Bright Island by Mabel L. Robinson

Bright Island by Mabel L. Robinson

Author:Mabel L. Robinson [Robinson, Mabel L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cookie429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9780375971372
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-10-22T13:00:00+00:00


PART III

Bright Island Now and Then

Bright Island Thanksgiving

Thankful was puzzled by Selina. Her pride made her wary of the girl’s advances. She mustn’t feel that she has to be nice to me, Thankful thought, just because I happened to haul her out of the water that day. Anybody would have. And I’m no different now than I was before.

But Selina persisted. She seemed softened and humbled. She invited Thankful to do this and that, and brought her little gifts of sweets which she offered tentatively as if she feared refusal. Thankful ate the candy, but withheld her affection. In these months she had built up a resistance against Selina which was not easily brought low. It had helped her to stand the daily hurts and it still held her unresponsive behind its protection. Selina met with unexpected rebuff.

To Thankful’s embarrassment the school treated her as its hero for nearly a week. When they had forgotten the reason for their conduct, they still kept shreds of the new pattern toward her. Thankful had no lack of companionship these days. Indeed, with the Dinkle Saturdays gone she felt a desperate need sometimes to escape what she called their yammer and yawl. She liked them but the need of healing quiet was her island heritage.

When a letter from her mother proposed Thanksgiving day at home, she sat over it mute with joy while Selina chattered words which she did not hear. Jed had to come up the coast the day before and he would bring her over in his powerboat. Her father would take her back the next day. Mary Curtis was brief but she made it possible for her daughter to come home. Bring someone with you if you wish, she had added in a postscript, but Thankful paid it no heed. She was going home to Bright Island. She would see it brown and bare in the November desolation which she loved. She would lie under the eaves in her cold little room, and look out at stars higher and in great numbers. She would hear the plash of the small waves in the cove, and smell their saltiness, clean, unbreathed.

She drew a long deep breath as if to catch their scent and looked up from the page in her hand to find Selina staring at her. “Someone just left you a diamond ring?” she asked with familiar tartness.

Thankful folded up her letter. “Best one I ever had.” She kept herself absent from Selina. It was the only way to do.

Selina made a queer noise in her throat. Then the words tumbled by her anger. “You make me mad! You never tell me anything. I run on and on, and all you ever do in return is to shut up tight and leave me guessing. You just keep yourself to yourself.”

Thankful’s astonished eyes watched her. Does she think I want her to go on and on? Doesn’t she know how I have to stop listening? Does she want me to tell her about me? She flinched under the impact of this idea.



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