The Dragonfly Pool

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Authors: Eva Ibbotson
and her fluttering eyelashes, who was too busy being famous to acknowledge her daughter.
    It was a while before she could come back to comfort her friend.
    â€œI expect it’s just as hard for her. She must long to be with you, but I expect it’s her manager who told her she has to be careful.”
    Julia looked at her with gratitude. “Yes—he says it’s only while her contract lasts. Then when she’s saved lots of money she can retire and we can be together.” She looked wistfully at Tally. “There’s another performance at five o’clock. I’m going to stay for it—even if I get into trouble. Will you tell Magda? ”
    Tally sighed. “I’ll stay with you,” she said. “You shouldn’t go home by yourself in the dark.”
    The thought of another two hours of the swan-necked Gloria was appalling. But at least she’d get another look at the brave king of Bergania, not to mention the prince-under-plumes.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Biology at Dawn
    D r. Hamilton was reading the latest letter from his daughter:
    We had our first biology class with Matteo today. Only it wasn’t a class really. It was a sort of walk . . . or an exploration . . . or an expedition. It was like being hunters on a trail and having your eyes sharpened with special drops so that you saw things that you didn’t think you could see and yet they had been there all the time.
    Matteo is tall with broad shoulders and very dark hair and eyes. He looks foreign and he is—he has a slight accent and his voice is very deep. He can look quite scary but he has a very funny laugh. I’m not describing him well because he isn’t really like anybody else I’ve met. And the biology class wasn’t like anything I’d imagined either.
    For one thing it started at four o’clock in the morning. You wouldn’t think a class could start then, would you, but Matteo’s classes start at whatever time he thinks we will see the things he wants to show us.
    So I was woken by him walking down the corridors and opening our bedroom doors and saying, “Out”—and then we were all huddled in the courtyard, trying to wake up.
    But we didn’t stay huddled for long because as we followed him into the copse where the path goes down to the river we were greeted by the most incredible noise! I’d read about the Dawn Chorus, but I thought it was just a gentle twittering. I didn’t realize that while I was asleep all the birds in England were singing their heads off.
    Matteo made us stop to listen but actually he didn’t have to make us—it was so beautiful we couldn’t help listening. He didn’t tell us the names of the birds—it was about listening not identifying. Barney told me later that there were thrushes and robins and warblers and wrens—but I heard them like instruments in an orchestra, each one distinct and separate but joining up to make a marvelous whole.
    Then we went on through the wood and no one said a word. If anyone starts talking when they’re out with Matteo he bites their head off.
    It was getting lighter now, and when we came to a boulder lying on the side of the path, Matteo stopped and said, “Well? What do you expect to find?”
    All the others stood around and Barney said, “Snails’ eggs,” and Tod said, “Centipedes,” and Julia said, “Wood lice,” and Matteo nodded and said, “Anything else?” and when no one said anything he said, “What about the humidity?” and one of the other boys said, “Violet ground beetles,” and Matteo said, “And a sheltering toad perhaps?”
    So then he turned the stone over—and all the things were there, and I know it sounds silly but he made us all so pleased—I suppose because he was so pleased himself. It was as though what was under the stone was a splendid present that God or whoever does these things

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