Free The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Page A

was a rather short smile.
    “Gwen,” she said. “I’ve asked you not to sit on your bed.”
    Robin stood up quickly. Gwen said, “I’m not sitting on it. I’m lying on it,” but she got up and sat down in a chair.
    Mrs. McCurdv smoothed the wrinkles out of the white spread and then stooped to look in the mirror of Gwen’s vanity table. She patted her hair and adjusted the big hat. Then she stood up and just looked at Gwen and Robin. “Well,” she said at last, “I don’t believe we’ve met. Gwen, I think an introduction is in order.”
    Gwen sighed and stood up. “Mom, this is Robin Williams. Robin, I’d like you to meet my mom.”
    “How do you do, Robin,” Mrs. McCurdy said. “It’s nice of you to visit us.” Her smile was cool and beautiful. “Gwen,” she said, “would you come with me. I’d like to see you for a moment.”
    Robin stood in the middle of the room, feeling awkward and listening to the sound of voices from just outside the bedroom door. After a while Gwen came back in the room. She grinned and shrugged.
    “I guess I’ll go now.” Robin said.
    “Oh, wait a while,” Gwen said. “I want to talk some more. You don’t have to go right now.” But just at that moment the phone rang. Gwen sat down on the bed again to answer it. “Oh, hi, Bob,” she said. “Nothing much…sure I would…swell, I’ll be right over.”
    Gwen hung up the phone. “That was Bob Walters. He lives in the brick house up the highway toward Santa Luisa. We’re teaching Mirlo to be a jumper. The Walters have a practice ring and some jumps. I guess we can talk some other time. O.K.?”
    Five minutes later Robin was once more on her way down the gravel road toward the Village. She stopped once and looked at the McCurdy’s house. With its smooth curved lines and gleaming glass it looked like a huge hot igloo. Closing her eyes, she pictured cool gray walls under sheltering oaks. Then she turned around and began to run again, limping a little on the leg with the skinned knee.

The Velvet Room

    A LL THROUGH THE LONG HOT AFTERNOON Robin looked for a chance to slip away to the stone house. She found an old broken candle in one of Mama’s kitchen boxes and managed to hide it with a box of matches under the bottom step. It would be handy there in case she had to leave quickly. But then, before she could get away, Mama asked her to take Shirley for a walk under the eucalyptus trees to get her out of the heat of the cabin. Shirley wouldn’t go outdoors alone to play. Not even today when her hair was hanging around her face in soggy little wisps and her skin looked like wet tissue paper. Of all the things Robin didn’t want to do that afternoon, walking with a whiny baby just about topped the list. So she started off fast and silently with her head down, hoping that Shirley would get bored and want to go home. But after a while Shirley took hold of Robin’s hand and smiled a hopeful, worried smile. It really was too late to get to the stone house and back before dinner, anyway. So Robin began making little houses out of eucalyptus bark, and she and Shirley played with them till dinnertime.
    That night Robin decided to go to bed early so morning would come more quickly, but it was hard to get to sleep. It was a bright moonlit night, and it stayed warm much later than usual. Most of the Village kids were up late playing hide-and-go-seek and run-sheep-run. Mama and Dad were sitting out in front of the cabin next door, talking to the neighbors, Jim and Mabel Brown. Robin was alone in the cabin, except for Shirley, who was asleep in the other room.
    After a while she gave up trying to go to sleep and pulled her cot over against the window. Everything was strangely beautiful. The dusty yard with its pile of auto parts looked different. And the rest of the Village, too, seemed less ugly and makeshift. It was as if the whole world had been slip-covered in the strange, soft fabric of moonlight. Robin had never liked