The Bad Seed

The Bad Seed Read Free Page A

Book: The Bad Seed Read Free
Author: William March
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knew it was mine.”
    Christine touched the child’s cheek with her finger. “These things happen to us all the time,” she said; “and when they do, we simply accept them. If I were you, I’d forget the whole thing.” She drew the child’s head toward her, and Rhoda submitted to the caress with that tolerant but withdrawn patience of the pet that can never be quite domesticated; then, smoothing down her bangs, she impatiently pulled away from her mother. But feeling, perhaps, that she had been inconsiderate or unwise, she smiled her quick, placating smile, her pink, pointed tongue darting toward her glass.
    Christine laughed softly and said, “I know you don’t like to have people paw at you. I’m sorry.”
    “It was mine,” said Rhoda stubbornly. “The medal was mine.” Her round, light-brown eyes were stretched and unyielding. “It was mine,” she said. “The medal was mine.”
    Christine sighed and went into the living-room; and kneeling on the window seat, she hooked back the heavy, old-fashionedshutters, allowing the soft morning sunlight to flood the room. It was almost seven o’clock, and the street was rapidly waking up. Old Mr. Middleton came onto his front porch, yawned, scratched his stomach, and, stooping cautiously, picked up the morning paper; the cooks for the Truby and the Kunkel families, approaching from opposite directions, nodded, raised their hands in greeting, and disappeared, almost at the same instant, around the corners of their respective houses; a half-grown girl, with legs as shapeless and almost as thin as the lines in a child’s drawing of a girl, pulled her scarf more tightly about her head and ran for her bus with a clumsy, loping motion, her ankles turning inward a little like the ankles of an inexperienced skater.…
    Mrs. Penmark, seeing these familiar things, turned back to her living-room and began to straighten it up. When her husband’s work had brought them to this particular town, they had looked forward to a house of their own, having spent their entire married life in apartments; but not having at once found what they wanted, they had taken another apartment after all, deciding vaguely to build later on.
    The apartment house itself consisted of three floors of ponderous Victorian elegance. It was of red brick, and its turrets, oriel windows, spires, and ornamental spouts balanced and matched one another in a sort of impressive architectural madness. It was set on a little natural hillock, well back from the street, and it was banked with shrubs and flanked by a well-tended lawn. When the house was planned, the lot at the back had been bought as a playground for the children who might some day live in the apartment itself, and it had been turned into a sort of private park enclosed by a high brick wall. It was the playground rather than the big, inefficient apartment which had attracted the Penmarks to the place.
    The bell rang at that moment, and Christine went to answer it. It was Mrs. Monica Breedlove from the floor above, and shecalled out gaily, “I wanted to make sure that you hadn’t overslept on such an important morning. I thought my brother Emory was coming along, too, but he’s still fast asleep. No power in the world can get him up before eight o’clock, but he did open his eyes long enough to tell me that his car is parked in front of the building, and to suggest we use it this morning. So I’m going to drive you and Rhoda to the Fern School, if you haven’t any objections. Anyway, it’ll save you the trouble of getting your car out of the garage.” Then, turning to the child, and tossing her head a little, she added, “I have two gifts for you, my darling. The first is from Emory. It’s a pair of dark glasses with rhinestone decorations, and he says tell you that it’s intended to keep the sun out of those pretty brown eyes.”
    The child moved quickly toward Mrs. Breedlove, with the expression on her face which Christine had come to think

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