Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) by Virginia Sorensen

Author:Virginia Sorensen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2003-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

"He was going after water and heard us in there, I guess," Joe said. "Come on!"

On their own road, Joe said he hadn't really been scared. It was only that you couldn't tell about people like that. "You hear such queer things. In the newspapers there are all those awful stories, like that old man who went into that trailer in New Mexico." He kept glancing back. "If I'd been alone, I'd have just talked to him. Fritz says he's a queer old man but nice when you know him." He stopped in the road. "Maybe we shouldn't have run like that," he said.

"Joe, we couldn't just stay and have him come in after us. We couldn't!"

"It didn't seem like we could, did it?" Joe looked awfully bothered. "Until after, I didn't think of anything else we could do. But now..." He stood still. "I'm about to go back, Marly. That was a dumb thing to do—just running like that. I was thinking about you." His voice accused her. "Why do you always have to follow along?"

"You would too have run! You were just as scared as I was, and you know it! Besides, it was all your fault, going around looking at everything the way you did. Why, maybe he was right there in his house when you kept looking in!"

"That note on the box said he was gone," Joe said.

"It didn't say what day he was gone, did it? And it didn't say when he was coming back."

He looked at her angrily. "Why didn't you think of that before?" He didn't like the idea of himself peering through that screen, practically right into the face of the hermit himself.

"I'm going back and apologize," he said.

"Joe! Now? By yourself?"

"Well, you don't need to come!"

"I didn't mean I wanted to. I only thought maybe you'd better go back with Fritz or somebody. Joe—the thing to do is to get introduced—"

He looked uncertain. But then he started walking toward home again. "Maybe so," he said.

Goodness, boys were funny! She didn't blame Joe in the least for being scared—who wouldn't be?—and she didn't mind saying she was scared either. But she knew that if she should mention one word about the way they ran out of that springhouse and down the hill, he would hate her for a week, if not forever. She wanted to tell it, making it as gruesome as she could, but she knew Joe would never forgive her if she so much as mentioned it. For the millionth time, she was glad she wasn't a boy. It was all right for girls to be scared or silly or even ask dumb questions. Everybody just laughed and thought it was funny. But if anybody caught Joe asking a dumb question or even thought he was the littlest bit scared, he went red and purple and white. Daddy was even something like that, as old as he was.

At their own lane she said, "Joe, I don't blame you one little bit for being scared.

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.