Dinner Along the Amazon Read Online Free Page B

which most of the residents had had the sense to disguise. Thus the houses were mostly of painted brick and refashioned facade—of fronts stripped bare of ornament but still retaining high pointed convergences of line and many had little turrets and false gables.
    All the houses were confronted with wide long lawns and most attempted to hide their Victorian manner behind screens of ivy vines and a profusion of trees and bushes, so that the whole length of the street was a vision of green mottle, relieved with floral colour and the rich red of the brick walks which, like the many courses of a maze, wove in and out of the gardens up and down either side of the street.
    The residents were of varied stamp but all within the category of what is known as the ‘professional’ world. There were doctors, and one of the city’s prominent lawyers; also an ex-mayor, a retired colonel, two university professors, a clergyman, an author, two widows (Mrs Dewey and Mrs Jamieson), also a Mr Robertson whom no one knew anything about except that he was enormously wealthy and drove about in a Rolls Royce car and that he had two boxer dogs of whom everyone stood in distant respect (Mr Robertson never spoke to a soul and no one ever spoke to him); there was also an architect and a witch. The witch was Miss Kennedy.
    She lived in a tall dark house at the end of the street, the one house that had not been stripped of its Victorian vestiges. It stood closer to the street than the rest, its tall facade looming darkly in the unrelenting shadow of the only oak tree on the whole street—a tree reputed to be two hundred years old, which meant, to Harper’s delight, that it had stood there in the days of the Indians. It was also said that in the early days of the city, when there was a stockade built about its periphery, renegades and witches (perhaps Miss Kennedy’s own forebears) were hung from this tree. In that time the burning of witches was forbidden, so that they were hung, as common criminals were, deprived of the dignity of a heretic’s martyrdom, traditionally fire.
    One day in early August Harper went down the street to speak to Miss Kennedy.
    He stood outside her gate, hesitant only for a moment, and then went into the shallow garden, in which nothing would grow because of the thick shadow of the oak tree.
    Miss Kennedy hovered in an upper window, dressed in a dark Victorian wrapper. Harper pulled the chain which rang the doorbell.
    Inside he could hear Miss Kennedy’s Pekinese dog snuffling excitedly at the space between the floor and the bottom of the door.
    There was the sound of steps within and a gentle admonition to the little dog before the door opened to reveal Miss Kennedy—wrapper clutched at the breast, her red hair piled high upon her thin bony head, her eyes snapping, her mouth pursed, her ears dragged down at the lobes by the weight of elaborately long earrings. She smiled.
    Harper was amazed. It had not occurred to him that a witch ever smiled. Leer, she might, but smile, never.
    “Well, Harper Dewey. Is that right? What is it?” she said.
    “I—I’d like to speak with you. I’d like to have—” he turned and looked back at the street, wondering if he should run off now while he could, but before he could remedy the situation, Miss Kennedy spoke.
    “Come inside,” she said, “I’ll fix some lemonade.”
    Harper imagined the contents of the lemonade and blanched.
    “Thank you m’am,” he gulped, and stepped inside, never, he was sure, to return.
    The Pekinese immediately flung itself at his toes.
    “Stop that!” squealed Miss Kennedy. “That’s Harper.”
    The dog wagged its tail and backed away, voicing a high pitched greeting.
    “Hello,” said Harper, nervously.
    “You sit in there, dear, while I fix the lemonade.”
    Miss Kennedy gestured, with a long arm, to a sitting room to the left of the dark hallway.
    Harper went in. It was cool in the sitting room and there was an organ in the corner, with