Lilli's Quest by Lila Perl Read Free Book Online

land.”
    â€œWhat odd foods we eat, especially for ‘tea,’ which is supper. Mainly, there is dried salty fish and boiled eggs, because we have plenty of those. There is no running water or indoor toilet, as we had on Heinrichstrasse and with the Bayers. The outhouse is full of spiders. And now that the weather has begun to turn cold at night, the chamber pots in the cottage have begun to freeze, for there is only the fireplace for heat. When I climb up to my bed in the loft, I take a heated brick or a large stone, wrapped in layers of flannel.”
    Lilli also tells Mutti about her grimly silent hosts, and about Tim. “I don’t think they are mean people, but they are very sad and disappointed by their sick little boy.I disagree with Tim’s father. Tim should go to school and he should have friends. Sometimes I give him a few lessons. He is not stupid.”
    Lilli tries to keep her letter as factual as possible. She does not tell Mutti how heavy her heart is, with an ache that never goes away. She ends the letter hoping the family is still safe at the Bayers, and imploring Mutti to write back soon. But who knows what is happening now in wartime Germany?
    It is now January 1940, and the English winter, with its bleak skies and chilling rains, has set in. Nonetheless, Lilli and Tim are venturing forth on a walk to the village, which Tim dearly loves to do. Lilli is focused on the small country post office, where she has been hoping for months to receive an answer to her letter to Mutti.
    Tim is pointing as they tread along to the distant “castle” where the rich landowners of the estate live. It is the largest house Lilli has ever seen, four stories high and topped with numerous turrets and spires that appear to challenge the sky.
    â€œHave you ever been inside the manor house?” Lilli asks Tim.
    He shakes his head violently. “No. Mustn’t never go there.”
    Lilli tries to imagine what it must be like inside: high ceilings, fireplaces and heating stoves in every room,elegant furnishings and draperies, and servants to look to one’s every need. Could anything be more different than the chill and spare life at the Rathbones?
    The soggy unpaved road on which Lilli and Tim have been navigating the puddles gives way to a hard surface as they approach the village, with its parish church, its pub, its inviting shops, and, of course, its post office.
    As they are about to enter the main street, they come face to face with two little girls, who are, strangely, dressed in what Lilli would call “city clothes.” They are bundled up against the cold in woolen coats and matching bonnets. Yet their knees are bare, and their shoes seem hardly suitable for country roads. Lilli, who is happy to see new faces, greets them with a smile. “You look like sisters,” she can’t refrain from remarking.
    â€œYes, we are. I’m Clarissa and this is Mabel,” says the older of the two, who looks about ten. “We’re from London. Where are you from? And what’s the matter with him?” Tim clutches Lilli’s hand more tightly.
    So many nosy questions, Lilli thinks indignantly. “Nothing at all is the matter with him,” she replies, and she promptly asks a nosy question of her own. “If you live in London, what are you doing here in the countryside?”
    â€œOh, we’re Pied Piper children,” Clarissa declares. “We’ve come to stay at the manor house until the Jerries stop blitzing London. There are four of us here now and more coming soon.” Since the war began, there had beentalk of a Blitz, an all-out bombing of British cities and towns by the terrifying Luftwaffe , the German air force. So the government organized the Pied Piper Operation, where British children are evacuated by bus or train to the countryside, where they will be out of harm’s way.
    Lilli can’t help feeling jealous at the luck of the two