as a magnet draws a jack-knife blade. But he did not wholly like it. Sometimes when the six-foot-high clock standing between the curtained windows struck the hour, he started up as though he had heard the snarl of a werewolf or the wail of a banshee. And sometimes when he lay reading he stopped abruptly and looked over his shoulder, as though he had felt a hot breath on the back of his neck.
Something in the dark, shining, airless room troubled him and made him uneasy. He could not give his uneasiness a name, but it was a little, just a little, like the uneasiness he had felt on the one or two occasions that he had passed a graveyard, alone and at night.
One day after school, he clambered over the pole gate at the foot of the Minard lane. The poles in this section of the fence were not nailed to posts but lay between frames built like miniature ladders. When cattle or horses were to be driven up the lane, the poles were lifted from their rungs and slid to one side. Kevin preferred to climb over them.
He ran up the hill. Beyond the fences, on either side of the lane, flocks of sheep were grazing, their fleeces the colour of dirty white shirts. They blatted at him as he ran by kicking up red dust, the old ram blatting first, then all the ewes echoing him. Kevin was not fond of sheep. He disliked their sour, vomity odour and their stupid, trusting eyes. Whenever he looked at them, he wondered why God had compared men to sheep. Horses would have been so much better . . .
With a hop and a jump and a windmill of arms he was in the Minardâs back dooryard.
In the front dooryard, the grass was trimmed regularly with a lawn mower, the only lawn mower that Kevin had ever seen. The gravelled walk leading to the front door was lined with little flower beds in which Miss Sarah had planted butterfly-coloured, velvety pansies. Purple dahlias, which Kevin imagined to
But the farm possessed a lure greater than that offered by the animals and the outbuildings. Kevin had never seen a room like the Minard parlour.
Miss Sarah made him wash his muddy feet before entering the house. He sat on a bench in the porch that she called her laundry room and scrubbed his feet in a gleaming white basin. Then he could come into the kitchen and, if Miss Sarah was in a good mood, into the parlour as well.
Miss Sarah had learned that he liked books, and the parlour contained dozens of them, stacked on the shelves of a shining, varnished book case. Often, he spent an hour or more alone in the room, lying on his belly on the soft, maroon carpet and paging through stiff-backed, leather-bound volumes. In the past year he had read The Sermons of DeWitt Talmadge , The Life of Frances E. Willard , The Prisoner of Zenda , The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come , and â both of these last three times each â The Life of Lord Nelson and A History of the United States written in 1901. But he would have been captivated by the room had it not contained a single book. For to him it seemed the height of grandeur and luxury. It was such a room as he would build in his palace when he became King of Nicaragua, such an office as he would use when he was elected to parliament, such a study as he would possess when he became the wealthiest and most famous doctor in Canada.
The parlour was dark, with the darkness of old, varnished things, and with the darkness of shadows. The floor-length, tasselled window curtains were kept closed because, so Miss Sarah said, the sunlight would warp the furniture and fade the carpet. The darkness of the walls, the darkness of chairs and tables glowed with incredible black luminosity. Everything in the room was odorous with age, redolent of soaps and polishes. And there was another fragrance, ambiguous and haunting, that reminded him vaguely of the scent of dead flowers pressed between the pages of a Bible.
The room drew him as a magnet draws a jack-knife blade. But he did not wholly like it. Sometimes when the six-foot-high clock standing between the curtained windows struck the hour, he started up as though he had heard the snarl of a werewolf or the wail of a banshee. And sometimes when he lay reading he stopped abruptly and looked over his shoulder, as though he had felt a hot breath on the back of his neck.
Something in the dark, shining, airless room troubled him and made him uneasy. He could not give his uneasiness a name, but it was a little, just a little, like the uneasiness he had felt on the one or two occasions that he had passed a graveyard, alone and at night.
One day after school, he clambered over the pole gate at the foot of the Minard lane. The poles in this section of the fence were not nailed to posts but lay between frames built like miniature ladders. When cattle or horses were to be driven up the lane, the poles were lifted from their rungs and slid to one side. Kevin preferred to climb over them.
He ran up the hill. Beyond the fences, on either side of the lane, flocks of sheep were grazing, their fleeces the colour of dirty white shirts. They blatted at him as he ran by kicking up red dust, the old ram blatting first, then all the ewes echoing him. Kevin was not fond of sheep. He disliked their sour, vomity odour and their stupid, trusting eyes. Whenever he looked at them, he wondered why God had compared men to sheep. Horses would have been so much better . . .
With a hop and a jump and a windmill of arms he was in the Minardâs back dooryard.
In the front dooryard, the grass was trimmed regularly with a lawn mower, the only lawn mower that Kevin had ever seen. The gravelled walk leading to the front door was lined with little flower beds in which Miss Sarah had planted butterfly-coloured, velvety pansies. Purple dahlias, which Kevin imagined to
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