Читать книгу Wickford Point онлайн

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"I wish you wouldn't go away and leave me," she said. "I won't have anyone to talk to until someone else wakes up. If you're going upstairs, wake someone up. I can't sit here all alone. You're not really going away now, are you?"

"Yes," I said, "I may as well."

"I wish that people would look after me," she said. "No one ever seems to take care of me, and I take care of everyone, and I get tired of it sometimes."

My car was in a shed beside the barn. A heat wave shimmered from the twisted shingles of the barn roof and the building needed a coat of paint. A pair of swallows darted from the shed with low, resentful squeaks. They must have felt that the car would be there all day, presumably for their personal use. When I pressed the starter the engine turned, but nothing happened. A glance at the gasoline gauge told me why.

Out on the lawn near the garden a faint breeze, which passed through the trees, did not dispel the sultriness. Everything was very green—monotonously, luxuriantly green; everything stood in a gentle, reminiscent silence that rebuked me when I raised my voice and called for the boy who worked around the house in summer.