Enter Three Witches Read Online Free PDF Page B

not so popular as they used to be. Unfortunately, though, Mr. Chu has run out, and I don’t want to go to another dealer. What do you think?”
    “What do I think? You’re asking
me
where to find frogs?” Bren gave the astrolabe a push and watched it rotate slowly on its long chain in the center of the room. “There might be some in Central Park,” he said, “but you’d never catch them, and the rangers wouldn’t approve. The only other place I can think of is…Oh, no. I must be crazy. What a dumb idea.”
    “The biology lab!” Miranda cried.
    “Stop that!” Bren said. “What are you doing, reading my mind?”
    “Not at all. It’s perfectly logical.”
    “It’s perfectly insane. Put it right out of your mind,” Bren said, with the doomed feeling he had whenever he saw that his mother had made up her mind to something he didn’t want to do. “I don’t take biology this year. The biology teacher’s new and I’ve heard
very
strict about her supplies, pathologically fussy, in fact.”
    “I hear you, Bren,” Miranda said. “I’m not feeble-minded. You just don’t want to snitch even one little frog—one little frog that wouldn’t be missed. You want me to go all the way downtown and spend a ghastly day trying to get another suspicious Chinese to trust me enough to take my money.”
    “I’ll get the name of the biology supply place,” Bren said. “I’ll even write the letter.”
    “That shouldn’t take more than a month,” Miranda said. “Meanwhile Mrs. Goodrich will certainly find another witch.”
    Bren laughed and clutched at his head. “You’re impossible,” he cried. “All right, I’ll look. Okay? Just look in the bio lab. No promises, understand?”
    “Of course,” his mother said. “I wouldn’t want you to promise and then do something that might get you in trouble. Just scout around. ‘Case the joint,’ I think is the phrase.”
    “That’s the phrase,” Bren said. “Burglars use it.”
    “Well, it’s not like it’s anything valuable. Stop wandering around. Come sit by the window and tell me about your day. You’re late. Did you do something after school?” Miranda tucked her feet up on the window seat and beckoned to her son.
    “Eli took me to look at the switchboard,” Bren explained. “I’m going to help him light
Macbeth
, which will be really cool; but the price I have to pay is doing a lot of electrical work—putting plugs on cables, stripping wires, that sort of thing. I suppose it will come in handy someday.”
    “Almost certainly,” Miranda said. “And then?”
    “What do you mean, ‘and then?’ That’s how I spent the time after school. Oh, all right. There was an interesting girl there. She was dancing, and we fooled around, turning her all different colors. She liked that. She’s going to play the first witch, and I’m going to take her to the dance program at the Delacorte on Saturday. There. Now you know it all.”
    Miranda smiled happily. “Well, it’s a start,” she said. “What kind of dance does she do?”
    “Some sort of ballet, I suppose,” Bren said. “Everything I know about dancing I learned at parties, and that’s not much.”
    “You’d better go to the library and read up on it.”
    “Would that help?” he asked. “I doubt it, and when do I have time to go to the library?”
    “Books are better than nothing,” Miranda said. “Why don’t you ask Madame Lavatky? She has tons of books on the performing arts—mostly opera, I suppose, but surely ballet too. She’d be thrilled to lend you one.”
    Bren groaned. “She’s always thrilled to see me, but the feeling is not mutual. Still, it’s worth a try. Come, Shadow. Come and defend me for just a minute, and then I’ll take you out. Please do something about supper, Mom. I could eat a horse. Or maybe a fat Siamese cat,” he added, as Luna slid from under Miranda’s desk and darted through the door ahead of him.
    “I can’t till your grandmother gets back