Number the Stars by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page A

She peered over the low stone wall and looked at the few flowering bushes as they passed the house. "Maybe they still do, but it's the wrong time of year—there are just those few chrysanthemums left.
    "And see, over there?" She pointed again. "My best friend—her name was Helena—lived in that house. Sometimes I used to spend the night with her. But more often she came to my house, on weekends. It was more fun to be in the country.
    "My brother Henrik always teased us, though," she continued with a chuckle. "He told us ghost stories and scared us half to death."
    The sidewalk ended and Mama turned onto a dirt path bordered by trees. "When I walked each morning into town for school," she said, "my dog followed me this far. At the end of the path he turned and went back home. I guess he was a country dog and didn't like town.
    "And do you know what?" she went on, smiling. "I had named him Trofast—Faithful. And it was just the right name for him, because what a faithful dog he was! Every afternoon he was always right here, waiting for me to return. He knew the right time, somehow. Sometimes, as I come around this bend, even today, I feel as if I might come upon Trofast, waiting still, with his tail wagging."
    But the path was empty today. No people. No faithful dogs. Mama shifted the bag she was carrying from one hand to the other, and they walked on through the woods until the path opened to a meadow dotted with cows. Here the path skirted the edge of the field, along a fence, and beyond it they could see the gray sea, ruffled by wind. The breeze moved the high grass.
    At the end of the pasture, they entered the woods again and Annemarie knew they would soon be there. Uncle Henrik's house was in a clearing beyond these woods.
    "Do you mind if I run ahead?" she asked suddenly. "I want to be the first to see the house!"
    "Go on," Mama told her. "Run ahead and tell the house we've come home."
    Then she put her arm around Ellen's shoulders and added, "Say that we've brought a friend."

7. The House by the Sea
    "Oh, Annemarie," Ellen said, with awe in her voice, "it is beautiful,"
    Annemarie looked around and nodded her head in agreement. The house and the meadows that surrounded it were so much a part of her childhood, a part of her life, that she didn't often look at them with fresh eyes. But now she did, seeing Ellen's pleasure. And it was true. They were beautiful.
    The little red-roofed farmhouse was very old, its chimney crooked and even the small, shuttered windows tilted at angles. A bird's nest, wispy with straw, was half hidden in the corner where the roof met the wall above a bedroom window. Nearby, a gnarled tree was still speckled with a few apples now long past ripe.
    Mama and Kirsti had gone inside, but Annemarie and Ellen ran across the high-grassed meadow, through the late wildflowers. From nowhere, a gray kitten appeared and ran beside them, pouncing here and there upon imagined mice, pausing to lick its paws, and then darting off again. It pretended to ignore the girls, but looked back often to be certain that they were still there, apparently pleased to have playmates.
    The meadow ended at the sea, and the gray water licked there at damp brown grass flattened by the wind and bordered by smooth heavy stones.
    "I have never been this close to the sea," Ellen said.
    "Of course you have. You've been to the harbor in Copenhagen a million times."
    Ellen laughed. "I mean the
real
sea, the way it is here. Open like this—a whole world of water."
    Annemarie shook her head in amazement. To live in Denmark, a country surrounded by water, and never to have stood at its edge?
    "Your parents are really city people, aren't they?"
    Ellen nodded. "My mother is afraid of the ocean," she said, laughing. "She says it is too big for her. And too cold!"
    The girls sat on a rock and took off their shoes and socks. They tiptoed across the damp stones and let the water touch their feet. It
was
cold. They giggled and stepped