Dotty’s Suitcase Read Online Free PDF Page B

saw the hole in the sole. She put her finger through the hole, wiggling it and admiring the look of her fingernails since she’d given up biting them.
    â€œWhy don’t you buy a new pair?” she asked.
    He put out his hand and she gave him back his shoe. “Haven’t had time,” he said. “There,” and he fitted the piece of newspaper he’d been folding over and over until it was nice and thick, into the hole, covering it completely so it might never have been. If she hadn’t seen it.
    â€œThat ought to hold me for a while. When you’re finished in the bathroom, Dotty,” her father said, “wake the girls if they’re not up, will you?” He smiled at her, and in the new light of morning he looked, for a minute, quite young, almost the way he did in the picture on his bureau taken with Dotty’s mother on their wedding day.
    There was nothing Dotty liked better than waking her sisters. Especially Mary Beth. More than anything else in the world, Mary Beth hated to wake up. She scrooched down under the covers, moaning, “Five more minutes. Only five. That’s all I ask.” Every day it was the same. When Mary Beth married her millionaire, she said she’d sleep as late as she liked, seven days a week. Laura, on the other hand, snapped open her eyes and sat up in bed, her hair as neat as if she’d slept sitting up. Laura was ready to spring from bed to attack the day.
    â€œRise and shine!” Dotty shouted.
    Laura raised her head. “I wish you wouldn’t say the same thing every morning,” she said. “I can’t bear it.”
    Dotty retreated, but not far. “Rise and shine!” she shouted again. Mary Beth started her moaning and Laura threw a heavy object, which just missed Dotty’s ear. Probably a math book. That’s what they usually threw. They never hit her, Dotty thought with satisfaction, but it was kind of tough on the book.
    Jud’s face was pushing against the glass in the door when Dotty got downstairs. Her father was drinking tea and eating a piece of toast and staring into space, not noticing Jud.
    â€œWait outside!” Dotty opened the door a crack and hissed. “We haven’t even started breakfast yet.” Jud came in anyway. He sat down opposite Mr. Fickett and stared at the toast, running his tongue over his lips.
    â€œYou hear about the bank robbery?” he finally said.
    â€œWhat?” Mr. Fickett pulled his thoughts back from where they’d been. “Oh, yes. Yes. Terrible. I hope they catch them today.”
    The girls came clattering down. Their father put on his hat and absentmindedly kissed his daughters, one, two, three. He almost kissed Jud, too, but Jud ducked just in time. This set Laura and Mary Beth to giggling so hard they bent over, clutching their stomachs. “Oh, oh, I’m going to be sick!” Laura cried.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” Jud said, frowning. There was one piece of toast left on the plate, decorated with a smidgen of Aunt Martha’s peach jam, which had taken many a prize at the state fair. He let his fingers wander toward the plate. No one was looking at him.
    He almost had it. “No!” Dotty’s hand came crashing down. “You’re supposed to eat breakfast in your own house.”
    â€œI wasn’t doing anything.” Jud’s face assumed a look of innocence. “My brother says he would’ve let those robbers have it if he’d been in that bank,” Jud boasted, changing the subject. “He woulda crashed their heads against the wall, he said, and knocked ’em out.”
    â€œYou want an apple or an orange?” Laura asked Dotty. It was Laura’s week to make the lunches.
    â€œBoth.”
    â€œOne or the other.” She threw a spotted apple into Dotty’s bag, along with a scalloped-edged cookie that looked as if somebody had gotten to it first. “Don’t forget to