Cassie Binegar Read Online Free PDF

way of speaking, “the way your floors tip a bit. And your plants! Are they real?”
    Cassie’s mother smiled at her. “Yes, they are real. All of them.”
    â€œI like that one best of all,” Margaret Mary said, pointing. “The one that looks like a pine tree.”
    â€œThat’s rosemary,” said Gran who had been watching Cassie watch Margaret Mary. “Rosemary for remembrance. It’s an herb.”
    Margaret Mary nodded. “We have lots of herbs in England. I think most of them began as weeds.” She beamed at John Thomas and James, who beamed back. “Maybe that’s why my mum likes plastic plants,” she added thoughtfully. “She hates weeds.”
    Margaret Mary even loved the Jell-O dessert that wasn’t quite Jell-O yet.
    â€œI say,” said Margaret Mary admiringly, “one could almost suck this through a straw, couldn’t one?”
    Cassie sighed heavily. One could all right, she thought, devastated. And she stared at Margaret Mary, happily slurping her runny Jell-O dessert and wiggling her stockinged toes beneath the table.
    Most of all, Margaret Mary loved Cassie’s family and the talk of boats and fishing. And the sea.
    â€œWhat’s it like,” she asked James, “to be out there? Are you the only boat you can see?”
    James, his face touched by the glow of the lamp, his eyes narrowed as if focused on a faraway view, told Margaret Mary.
    â€œSometimes alone, most times one of many. It’s like a giant, or something bigger than all of us, has taken the sky and tucked it down securely all around and kept us safely bobbing within.”
    Cassie, her fork caught midway between her plate and her mouth, stared at James. She’d never heard him talk this way before. Or seen his look of contentment.
    â€œBut there are storms!” she protested as everyone turned to look at her.
    Her father laughed. “That there are, Cass,” he said.
    â€œBut after the storms,” said John Thomas, smiling, “coming home with the gulls and terns following us, some even daring to sit on the boat, waiting for scraps of fish, it is like . . .” John Thomas, not used to long speeches, searched for the right words.
    â€œPeace,” said James quietly. “It is peace.”
    â€œAnd,” said Cassie’s father, as if adding to a chorus, “that’s the way it has been for hundreds and hundreds of years. Just the men, the boats, and the sea.”
    There was a long silence. It had never occurred to Cassie that they loved fishing. She had always thought they did it because they had to.
    â€œIt is somehow always the same and yet never the same,” said Cassie’s father. “But always beautiful.”
    â€œLike a kaleidoscope!” exclaimed Margaret Mary. She turned to Cassie. “Do you have one?” Then, not stopping for Cassie’s answer, she went on. “When I was very little, in England, I had one. I would turn it and turn it and the pieces of glass would fall into patterns, all lovely. But I would want one pattern—one special one—to stay there forever. But the pieces of glass would fall into another shape, then another. And they were never the same.”
    â€œBut always beautiful,” said Cassie’s mother softly.
    â€œI remember,” said Cassie. “I always wanted one to stay the same for always.”
    â€œAnd you still do,” said Gran.
    Cassie stared at Gran. Then she broke the silence. “Fish stink sometimes, you know.”
    She had not meant the harsh flatness of the statement, but everyone knew it, for they laughed.
    â€œEverything stinks sometimes,” announced Margaret Mary. “You ought to smell my mother’s casseroles.”
    They laughed harder, and got up to clear away the dishes, all but Cassie in bare feet or socks.
    Afterward, sitting on the porch, listening to the steady lap and swish of the waves, they