"Diana Wynne Jones - The Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

trousers for girls.
To add to the strangeness, there were more boys here than girls.
Most of the boys were fair and skinny, like the girls—and the girls
were so pretty and so confident that Hayley sighed again—but two
of the boys stood out by being dark. One was a tall, calm boy who
didn’t seem to shout as much as the others. He was obviously
popular, because the others were always trying to get his attention.
“Troy !” they shouted. “Come and look at my new trick!” or “Troy!
What do you think of this?” Troy always grinned and went
obligingly over to look.
The other dark boy was smaller, and he struck Hayley as a
perfect little beast. He spent his time slyly pulling the beautiful
streaming hair of the girls, or stamping on people’s feet, or trying to
steal things out of the pockets in the baggy trousers. Hayley learnt
his name too, because every minute or so someone screamed,
“Tollie, do that again and you’ll die !”
These people are all my cousins! Hayley thought wonderingly.
And I didn’t know about any of them until this moment!
Here she found that Tollie had come to stand in front of her,
jeeringly, with his hands hanging in exactly the same useless
position that Hayley’s were and his feet planted the same uncertain
six inches apart. “Yuk!” he said. “You dirty outcast!”
“You’re my cousin,” Hayley said. Her voice came out small and
prim with nerves.
“Nim-pim!” Tollie mimicked her. “I am not so your cousin!
Mercer’s my dad, and he’s your cousin. But you’re only a dirty
outcast in a frilly dress.”
Hayley felt things boiling in her that she would rather not know.
She wanted to leap on Tollie and pull pieces off him—ears, nose,
fingers, hair, she scarcely cared which, so long as they came away
with lots of blood —but, luckily, at that moment a large lady bustled
up and enfolded Hayley against her big soft bosom hung with many
hard strings of beads.
“My dear!” the lady said. “Forgive me. I was making the sauce
and you know how it goes all lumpy if you leave it. I’m your aunt
May. Tollie, go away and stop being a pain. You have to forgive
Tollie, my dear. Most of the year he’s the only child here, but this is
the week we have all the family to stay and he feels outnumbered.
Now come and be introduced to everyone.”
Hayley, who had gone limp with relief against Aunt May’s many
necklaces, found herself tensing up again at this. Now they were all
going to despise her.
Although nobody did seem to despise her, the introductions left
Hayley almost as confused as before. The loud, fair cousins were
the children of two different aunts. But, beyond gathering that
some were Laxtons and belonged to Aunt Geta and that the rest
were Tighs, which made them sons and daughters of Aunt Celia,
Hayley had no idea which were which—let alone what all their
names were.
Aunt Geta stood out a bit by being tall and fair, with an