"Shadow On The Hearth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

Gladys Mitchell left the phone, and could not repress a small sigh. In the
dining room Ginny was clamoring for breakfast. Upstairs Jon was loudly demanding
some clean socks. Veda, she reflected, was a good worker and a fine person; but
she did have her ailments, and there was no way out of it.
"Barbie," Gladys called over the noise, "see what Ginny wants, will you?" She
passed the hall mirror and frowned into it; there ought to be some way to turn
the thing off in the morning. She called up to Jon and told him where to find
the socks, then listened to his footsteps as he followed her instructions. Ginny
had stopped yelling, but that was not necessarily good. Gladys walked swiftly
into the dining room and found the five-year-old contentedly stuffing herself
with hot oatmeal.
Barbara came through the swinging door from the kitchen. She set down her own
oatmeal and gave Gladys a cup of steaming coffee. "Everything was ready on the
stove, so I just dished it out." She was defiant about it. At fifteen, she knew
she ought to hate housework.
Touched, Gladys squeezed her daughter's arm and sipped gratefully from the hot
cup. She thought of Veda, alone in the dark little boardinghouse room, and she
looked from her two daughters to Tom's picture on the lowboy—a freckle-faced boy
grinning out of an open-necked khaki shirt, his R.O.T.C. cap pushed back on his
head, the world in his hands. He had sent it home from school two months before,
proud testimonial to his homemade photo enlarger. Her eyes wandered on to the
window and the big maple tree outside. Then Jon came in and dropped a kiss on
the top of her head before he crossed to the other end of the table.
He surveyed the uneven edges of his grapefruit and asked with the first
mouthful, "Veda out again?" He picked up his paper. "Maybe you ought to get
someone else, Glad?"
He hid his smile behind the raised newspaper as three feminine voices answered
immediately and firmly. He knew how they felt about Veda.
"I ought to do the wash," Gladys was thinking out loud, "but there's that
luncheon today . . ."
"Oh, Mother! Isn't the laundry done yet? I've got to have those things for
tonight."
Gladys surveyed her older daughter absently. "What's tonight?"
"The class! I don't see how you can forget it every time. And I gave you the
jackets a week ago . . ."
"You gave them to me Monday night," Gladys pointed out. "We only do laundry once
a week around here, you know."
"I can iron 'em myself when I get back from school," Barbie pleaded, "but
they've got to be starched and everything—they have to be washed this morning,
Mom."
She still calls me "Mom" when she wants something, Gladys noted with amused
satisfaction. "Mother" had come into use some months back as part of Barbara's
campaign to convince the whole family, and primarily herself, that she was now
fully mature.
"Are we taking in wash now?" Jon looked up from his paper.
"Oh, Daddy, I told you all about it. It's the white jackets for the baby
sitters, and I got them at a sale, and they were all dirty. I'd never have got
the kids to use them if they weren't so cheap."
"I don't know which is worse," Jon grumbled contentedly. "First it was Tom