The Boggart Read Online Free Page B

office on Avenue Road. He wants us to find him a bookcase to match the desk.”
    â€œHe’s a creep,” said Jessup.
    â€œI think you’re getting too old for that double-child act,” his mother said ominously. “It’s not cute anymore.” Then she grinned at them. “Anyway look at this — Dr. Stigmore left his newspaper on the floor, and look at the ad I found staring up at me!”
    She spread the paper on the steps, folded to show a half-page advertisement for an airline. It was full of large black type and exclamation marks. FLY YOUR KIDS TO BRITAIN! it said. And then in smaller print: ONE PARENT, ONE CHILD FOR ONE ADULT FARE!
    â€œAutumn Special. Bargain flights to London, if you go before November.” Maggie said. “How about it, Robert? Take ten days off before the season swallows you up? Solve the castle problem? Show the children their ethnic background?”
    Emily and Jessup stared at her, wide-eyed. Emily said, “You mean you’d take us?”
    â€œWell, well,” said Robert. “See how useful a creep can be?”

THREE
    Â Â Â Â Â  I T WAS ONLY as the big plane rose into the air that Jessup really believed what was happening to him. He felt his body tilted upward, pressed back against the seat by acceleration; he felt a pain in his ears as air hissed into the cabin to balance the thinner outside atmosphere into which they were climbing.
    â€œSwallow,” said his father in his ear, and Jessup swallowed and the pain went away. Outside the window he saw the shoreline of Lake Ontario tilting crazily as the plane banked away from Toronto. He peeked back through the gap between his seat and the window, and caught a glimpse of Emily’s face pressed intent against the glass. “Pssst!” he said softly, joyously. “We’re going to Scotland!”
    â€œPssst yourself,” said Emily calmly. “Of course we are.”
    But later, hours later, forty thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean, she changed places with Robert so that children and grown-ups could each sit with their own kind, and she gazed past Jessup out of the window and whispered, “Look! They’re like mountains!” And Jessup too looked at the limitless world of mounded cloud tops below them, glimmering in the last light from the sunset they had left behind, and he knew she was as deeply excited as he was himself. He poked her in the ribs with his elbow, and they grinned at each other.
    The half-buried feeling of wonder lasted for a long time, through the airline dinners of which they ate every scrap of their own, and their parents’ desserts as well; through a film which they had seen before but laughed at all over again; through sleep broken by an airline hostess offering them orange juice and breakfast far sooner than they wanted them. But they ate and drank just the same, and soon found themselves looking down at a dim-lit layer of cloud dappling the misty green floor that was morning Britain.
    Mist was their main impression for quite a while after that. They had dropped into a grey, damp world. A fine rain was falling on Heathrow Airport, where they waited sleepily in line with hundreds of other Canadians and Americans to show their passports at the immigration desk. At length they were beckoned forward as a family group, by an immigration officer with bright red hair and freckles. Jessup felt restive. We’re not just tourists , he thought, we’re different! He stood on tiptoe, straining to see over the desk, as the officer surveyed them all.
    â€œWhat’s the purpose of your visit — business or pleasure?” said the officer, to Robert.
    â€œPleasure, I hope,” said Robert.
    â€œWe’re going to take over our castle in Scotland,” Jessup said proudly. Emily kicked him, and he kicked back at her without looking, and missed.
    The immigration officer looked down at him gravely. “Are you now? Well,