"Diana Wynne Jones - Witch Week" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

Chapter Two
The next day was the day Miss Hodge tried to find out who had written the note. It was also the
worst day either Nan Pilgrim or Charles Morgan had ever spent at Larwood House. It did not begin too
badly for Charles, but Nan was late for breakfast.
She had broken her shoelace. She was told off by Mr. Towers for being late, and then by a monitor.
By this time, the only table with a place was one where all the others were boys. Nan slid into the place,
horribly embarrassed. They had eaten all the toast already, except one slice. Simon Silverson took that slice
as Nan arrived. "Bad luck, fatso." From further down the table, Nan saw Charles Morgan looking at her. It
was meant to be a look of sympathy, but, like all Charles's looks, it came out like a blank double-barreled
glare. Nan pretended not to see it and did her best to eat wet, pale scrambled egg on its own.
At lessons, she discovered that Theresa and her friends had started a new craze. That was a bad
sign. They were always more than usually pleased with themselves at the start of a craze-even though this
one had probably started so that they need not think of witches or birds. The craze was white knitting, white
and clean and fluffy, which you kept wrapped in a towel so that it would stay clean. The classroom filled
with mutters of, "Two purl, one plain, twist two . . ."
But the day really got into its evil stride in the middle of the morning, during PE. Larwood House had
that every day, like the journals. 6B joined with 6C and 6D, and the boys went running in the field, while the
girls went together to the gym. The climbing ropes were let down there.
Theresa and Estelle and the rest gave glad cries and went shinnying up the ropes with easy swinging
pulls. Nan tried to lurk out of sight against the wall bars. Her heart fell with a flop into her gym shoes. This
was worse even than the vaulting horse. Nan simply could not climb ropes. She had been born without the
proper muscles or something.
And, since it was that kind of day, Miss Phillips spotted Nan almost at once. "Nan, you haven't had a
turn yet. Theresa, Delia, Estelle, come on down and let Nan have her turn on the ropes." Theresa and the
rest came down readily. They knew they were about to see some fun.
Nan saw their faces and ground her teeth. This time, she vowed, she would do it. She would climb
right up to the ceiling and wipe that grin off Theresa's face. Nevertheless, the distance to the ropes seemed
several hundred shiny yards. Nan's legs, in the floppy divided skirts they wore for gym, had gone mauve
and wide, and her arms felt like weak pink puddings. When she reached the rope, the knot on the end of it
seemed to hang rather higher than her head. And she was supposed to stand on that knot somehow.
She gripped the rope in her fat, weak hands and jumped. All that happened was that the knot hit her
heavily in the chest and her feet dropped sharply to the floor again. A murmur of amusement began among
Theresa and her friends. Nan could hardly believe it. This was ridiculous- worse than usual! She could not
even get off the floor now. She took a new grip on the rope and jumped again. And again. And again. And
she leaped and leaped, bounding like a floppy kangaroo, and still the knot kept hitting her in the chest and
her feet kept hitting the floor. The murmurs of the rest grew into giggles and then to outright laughter. Until
at last, when Nan was almost ready to give up, her feet somehow found the knot, groped, gripped, and hung
on. And there she clung, upside down like a sloth, breathless and sweating, from arms which did not seem
to work anymore. This was terrible. And she still had to climb up the rope. She wondered whether to fall
off on her back and die.
Miss Phillips was beside her. "Come on, Nan. Stand up on the knot."
Somehow, feeling it was superhuman of her, Nan man-aged to lever herself upright. She stood there,
wobbling gently round in little circles, while Miss Phillips, her face level with Nan's trembling knees, kindly
and patiently explained for the hundredth time exactly how to climb a rope.
Nan clenched her teeth. She would do it. Everyone else did. It must be possible. She shut her eyes to
shut out the other girls' grinning faces and did as Miss Phillips told her. She took a strong and careful grip on
the rope above her head. Carefully, she put the rope between the top of one foot and the bottom of the
other. She kept her eyes shut. Firmly, she pulled with her arms. Crisply, she pulled her feet up behind.