"Elizabeth Lynn - The Silver Horse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lynn Elizabeth A)

There was one thing in the room the horse couldn't make shabby.
Crossing to her bed, Susannah reached beneath it and pulled out her new paint
box. She had saved her allowance money all year and had bought it for herself.
Her parents had bought her a real sable brush to go with it. It had forty
colors in it. There had only been twelve colors in her old paint box.
Hugging the paint box, Susannah walked to the horse. I bet I could draw
you, she told it. Horses were hard to draw. The difficult part would be the
head, with all the delicate detail of lips and eyes and ears. It would be
hard, too, to show the way the muscles ran on the graceful arching neck. The
musculature, Susannah repeated to herself. She had just learned the word. The
horse had very clear musculature.
Niall wandered into the room. "What are you doing?" he whined. Without
waiting for her answer, he shouted, "Ma, Susannah's bothering my horse!"
"I'm not bothering your old horse," Susannah said. "How could I bother
him, he's just wood!" Shoving the new paint box under the bed, she jammed her
fists into her pockets and went into the hallway. She had made a secret vow
that she wouldn't fight with Niall, no matter how snotty he was, for a week
after his birthday, and she knew if she stayed in the bedroom she would break
her promise.
Had she been that snotty when she was six years old?
She doubted it. But when she was six, Niall was one year old. He was
kind of cute then. And they hadn't had to share a room; he had slept in her
parents' room, in a crib. One thing you could say about school; in school they
didn't have to be together the whole day as they were now. Almost Susannah
regretted that there was no school.
But she didn't want to be in school. She just wanted _Niall_ to be in
school.
The door at the end of the hallway was open a little. "Mother?" she
said.
"I'm here," said her mother's voice from the other side of the door.
Susannah pulled the door further open and stuck her head around it. Her mother
turned around. "Hey," she said. "Come outside."
Susannah slid through the opening. Her mother was sitting on the top
landing with her feet on the steps. Carefully, because the steps were
splintery and because she was barefoot, Susannah climbed down two steps, sat,
and leaned against her mother's legs.
Her mother's name was Bonnie. She was tall, with golden hair that she
wore in braids or piled on top of her head. She liked to cook and she liked to
dance. But she hadn't gone out dancing in a long time, because she was going
to have a baby. She had been going to have a baby since Christmas. Susannah
had heard her say once to Celie that she liked having babies, she liked the
feel of being pregnant. Celie, who had been pregnant at the time, said, "I
don't!" Susannah didn't think she would like it much, walking around all
puffed out in front and not wearing blue jeans.
But she wondered what it felt like, being pregnant.
Her mother skipped her fingers over the top of Susannah's head. "Hey,
Susie-pooh. How you doing?"
"Okay," Susannah said. She rested her chin on her arms. "Mother?"
"Hmm?"
"When will the baby come out?" She had been told. But it was hard for