The Four-Story Mistake Read Online Free

she could hear it, and there were drops on the window. A light came and went, came and went, among the tossing branches: from Willy Sloper’s room above the stable, perhaps. Maybe it was going to be nice living in the country after all. Delightful facts and probabilities floated in confusion through her mind: in bad storms the lights went out; there were woods to explore; her room had a window seat, a real window seat, where she could curl up and read, just like a girl in a bookplate. And there was a stable; maybe they could find something alive to keep in it; maybe there were hickory nut trees, she thought she smelled them; maybe there was a brook, she thought she heard one. And on top of the house there was a cupola, a tiny turret with four long windows looking east and north and west and south. Tomorrow she would explore it all for the first time. “The first time, the first time,” was the refrain that sang through Randy’s thoughts tonight instead of “the last time, the last time,” as it had been this afternoon.
    Wind and rain lapped the house in a deep ocean of sound and movement. Glass rattled in the windows, and someplace faraway something banged from time to time: a shutter probably. Cuffy, hollow-cheeked without her teeth, tiptoed from room to room adjusting windows and pulling blankets up under chins. At last every light was out, every room was still. The house was full of sleep.
    It was beginning to be home.

CHAPTER II
    A View Apiece
    Rush woke up early the next morning. The bluejays woke him up. He, who could sleep through the metallic thundering of ash cans and the honking of taxis, was startled out of sleep by the jeering mew of the bluejays in the Norway spruce outside his window.
    The room was strange in the daylight. There was a carved marble mantel over the fireplace with a cherub’s head in the middle that looked like Henry the Eighth as a baby. But on top of the mantel were some of his books, his clock, the socks he had taken off last night, and the World’s Fair savings bank with nothing in it but two aspirins, which he had dropped in there once when he was sick and was supposed to take them and didn’t. And there was the little brown photograph of his mother. The sight of these possessions made him feel at home, and so did Isaac at the foot of the bed.
    Rush got up and Isaac hopped down, and they both went over to the window to look out.
    At first they couldn’t see anything but the tangled needles of the Norway spruce beside the window. The rain had stopped hours ago, but now a heavy mist rose up from the earth and obscured the valley. After a while, as Rush watched, a tree swam into view, looking pale and ghostly; then another and another. The mist was lifting, and it was going to be a good day. The air was full of a sound of dripping, and the cries of jays, and another sound: a rushing, pouring one.
    â€œGosh, I believe it’s a brook!” exclaimed Rush. “Why didn’t Father say there was a brook? Come on, Isaac, let’s go see.”
    With more stealth than necessary, Rush peered out into the empty hall, closed the door noiselessly behind him, and tiptoed down the stairs. A warm, hopeful smell of coffee seeped out of the kitchen. That meant that Cuffy was up already.
    â€œPretend it’s the headquarters of a German general,” Rush whispered to Isaac. “His orderly is making coffee. We’ve been concealed in the rafters all night, intercepting code messages. To be discovered means certain death.” Crouched like an Indian, silent as a panther, Rush reached the big front door and opened it. He and Isaac stepped out, free men.
    The air was moist and mild. Veils and plumes of mist drifted by like the finest smoke. Wet drops fell on Rush’s head, and cold wet leaves clung to the soles of his bare feet. He couldn’t stop smelling the air in great, deep, loud sniffs. It was so delicious: it smelled of water, and mud,