Free Elusive Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman Page A

language.”
    “Route One doesn’t
feel
any better,” Debby said, sitting up and looking around her. “What are these roads built of?”
    Poplars lined the road, and beyond them stretched fields that carried the eye to the mountains on either side, still clouded by morning haze. The valley was green and rolling, punctuated by tidy haystacks at symmetrical intervals, and here and there low-lying walls of intricatelyworked stone. They passed a hay wagon and a farm truck and then no one.
    “Of stone,” said Mrs. Pollifax in reply. “Rather like those farm walls. You can see it here and there where the macadam’s missing–a parquet affect.” Waving a hand toward the mountains on their left, she added, “We cross that range further along, at Shipka Pass, where something like twenty-eight thousand Bulgarians died fighting the Turks.”
    “Twenty-eight
thousand?
” repeated Debby disbelievingly.
    “You’ll find it on the back of the map, translated into French, German and English. It says there’s a monument and a restaurant there. They fought in the dead of winter and when they ran out of ammunition they threw rocks and boulders down the slopes at the Turks. There were eighteen survivors.”
    Debby whistled. “That beats Custer’s last stand. Twenty-eight thousand and they didn’t even
win?
”
    “I don’t think they’re on the winning side very often in Bulgaria,” said Mrs. Pollifax tartly.
    Debby said, “That’s dramatic, you know? I never thought about the places I hiked through this summer.”
    “Rather a waste. What
did
you think about?”
    “Finding other kids. Looking for a piece of the action. That sort of thing.”
    “Do your parents know you just wander about picking up rides and people?”
    Debby emitted a sound like
“Ech.”
    “Do they even know you’re in
Bulgaria?
” she asked in a startled voice.
    This time Debby’s comment sounded like
“Aaaah.”
    Mrs. Pollifax sighed. “Debby, if we’re going to be traveling together I really think you’ll have to enlarge your vocabulary. I’m sure you’d much prefer to be with people your own age, but for a few days we’ll have to accept this situation and lay down some ground rules. Later youcan explain what ‘
aaaah
’ means, but what on earth is ‘
ech
’?”
    Debby looked resentful. “Dr. Kidd doesn’t ask things like that. He’s my psychiatrist and he wants me to be spontaneous.”
    “Well, I’ve nothing against psychiatrists or spontaneity,” retorted Mrs. Pollifax, “but I do think clear communication simplifies life a great deal. Now. What does
ech
mean?”
    Debby laughed. “It sounds so funny when you say it.”
    “It sounds funny when you say it, too. What took you to a psychiatrist, by the way?”
    “I run away a lot,” Debby said vaguely. “And I get attached to too many boys. It upsets my parents. Dr. Kidd says I get devoted to people because
they’re
not. Dr. Kidd says they are, but I don’t believe it. How
can
they be when they never say no and are scared of me?”
    Mrs. Pollifax deftly supplied her own translation. “You mean you haven’t written your parents at all since you left America?”
    “That’s right,” said Debby. “I’m giving them a restful summer.”
    “But don’t they mind not hearing? Don’t they worry?”
    “You know,” she said a little wistfully, “I wish they did sometimes. Just once in a while. They really don’t know what to do with me and they always want me to be
happy
. I’m too old for summer camps now so they said I could go to Europe on my own. Dr. Kidd said maybe I’ll find myself by doing it.”
    Mrs. Pollifax was silent and then she said lightly, dryly, “I see. Rather like a lost-and-found department.”
    But Debby had grown tired of the subject. “I wonder how Phil is today. What’s at this Borovets place we’re going to visit, or are you going to say I’ll find out soon enough?”
    “You would if we were going there,” Mrs. Pollifax told her. “But