Annie by Thomas Meehan

Author:Thomas Meehan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

Nine

A few minutes later, the limousine drew to a halt in front of Bergdorf Goodman, at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, and Miss Farrell led Annie into the elegant department store. There she bought her the warmest and most beautiful winter coat that Annie had ever seen—it was a pale pink wool and had a white ermine collar. And Miss Farrell also bought her a matching pink hat. Annie couldn’t believe the price tags on the coat and hat—together they cost more than a hundred dollars. But Miss Farrell didn’t blink an eye at the prices as she casually told the saleslady, “Charge it to Oliver Warbucks.”

Feeling like a fairy-tale princess in her new coat and hat, Annie settled luxuriously once more in the backseat of the limousine as it proceeded northward and at last stopped at the curb in front of Oliver Warbucks’s six-story marble-pillared mansion, at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The chauffeur ceremoniously opened the door, and Annie and Miss Farrell alighted from the limousine. Taking Annie by the hand, Miss Farrell led her up the front steps of the mansion and rang the bell by the huge, carved-oak front door. All but instantly the door was opened by a tall, stern-faced butler in a bottle-green uniform whom Miss Farrell introduced to her as Drake. Now, as Drake bowed to one side, Miss Farrell led Annie into a high-ceilinged foyer that was the biggest room she’d ever seen aside from the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal. “Do you really live here?” asked Annie, looking around in wide-eyed awe, “or is this a train station?” “We really live here,” replied Miss Farrell with a smile.

“May I take your coat and hat, miss?” Drake asked Annie, speaking with a nasal British accent.

Annie took a wary step away from Drake. “Will I get ’em back?”

“Of course, dear,” said Miss Farrell, smiling once again as Drake took Annie’s coat, hat, and tattered old sweater. Having arrived at the mansion in her beautiful new coat and hat, Annie felt embarrassed to be seen now in her patched dress and the worn-through shoes that she’d lined with cardboard during her days at the Hooverville. But neither Drake nor Miss Farrell seemed to notice how sadly raggedy she looked.

Now Miss Farrell, followed by Drake, led Annie into a vast living room with a huge marble fireplace. The room, seemingly about the size of a football field, was several times larger than the foyer. A dozen or so uniformed maids and footmen were busy cleaning the room, dusting the furniture, polishing the woodwork, and vacuuming the Oriental rugs. In the center of the room was a large statue of a naked woman who had no arms. “What’s that thing?” asked Annie, pointing at the statue.

“That’s called the Venus de Milo, dear,” said Miss Farrell. “There’s a copy of it in a museum in Paris called the Louvre, but this one, belonging to Mr. Warbucks, is the original, of course.

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