Free The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry Page A

certainly."
    "Peggy did."
    Gram smiled. "She ' s a country girl. But I ' m sure she's a great help to your mother."
    "Oh, yes. Peggy works hard. And do you know what? Her sister ' s right next door. Do you remember my friend Austin Bishop, the boy with the pretty little sister named Laura Paisley? Peggy's sister Nell is a hired girl at the Bishops ."
    "Two sisters side by side. Isn't that nice? Does Nell look like Peggy, with that thick brown hair?" Gram leaned forward to the looking glass and patted her own hair to tidy it.
    "Not really. Nellie's hair is bright red, and she's more—" I tried to think of the right word to describe Nell: the overabundance of pink in her cheeks; her wild, flame-colored hair; the extra flounces in her clothing.
    "More glamorous," I said, finally.
    Speaking of Peggy's sister made me think, suddenly, of something uncomfortable I had seen in the Bishops barn. I willed the thought from my mind and took my Gram's hand, to lead her down the hall again, back downstairs to the waiting dinner and the warm comfort of my family.
    Â 
    Austin came over on Saturday afternoon to play, and Peggy gave us cookies. We stood by Gram, watching her with the cards, and she tried to show
us how the game went, but Austin was bored by it and so after a while we went outdoors.
    Austin was in my class at school, but being a boy he played only on the boys side of the playground while I played on the girls , and we never looked at each other during recess. But at home, on Orchard Street, we often played a game we had created together. We called it Tragedy and Disaster, and it took many forms.
    On this early April afternoon, we played the version named San Francisco Earthquake. "Tragedy and disaster!" we called out together, and then shook the porch furniture until the wicker legs of the chairs thumped on the floor. We screamed, "Tremors!" again and again until Mother came to the door and told us to be quieter.
    So we played Shipwreck, instead, sitting quietly in the porch chairs and commenting about the beauty of the sea, then tipping over and drowning silently after a few last words. "Tragedy and disaster!" we gulped. Pepper kept getting up from where he was sleeping by the steps to come sniff our bodies.
    Then, because drowning wasn't very interesting after we had done it twice, we decided to be saved by a lifeboat. There had been a shipwreck off Nantucket a few years before, when a liner named
Larchmont
had collided with another ship. People had been saved by the lifeboats, though the ship
was lost forever, and with it some treasure, or so it was said.
    We found boards in the Bishops barn, dragged them to my front yard, and arranged them just below the porch railing, though we were careful not to smash the budding azaleas, because I knew Mother would be cross if they were ruined.
    We began the game again, seating ourselves very properly in the porch chairs that we had arranged side by side, imagining them to be on the deck of a ship.
    "How do you do," I said to Austin, holding my fingers around an imaginary teacup. "What a lovely day it is."
    "Yes," he replied. "How do you do. My name is Mr. Larchmont."
    I kicked his chair and whispered, "You can't be. That ' s the
boat
' s name."
    He puffed on an imaginary cigar. "They named this ship after me," he explained in a loud voice.
    "Oh," I replied, sipping my tea. "How nice. And isn't it a lovely ocean? Such beautiful water."
    "Yes indeed," he said. "But I believe I can see another ship coming dangerously close."
    "I do hope it doesn't strike us."
    "I ' m sure it won ' t," Austin said. "Would you like to dance, or stroll?"
    "Stroll," I decided. So he took my arm and we
walked slowly across the porch. He puffed some more on his cigar.
    "Here it comes!" I called out. "Collision!"
    "To the lifeboat!" Austin cried, and we scurried to the porch railing.
    "Tragedy and disaster!" we shouted together. We climbed the railing, held hands, and jumped down onto our boards.
    "I