The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall Read Free Book Online Page A

power.”
    Jane’s offering that day was the Famous Women in Massachusetts History essay, the one that had gotten her a
C.
Despite what her father had said about Mr. Tolstoy and
War and Peace,
Jane felt that the essay with its big red
C
was a curse, a blight on her life. She had still more essays to write for Miss Bunda—how could she even begin another with this hanging over her? But if anything could lift a curse, the Enchanted Rock could. It had before. Like the time her friend Emily was so sick, and Jane had given the rock a photograph of her, and by the next day she was already getting better.
    Still, sometimes the rock was a bit unpredictable. Just recently, when Jeffrey had visited Cameron on his way to boarding school in Boston, Jane had brought him here. Together they’d drawn a picture of Dexter on a piece of paper and given it to the rock. They’d hoped that the rock could get rid of Dexter’s badness, or better, simply make him disappear. But a week later, Jeffrey was calling from Boston with the news that his mother and Dexter had just gotten married and were about to leave on an extended honeymoon in Europe.
    Jane hadn’t blamed the rock, since she and Jeffrey hadn’t mentioned marriage one way or the other, and they also hadn’t told the rock when Dexter should lose his badness. For all she knew, he could become a better person ten years from now, when it hardly mattered anymore. So she’d decided that she needed to be as specific as possible when asking for a favor.
    “And, please, dear Rock, don’t let me ever get another
C
on anything I write. Thank you. Oh! And, please, no
D
’s or
E
’s, either. Thank you again. Your friend, Jane.”
    Now she was done, but there was still a ceremony to perform, the same one she performed every time she came here alone. She hadn’t even once gotten results, but that was no reason to stop trying. So up to the top of the big rock she climbed, there to sit crosslegged and raise her arms in what she thought was a come-hither-to-me kind of prayerful salutation.
    “O Aslan,” she said, “I await you.”
    She looked this way and that, and when no golden lion from Narnia appeared, raised her arms again. “O Psammead, I await you.”
    Likewise, when no bad-tempered sand-pit creature out of E. Nesbit’s books scurried into view, Jane tried once more. “O Turtle, I await you.”
    She always gave Edward Eager’s wish-granting turtle extra time to arrive—he
was
a turtle—by counting to one hundred. “One–one thousand, two–one thousand, three–one thousand—”
    “Hi, Jane.”
    Her arms dropped and she almost fell over with shock. Was it true, after all, what Mr. Eager had written? But it wasn’t a wish-granting turtle who had spoken but only Tommy Geiger, in his helmet and shoulder pads, and carrying a football.
    “Hail ye, hero of the ten-yard line,” said Jane when she realized she wasn’t so disappointed after all.
    “I’m not. You’ve got to stop saying that stuff.”
    “But you are.”
    “Stop saying it anyway.” He tossed his football straight up, then leapt high to grab it out of the air.
    “Speak some Russian, then.”
    “Odin, dva, tri, chetyre.”
    “The language of tsars, Tommy! What did you say?”
    “I counted to four. Is Rosalind around?”
    “Only me,” said Jane. “That is, I. I mean, only I, Jane, am here.”
    “Because I’m going to do some rough-terrain drills in the woods, and I thought she’d like to do them with me.”
    “I’ll do them with you.”
    “You’re too young. Maybe Rosalind will want to later.” Again he tossed the football straight up, even higher this time.
    “She’s busy later,” said Jane tartly. But she regretted her tone when Tommy missed his catch and the football crashed down on his head, which must have hurt, even with his helmet on. To make up for it, she told him why Rosalind would be busy—which meant explaining about Aunt Claire’s visit and how the blind date with Ms. Muntz was