Love Among the Walnuts by Jean Ferris

Author:Jean Ferris [Ferris, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Retail, Ages 10 & Up
ISBN: 9780152015909
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1998-08-18T07:00:00+00:00

That night, after dinner, Sunnie turned off the TV in the library, took up her copy of The Wind in the Willows, which she was reading for the second time because everybody loved it so much, and led the way upstairs to the sleepers' room. Sandy had lit the fire and arranged the chairs for her. It would be the first time she had read without the TV playing in the background. There were only the hiss and crack of the burning logs in the grate and the cottony silence that came from Walnut Manor's being enveloped in falling snow.

The solemnity of sharing a room with four comatose fellow creatures affected all the inmates. They settled themselves quietly and, though the lack of a TV screen clearly made Virgil and Lyle uneasy, they all turned their faces expectantly toward Sunnie.

She read the chapter where Rat and Mole are head ing back to Rat's riverbank home, where they both now live, through a mid-December snowstorm and stumble upon Mole's old home. Rat and Mole stay the night there—fixing a cozy supper for the mice who come along caroling—and Mole realizes that, though he has a new life now, "it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome."

When Sunnie read those words and closed the book, there was a long thoughtful silence. Could any of the people in the room have said the words Mole had?

Perhaps because of their preoccupation with their own thoughts about what constituted home, no one had noticed that while Sunnie was reading, Louie had jumped into L. Barlow Van Dyke's lap, curled himself up, and gone to sleep while Mr. Van Dyke scratched his ears.

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