The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Author:Kevin Crossley-Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

59

GRACE AND TOM

THE PRETTIEST THING ABOUT GRACE IS PROBABLY her delicate, sloping shoulders, and the funniest is her little snub nose. But what I like about her most are the lights dancing in her blue eyes, and the very quick way she speaks and moves.

When I saw her in May, I promised to take her to the top of Tumber Hill and show her where England ends and Wales begins, and point out where the jumpers came from when they raided us last year, and climb my climbing-tree with her. And that’s what we did, although not in the way I expected.

On the first afternoon, Serle and Sian and I climbed Tumber Hill with Grace and Tom and the dogs, but Serle didn’t talk much because Johanna had pulled out his rotten tooth early that morning and his mouth was sore. It was damp and cold, so when Sian begged us to play hide-and-seek, we agreed so as to keep warm.

Sian was the first to hide, but it didn’t take us long to find her half-hidden under a pile of leaves. I was the last and, while the others hid their faces in their cloaks and counted up to one hundred, I ran through the beeches to the little green glade just over the top of the hill, and quickly climbed my climbing-tree. There were few leaves left on it to hide me, but seekers seldom think of looking above their heads.

“How did you know?” I asked Grace after I’d pulled her up on to my high perch.

“I thought of it at once,” Grace panted, “because you promised you’d show me your secret climbing-tree.”

While Serle, Tom and Sian sought us, and the hounds galloped between them, barking, Grace and I talked. She told me how her stepmother, Lady Alice, has begun to teach her French, and I told her how I’m going to get worse at my reading and writing lessons with Oliver in case my father wants me to be a monk or a schoolman, and she told me how Tom is no good at reading anyway, and I told her about Serle’s unkindness, though not what he said about my inheriting only a little land, and she told me she often cries because her father is always away or going away, and I told her how I want to go away to serve as a squire, perhaps with Sir William, but I didn’t say my father doesn’t seem to like this idea.

“I’d never see you anyhow,” Grace said dolefully, “because my father is never at home.”

“Does your stepmother mind?” I asked Grace.

“She has to do all the lady’s work, of course,” Grace replied, “and half the lord’s work too. She figures the accounts and, this autumn, she managed all the day-work, the ditching and dungspreading and sedge-cutting and all that. She grows very tired, and that’s when she cries.”

Grace and I stayed up in my tree, and talked and talked, until it was the blue hour and our limbs were almost as stiff as the tree’s branches.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.