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

table and noticed that Cousin Mercer, sitting behind the remains of
the turkey, was the only grown-up man there. All the family? she
thought. Shouldn’t there be some uncles? But she was afraid it
might be rude to ask.
The turkey was followed by treacle pudding that Hayley was far
too full to eat. While everyone else was devouring it down to the
last few sticky golden crumbs, the rain got worse. Hayley could
hear it battering on the windows and racing through pipes outside
the walls. The Laxton cousins were very put out by it. It seemed
that there was some game that they always played when they were
at the Castle and they had wanted to start playing it that very
evening.
“We couldn’t have played tonight anyway,” Troy said in his calm
way. “It’s too dark to see, even if it wasn’t raining.”
Then the Tigh cousins wanted to know if they could play the
game indoors instead. The Laxtons thought this was a splendid
notion, and said so at the tops of their voices. “We could use the big
drawing room for it, couldn’t we?” they demanded of Harmony, who
seemed to be in charge of the game.
“No way,” Harmony said. “It has to be done out of doors. We’ll do
it tomorrow, when the grass in the paddock has dried.”
This raised such a shout of disappointment that Harmony said,
“We can do hide-and-seek indoors, if you like.”
There were cheers. Aunt Geta murmured, “Bless you, Harmony.
Keep them organised till bedtime if you can and we’ll let you off
clearing the dishes.”
So while the aunts cleared away the stacks of plates, everyone
except Hayley rushed away into other parts of the house. Aunt May
picked up Hayley’s suitcase and showed her up a flight of stairs into
a small white bedroom with a fluffy bedspread which Hayley much
admired. There Aunt May drew the curtains—which flapped and
billowed in the gusts of rainy wind outside—and then helped
Hayley unpack the suitcase.
“Are these all the clothes you’ve got, my dear?” Aunt May asked,
shaking out the other two floral dresses. “These are not very
practical—or very warm.”
Hayley felt hugely ashamed. “Grandma said Aunt Ellie was going
to buy me clothes in Scotland,” she said. “To go to school in.”
“Hm,” said Aunt May. “I’ll have a look and see if I can dig you out
something to wear while you’re here.” She carefully spread Hayley’s
pink-and-white pajamas out over the white bed. “Hm,” she said
again. “Hayley, if you don’t mind my asking, just what did you do
to make your grandmother so angry?”
Hayley knew she would never be able to explain, when she
hardly knew what had happened herself. Aunt May would surely
not understand about Flute and Fiddle. Besides, Grandma had
never seen either of them. She had only seen the boy with the dogs,
but why that had made her so very angry Hayley had no idea. All
she could manage to say was, “Grandma said I was romancing at
first. Then she said I was bringing the strands here and destroying