"Gregort Maguire - Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maguire Gregory)

The blonde girl doesn't object. She leans forward, peering down at Ruth's face almost as if looking in a
mirror. "Thing," says the girl, "oh, thing, get away from bere."

The onlookers watch warily. The girl's mother calls— "Clara!" And there is a flurry of action in the room.
The girl is yanked back, the window slammed, the curtain closed.

Iris turns. Had they hoped to steal anonymously into this new place, they couldn't have done a worse job.
Everyone in the town square is watching.

Margarethe squares her shoulders again and, without saying anything more, leads her daughters through
to the other side of the market square. When they reach the far streets, where shadows have already
thickened the day into an early dusk, Iris brings out the fruit she has snatched from the pavement. The
pears are hard and juiceless. The three travelers munch them down to the pips, and eat the pips as well,

THE OBSCURE CHILD

and throw away the stems after sucking them dry.

The dusk is yielding to dark by the time they find Grandfather's house, in the lee of a city gate. There they
learn that he has died a few years ago, and those who live inside are not family and have no obligation to
take in the hungry strangers.

Stories Told TKrougH Windows

Anight spent huddled in the piss stink of an alehouse alley. Dogs chase them away at dawn. The mother
and daughters brush the mud and straw off their only skirts, and walk toward the marketplace again to
advertise for a position. The mother's voice is calculating: by turns brassy, pious.

Whatever works.

"I am Margarethe, Margarethe of the ten Broek family. My grandfather was Pieter ten Broek, who lived
in the shadow of the Zijlpoort. A good family! I have come back here hoping to stay with them. But now
I learn that he and his wife are dead, and my uncles are also lost though poxes and other whimsies of
God. You don't know my face, but you know my grandfather's; he stood tall in this city. To honor his
name, I ask you to stand by me, because there's no one left to turn to."

THE OBSCURE CHILD

First, Margarethe makes her plea at the half doors of merchant halls. She'll do needlework in exchange
for a clutch of blankets in a shed or byre. She'll do barn labor, just give her food for herself and her
ungainly daughters. She'll mind the ill-tempered young, and she'll wring milk from her breasts if fractious
infants need it. (Her breasts don't look up to the task.)

The merchants lob wilting lettuces at her.

So Margarethe turns to residential streets. Some of the houses are deafened, shutters like wooden muffs
over their window-ears. Margarethe lingers in lanes till maids open up their masters' homes. She chatters
with brave familiarity at the girls who come out to wash the stoops.

"Oh, you don't want to know what hardship we leave behind, in the godforsaken muck of an English