Ellray Jakes the Dragon Slayer by Sally Warner Read Free Book Online Page A

It’s fun seeing him, because we don’t have any pets at home. Alfie’s allergic. “And then we’ll go to the hardware store?” I ask, trying not to jinx it by sounding too hopeful.
    “Sure,” Dad says. “There’s always
something
we need there. And then….”
    He draws out these last two words in a tempting way, a smiles big at me, because me and my dad share one small secret.
    Our Saturday morning doughnut!
    I smile back at him. “Chocolate sprinkles,” I tell him. “I have a question,” I add, surprising even myself. “It’s about being proud. You’re always saying Alfie and I should be proud of ourselves.So that means pride’s a good thing, right?”
    “It
can
be a good thing, even though pride—vanity, that is—is considered to be one of the seven big vices,” Dad says, after thinking about it for a couple of seconds. “And not a ‘vise’ like in the hardware store, son. This ‘vice’ is spelled with a C in the middle, and it’s something bad.”
    My dad explains everything way too much. That can be frustrating, especially if you’re in a hurry. But it also means that you always know he has listened to your question and taken it seriously.
    “Wait. What?” I ask, now totally confused in the back seat. “So is pride a good thing or a bad thing?”
    “Well,” Dad says, stopping at a red light, which is always a good idea, “if you’re so proud that you think you’re a better, smarter, or nicer-looking kid than anyone else you know, that’s a bad thing. But if you’re proud enough to know you’re as
good
as everyone else, that you try to be the best you can be, that’s a good thing.”
    “Corey Robinson’s a lot better swimmer than I’ll ever be,” I tell my dad.
    “Do you feel proud of him?” Dad asks.
    “Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I wish I was better atswimming than I am, but I’m proud Corey’s a champion. I like to brag about him.”
    “See,
that’s
a good kind of pride, too,” my dad tells me as we pull into the crowded plant nursery parking lot. “And if your swimming improved even a little bit, it would be a good thing to be proud of that. We can work on it next summer, if you want.”
    “Maybe,” I say with some caution, because my dad can go overboard when he helps me work on stuff. Last year, when I said I
might
like to be a Cub Scout, mostly because Kevin was talking about joining, the next thing I knew I was wearing a uniform with too-big blue shorts sagging down below my knees, and I was reciting some pledge. When the whole thing was just an idea that had floated across my brain.
    And Kevin never even joined!
    Nothing against the Cub Scouts.
    “But can you
teach
someone to be proud? Someone little?” I ask my dad as if it’s just an ordinary question. Like I’m not talking about Alfie.
    “To have pride in himself, you mean? I hope your mother and I did that with you,” Dad says as he wrestles a giant shopping cart loose from a bigtangle of them. You should see these carts. They’re double-deckers. You could ride in the bottom of one, if your dad let you. I could, anyway.
    “Or pride in
her
self,” I say, not looking at him.
    “Well, sure,” Dad says, sounding a little lost in this conversation. And being lost anytime, anywhere, is unusual for him.
    “But you can’t just keep telling them and telling them to ‘show a little pride,’ because that doesn’t work,” I say, just barely keeping it from coming out like a question.
    “I suppose not,” Dad says, distracted now by a display of rose bushes in dark plastic pots.
    Right after Christmas, these same plants were what Dad called “bare root roses,” and they looked like a bunch of thorny sticks poking out of dirt-filled burlap bags. They hadn’t started growing any leaves or flowers then. But the nursery still charged money for them.
    With bare root roses, Dad told me, you just have to assume something good is gonna happen.
    But he decided to wait until now before he bought any.