Brave Warrior Read Online Free PDF Page B

said, his impressively voluminous eyebrows waggling.
    “No!” Maisie said.
    “Maybe,” Felix admitted.
    “A peculiar state,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, cutting his
croque-monsieur
in the unusual way he always cut things: Fork in his left hand, knife in his right, he cut and took a bite, cut and took a bite, never putting the knife down.
    “Can’t say that I recommend it,” he continued between bites. “Look what it did to my poor, foolish sister.”
    “Have you ever been in love?” Felix ventured.
    “Of course I’ve been in love,” Great-Uncle Thorne bellowed. “But I didn’t let it get the best of me like that nitwit sister of mine.”
    “Who was she?” Felix asked.
    “My sister? Why, you nincompoop, your great-aunt Maisie!”
    “No, no,” Felix said. “Who were you in love with?”
    Great-Uncle Thorne’s face softened. He put down his fork and knife and stared at some far-offplace that neither Felix nor Maisie could see.
    “Penelope Merriweather,” he said finally.
“Mon amour.”
He shook his head and resumed eating.
    “What happened to her?” Felix dared to ask.
    “Interesting story,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “I assumed she was dead. After all, she’d be ancient by now. But at your great-aunt Maisie’s…” He faltered for an instant, then cleared his throat and continued. “At her funeral, the Merriweathers’ footman handed me a calling card from none other than Penelope herself. Alive and well, after all.”
    “What’s a calling card?” Maisie asked.
    “One more lost piece of civilization, my dear niece,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, shaking his head sadly. “Everyone used to have them. And your footman would bring your calling card to the person with whom you wished to visit, and they would send their reply back.”
    “So Penelope Merriweather wanted to visit you?” Felix asked, tickled at the idea of meeting the woman Great-Uncle Thorne had loved.
    “Indeed,” Great-Uncle Thorne answered.
    The clocks in Elm Medona chimed nine o’clock with their various bells, bongs, and tunes.
    “In fact,” he added with a grin, “she should arrive just about now.”
    Aiofe, the maid, hurried into the Dining Room, looking quite upset. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were wide.
    “Mr. Pickworth,” she began. “There’s…well…she…I mean…”
    “Spit it out, you ninny!”
    “I…”
    But Aiofe didn’t have to say anything more. A strange shuffling sound came from outside the Dining Room. They all stopped eating to listen as it grew slowly, slowly closer.
    Aiofe pointed to the doorway, and everyone turned their gaze there.
    After what seemed like forever, a figure appeared.
    It took Maisie and Felix a moment to realize it was an actual person standing in front of them. Maybe the tiniest person they’d ever seen. It took another moment for them to realize that the person was a woman. A woman with probably the most wrinkly face in the whole world and a cap of oddly blue curls. She wore glasses that seemed to magnify her eyes a billion times, so that they appeared brightblue and enormous in her tiny face. She was like a bird in so many ways, that if she had actually taken flight, Maisie and Felix would not have been surprised.
    By now, Great-Uncle Thorne was on his feet, a look of delight written all over his face.
    The woman kept moving toward them, slower than the slowest living thing moved. Her tiny feet, encased in jeweled slippers, shuffled forward. She wore so many bracelets on her thin wrists that her bony arms seemed to be weighed down by them. She positively clanged as she made her way into the Dining Room. She wore a cardboard-brown wool suit, and the jacket had fat bands of black trim along the edges and in slashes across the front, with big gold buttons in the middle.
    After what felt like forever, the tiny woman was standing in front of Great-Uncle Thorne.
    She tilted her head coquettishly upward.
    “Thorne,” she said in a strange, girl-like voice.
    Great-Uncle