Free The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare Page B

and the Great Meadows stretched before them. Kit caught her breath. She had not expected anything like this. From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own. As far as she could see they stretched on either side, a great level sea of green, broken here and there by a solitary graceful elm. Was it the fields of sugar cane they brought to mind, or the endless reach of the ocean to meet the sky? Or was it simply the sense of freedom and space and light that spoke to her of home?
    If only I could be here alone, without Judith or anyone, she thought with longing. Someday I am going to come back to this place, when there is time just to stand still and look at it. How often she would come back she had no way of foreseeing, nor could she know that never, in the months to come, would the Meadows break the promise they held for her at this moment, a promise of peace and quietness and of comfort for a troubled heart.
    "What are you looking at?" demanded Judith, turning back impatiently. "Father's field is farther on."
    "I was wondering about that little house," said Kit, by way of excuse. "I thought you said no one lived down here." Far over to the right, at the edge of a marshy pond, a wisp of smoke curled gently from a lopsided chimney. Beyond the little shack something moved. Was it a shadow, or a slight stooped figure?
    "Oh—that's the Widow Tupper." Judith's voice was edged with contempt. "Nobody but Hannah Tupper would live there by Blackbird Pond, right at the edge of the swamp, but she likes it. They can't persuade her to leave."
    "What if the river floods?"
    "It did, four years ago, and her house was covered right over. No one knows where she hid, but when the water went down, there she was again. She cleaned out the mud and went right on as though nothing had happened. She's been there as long as I can remember."
    "All alone?"
    "With her cats. There's always a cat or so around. People say she's a witch."
    "Do you believe in witches, Judith?"
    "Maybe not," said Judith doubtfully. "All the same, it gives me a creepy feeling to look at her. She's queer, that's certain, and she never comes to Meeting. I'd just rather not get any closer."
    Kit looked back at the gray figure bent over a kettle, stirring something with a long stick. Her spine prickled. It might be only soap, of course. She'd stirred a kettle herself just yesterday; goodness knows her arms still ached from it. But that lonely figure in the ragged flapping shawl—it was easy enough to imagine any sort of mysterious brew in that pot! She quickened her step to catch up with Judith.
    The long rows of onions looked endless, their sharp green shoots already half hidden by encroaching weeds. Judith plumped matter-of-factly to her knees and began to pull vigorously. Kit could never get over her amazement at her cousin. Judith, so proud and uppity, so vain of the curls that fell just so on her shoulder, so finicky about the snowy linen collar that was the only vanity allowed her, kneeling in the dirt doing work that a high-class slave in Barbados would rebel at. What a strange country this was!
    "Well, what are you standing there for?" Judith demanded. "Father says we have to do three rows before we can go home for dinner." Kit lowered herself gingerly and gathered a halfhearted handful. At the second tug an onion shoot came too, and glancing to see if Judith had noticed, she guiltily thrust the tiny root back into the earth and patted it firm. Bother the things, she would have to keep her mind on them! All at once tears of self-pity brimmed her eyes. What was she doing here anyway, Sir Francis Tyler's granddaughter, squatting in an onion patch?
    She jerked at the weeds. If she should marry William Ashby, would he expect her to weed his vegetables for him? Her hands stopped moving at all while she considered this. No, she was quite certain he never would. Did it seem likely that his mother, who sat so elegantly in