Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle Read Free Book Online Page A

spoiled rotten, too.”
    â€œThat’s a nasty thought,” I said. “Not so much you being spoiled as the rest of us not being born.”
    â€œSometimes I’d be just as happy if you hadn’t been,” John said, and I was about to make an angry retort when he said, “Oh, let’s not fight, Vic. You know I didn’t mean it. I’d better go upstairs and check on those two now.”
    When he came down he said, “Well, they’re happily tearing up Suzy’s best doll so Suzy can do an operation.” Usually Suzy operates on dolls that get broken somehow or other. I didn’t think just deliberately destroying one was such a hot idea, and I didn’t think Suzy would, either, when it was all done and too late. But John and I thought, under the circumstances, we’d just let it go.
    â€œI know what you mean,” I said grimly. “Let’s keep peace and quiet at all costs. I think I’d better go fix the potatoes now before anything else happens. I’d hate to have Mother and Daddy get back and find I hadn’t done anything they asked me to.”
    â€œI’ll help you,” John said unexpectedly. His jobs are things like chopping wood and keeping the wood basket filled and mowing lawns and shoveling snow. We got out the scrapers and set to.
    â€œSounds funny without Mother playing records,” John said. “Shall I put something on?”

    â€œUh-huh.”
    John put on Rosenkavalier, and I was glad, because it’s lovely and gay, and I wasn’t in the mood for anything that wasn’t, and the sound of it made the house feel better, somehow.
    Well, we had only one more crisis, and that was when John tried to get Maggy and Suzy to do their homework before they watched Mickey Mouse Club. But he gave up, and we sat in the kitchen and realized we were starved because we’d forgotten to have anything to eat when we got home from school. So we had milk and cookies and took some in to Rob and Suzy and Maggy, and Maggy and Rob fought over them and we wished we hadn’t. I don’t know when we’ve been as glad to see Mother and Daddy as we were when they walked in at six.
    Â 
    After Mother had read to us and the three little ones were in bed, John and I went back downstairs in our nightclothes. Mother said that as long as I was sleeping in with Rob I could stay up half an hour later, and John stays up till he gets his homework done. If I think I have a lot now, what’ll I do when I get to high school? Daddy said that since Suzy and Maggy had not done their homework they would simply have to tell their teacher that they had played instead, and take the consequences. Neither of them liked that one bit. They wanted to sit up late and do it, but Daddy said no.
    â€œHow about you kids,” Daddy asked John and me. “You about through?”
    â€œI didn’t have very much today,” I said. “I’m all done.”
    â€œJohn?”
    â€œI just have to finish a book report.”

    â€œLet’s talk for a few minutes, then.” He put another log on the fire and sat down. Mother turned from getting things ready for breakfast and sat down, too.
    â€œSo you had a rough time this afternoon, didn’t you?” Daddy asked us. We nodded. He thought for a minute, then he said, “The way things stand now, it looks as though Maggy will be with us for quite a while, and it’s going to be an adjustment for all of us. But we must remember that it’s going to be an adjustment for Maggy most of all. Now, I know you’re both very sorry for her—”
    John broke in, “But that’s the trouble, Dad. We aren’t. We try to be, but we aren’t.”
    â€œAnd at school today, Daddy,” I said, “at recess, she kept sort of bragging about it, and telling people—about her parents being dead, I mean, and her father’s plane having exploded.”
    â€œShe was