The Dragon in the Driveway Read Online Free Page B

tight” (even though it was still late afternoon), they tiptoed out of the garage and locked it. They both knew that if she needed them, she would bark very loudly three times and one of them would come running, even if it was the middle of the night.
    Jesse and Daisy wearily trudged through the kitchen and upstairs. They were starved, but eating would have to wait. They went directly to Jesse’s room and turned on the computer. Jesse sat down and logged on to the dragon site. They were both grateful to see that Professor Andersson was in the mood for another visit. With his bushy brows deeply furrowed, he listened as Jesse and Daisy briefed him about St. George’s terrible path of destruction, the earthmover, and the hole leading down to the old mine.
    “Old mines are dangerous places, and he’s got all this heavy machinery and we’re just a couple of kids, and … what are we supposed to do, professor?” Jesse said.
    Daisy bumped Jesse with her hip and whispered, “You’re whining. He hates whining.”
    But the professor didn’t seem to notice. Usually, Jesse and Daisy saw only his face close-up, but now the professor moved away from the screen andleaned back in his chair. For the first time, they could see what he was wearing: an old-fashioned suit, a string tie, and suspenders. “I couldn’t really say,” said the professor, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders, which were striped.
    Jesse and Daisy stared at the screen. Here they were expecting an ominous warning or a stern lecture, or, at the very least, the barest of hints about what to do next.
    “I’m a dragon man myself,” the professor went on. “Ask me about masking, scrying, even spelling, and I’m the man for you. But mines and machines have always rather flummoxed me. They were never my forte.”
    Jesse turned to Daisy and asked, “What’s a
fort
have to do with anything?”
    Daisy shrugged, equally perplexed.
    “Not my area of
expertise
,” the professor explained. “Never cared much for mines, I must say. All those tunnels snaking beneath the earth make me feel claustrophobic. Closed in.” The professor shivered.
    “I feel the exact same way!” said Daisy, and just as she was about to tell him about her own worst encounter with enclosed spaces (getting stuck behind the claw-foot bathtub when she was three years old), the screen fizzled to a blank.
    Jesse glowered at the computer and said, “Doesn’t that man ever say ‘good-bye’ or ‘over-and-out’ or ‘good night and good luck’?”
    Just then, they heard Uncle Joe call them down to dinner.
    Jesse and Daisy took a good look at themselves. They were covered with dried mud!
    “Be there in five!” Daisy shouted, and they raced each other to the sink.
    “I can’t believe it turned into such a glorious day!” Aunt Maggie said, beaming at Jesse and Daisy across the dinner table.
    “Raining one minute, sunny the next,” Jesse said. “It was practically like magic!”
    Daisy kicked him beneath the table. They had agreed upstairs not to tell the grown-ups about what was going on in the Dell. After all, the Dell was their special place. Its problems were their problems, not Daisy’s parents’. “Poppy, tell us about the mines around here,” Daisy said.
    Uncle Joe gave his long graying ponytail an enthusiastic tug. If there was anything he liked more than talking about rocks, it was talking about mines. “The whole area is honeycombed with them. After all, this town was host to a prosperous gold mine operation in the early 1900s.”
    “We know that, Poppy,” said Daisy. “That’s how Goldmine City got its name.”
    “Yep, this whole area was overrun by prospectors burning up with gold fever. It was a boom city, with its own opera house and grand hotel and saloon and you name it, they had it. Then, practically overnight, the town shut down,” he said with a thoughtful expression. “It was a ghost town until the 1970s, when the college came in and things began to look