Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) Read Free Page B

looked tight. Marly held her breath, remembering something he said to Mother before they started out. "I want to be alone. None of that country good-neighbor business, I hope. Everybody trading dinners and knowing everybody else's business."
    Mother noticed, too, Marly could tell. She stood up quickly and said, "Well, we'd better be off, I guess. Chrissie, that was so wonderful..."
    Mrs. Chris stood on the porch again to wave them good-bye. "If you should get stuck again, just honk and honk!" she called. "But I don't think you will. Fritz cleared the road this morning."
    Marly felt her hands clenched tight with excitement.
Now—soon—
she thought. Joe had his face glued to his window again. "Joe, it's not on that side," she said.
    He looked at her. "How do you know?" he asked.
    Mother turned with a laugh. "Yes, how did you, Marly? I don't think I ever said. Did I?"
    For a minute Marly felt confused. She could see it in her mind, the whole place, the slope, the trees, the tumbly barn against the hill. Then suddenly she knew. "You said you used to sit on the front porch and watch the sun go down," she said.
    Mother and Daddy looked at each other, the look that said: What a child! She's quite bright after all! Joe crowded over to look from her window, too. He looked determined and she knew how he felt; after what happened before, he absolutely had to see Maple Hill first. And she decided to let him. Boys were queer. They seemed afraid they'd stop being boys altogether if they couldn't be first at everything.
    Suddenly the sun came out. All day it had been hidden, but now it burst from the clouds. Everywhere the crusted snow began to shine like Christmas cotton. It was only a minute, and then it disappeared again beneath a cloud. And there, as if the blinding moment of brightness had created it like the wave of a wand, was the house on Maple Hill.
    She thought Joe would never see it. But suddenly he said, "Is that it? That little house—"
    "That's it," Mother said firmly, and turned the car off the road. "I told you it was just a small place, didn't I?"
    "But it's pretty—little and pretty," Marly said quickly. And it was, in a way, though it looked awfully lonely in the vast countryside—and dilapidated, too. The porch was heavy with snow and you could see where one step had fallen in. Huge snowy bushes hung over the railing. It looked as if nobody had lived there for a hundred years. The trees on the hill were huge and bare, like skeletons.
    "I always loved the windows," Mother said as if she was trying to find something good to say.
    They were all little squares, Marly noticed then, with tipsy shutters.
    "They're so nice with ruffled white curtains," Mother said.
    Everybody sat still. Nobody could think of anything else to say for a minute. Then Daddy spoke. "Fritz seems to have made a good big fire. Look at the smoke coming from the chimney."
    "Me go in first!" Joe cried then. "Mother, can I unlock the door?"
    "Maybe we'd better flip a nickel for a privilege like that," Daddy said, looking at Marly.
    But she shook her head. She sat still while Joe got out and ran to the back door, while Daddy and Mother followed. She wanted time to say something to herself that she had planned to say.
    It had to be the right place. All outdoors. With miracles. Not crowded and people being cross and mean. Daddy not tired all the time anymore. Mother not worried. But it looked little and old to be all that. She was afraid, now that she was actually here, that it wasn't. She wished that they were still on the way. Sometimes even Christmas wasn't as much fun as getting ready for it. Maybe thinking about Maple Hill would turn out to be better than Maple Hill itself.
    She whispered, "Please, let there be miracles."
    "Marly!" Mother called. "Aren't you coming?"
    Forever and forever now, on Christmas morning, Marly knew, she would stop on the stairs where she couldn't see the living room yet. Afraid maybe somebody had forgotten to light the tree.