A Matter of Class Read Online Free PDF

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    He was grinning.
    â€œGood enough,” he said. “But I bet you can’t get down again.”
    She felt the sudden conviction that he was perfectly right.
    She laughed and swung her legs. Her dress must have ridden partway up them when she was moving along the branch. She could feel cool air blow against them.
    â€œYou have pluck,” he conceded. “I’ll give you that.”
    Which was the first grudging approval he had offered her.
    Perhaps she liked him just a little bit after all.
    â€œJumping is the quickest way down,” he called.

    The very thought of jumping made her stomach muscles clench convulsively.
    She laughed and swung her legs again.
    â€œThen Nurse would find out I had been here, and she would tell Mama and Papa, and I would never be able to come again,” she said. “I would never see you again.”
    â€œNow wouldn’t that be a pity?” he said, but when she risked another look down, she could see that he was grinning, not sneering. And he was coming toward the tree and shinning up it, all nimble arms and legs and bare feet.
    He stopped at the branch below hers and walked along it, as he had done before, until he was directly below. He tilted back his head and grinned at her yet again.
    â€œWe could jump together,” he suggested.
    Annabelle was feeling a most inconvenient and almost irresistible urge to use the commode.
    â€œYou do not care if I am never allowed to come here to see you again, do you?” she said severely. “Because I am a girl . And because I am five . And because I am the Ashton chit. I am Annabelle.”
    He reached up his skinny right hand.

    â€œReggie,” he said. “And you’re plucky for a girl, Anna, and one who is little more than a baby at that. Let me help you down.”
    It was rash to refuse such an offer. But she had been stung by the accusation of being little more than a baby, though he had not said it with his customary scorn. Besides, she did not know how she would release her tight hold of her branch in order to take his offered hand.
    â€œI do not need help, thank you all the same,” she said.
    He grinned yet again, shrugged, turned, and jumped.
    Annabelle felt a veritable shower of cold drops on her legs this time. She also felt that she would surely disgrace herself if she did not get to a commode right now or even sooner. But she would die if she did disgrace herself. She would never again be able to steal even the merest glance at him in church.
    The boy—Reggie—stretched out on the bank to dry, his hands clasped behind his head, and quite deliberately ignored her.
    Annabelle did not afterward know how long it took her to inch her way back along the branch and down the trunk. But it was long enough to make her feel panic lest Nurse be awake and aware that she was not in any
of the many places in or close to the house where she might legitimately be.
    That panic, in addition to the dreadful fear of falling or disgracing herself in other ways, was not a comfortable feeling, and long before her feet were on blessedly firm ground again Annabelle was silently promising an unidentified being that if she could only get safely home, she would never, never leave it unchaperoned again.
    Reggie was leaning nonchalantly against the trunk as she set first one foot and then the other on the ground.
    â€œI’ll tell you a secret,” he said, “if you promise not to tell anyone else.”
    â€œCross my heart,” she said, doing just that with one forefinger.
    â€œI always dive out of the tree,” he said, “because I am afraid to climb down.”
    â€œNo!” she said, thrilled.
    â€œNo, not really,” he said, shrugging.
    â€œOh, yes, you are,” she said. “And I was afraid too. My legs are still shaking.”
    She liked his grin. It was a little bit lopsided. His teeth were large and strong-looking, and the front two were ever so slightly