An Acceptable Time Read Online Free

been forced to take even stranger things seriously.” Mrs. Murry headed for the door. “I’m off to get the casserole and finish it in the kitchen.”
    Polly shivered. “It’s freezing in the lab. Grand was showing me how to use a gas chromatography this morning but icicles trickled off the end of my nose and she sent me in. Uncle Sandy calls me a swamp blossom.”
    Dr. Louise smiled. “Your grandmother’s machinery is all for show. Her real work is up in her head.”
    “I couldn’t get along without the Bunsen burner. Why don’t you go for a swim, Polly? You know the pool’s the warmest place in the house.”
    It was Polly’s regular swimming time. She agreed readily. She loved to swim in the dark, by the light of the stars and a young moon. Swimming time, thinking time.
    “See you in a bit.” She stood up, shaking a reluctant Hadron out of her lap.
     
    Up the back stairs. The first day, when her grandparents had taken her upstairs, she had not been sure where they were going to put her. Her mother’s favorite place was the attic, with a big brass bed under the eaves, where her parents slept on their infrequent visits. On the second floor was her grandparents’ room, with a grand four-poster bed. Across the hall was Sandy and Dennys, her uncles’ room, with their old bunk beds, because on the rare occasions when the larger family was able to get together, all beds were needed. There was a room which might have been another bedroom but which was her grandfather’s study, with bookshelves and a scarred rolltop desk, and a pull-out couch for overflow. Then there was her uncle Charles Wallace’s room—her mother’s youngest brother.
    Polly had had a rather blank feeling that there was no room in her grandparents’ house that was hers. Despite the fact that she had six brothers and sisters, she was used to having her own room with her own things. Each of the O’Keefe children did, though the rooms were little bigger than cubicles, for their parents believed that particularly in a large family a certain amount of personal space was essential.
    As they climbed the stairs her grandmother said, “We’ve spruced up Charles Wallace’s room. It isn’t big, but I think you might like it.”
    Charles Wallace’s room had been more than spruced up. It looked to Polly as though her grandparents had known she was coming, though the decision had been made abruptly only three days before she was put on the plane. When action was necessary, her parents did not procrastinate.
    But the room, as she stepped over the threshold, seemed to invite her in. There was a wide window which looked onto the vegetable garden, then on past a big mowed field to the woods, and then the softly hunched shoulders of the mountains. It was a peaceful view, not spectacular, but gentle to live with, and wide and deep enough to give perspective. The other window looked east, across the apple orchard to more woods. The wallpaper was old-fashioned, soft blue with a sprinkling of daisies almost like stars, with an occasional bright butterfly, and the window curtains matched, though there were more butterflies than in the wallpaper.
    Under the window of the east wall were bookshelves filled with books, and a rocking chair. The books were an eclectic collection, several volumes of myths and fairy tales, some Greek and Roman history, an assortment of novels, from Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones to Matthew Maddox’s The Horn of Joy , and on up to contemporary novels. Polly pulled out a book on constellations, with lines drawn between the stars to show the signs of the zodiac. Someone had to have a vivid imagination, she thought, to see a Great and Little Bear, or Sagittarius with his bow and arrow. There was going to be plenty to read, and she was grateful for that.
    The floor was made of wide cherrywood boards, and there were small hooked rugs on either side of the big white-pine bed, which had a patchwork quilt in blues and yellows. What Polly liked