Johnny Tremain Read Online Free PDF

felt cool fingers of air lifting the wet, fair hair on his forehead. The perspiration under his arms, dripping down his chest, evaporated and the prickly sensation was delightful.
    Isannah cried, 'The wind, the wind! Blow, wind, blow!'
    It did not blow, but flowed over them and cooled them. The three sat in a row, their feet dangling over the water below. They sat well apart at first, with arms outstretched, soaking themselves in the freshness of the sea air.
    For a long time they sat and said nothing, then Isannah put her head in Cilla's lap. Cilla leaned against Johnny. The two girls were almost asleep. Johnny was wide awake.
    'Johnny,' murmured Isannah, 'tell us a story?'
    'I don't know any.'
    'Johnny,' said Cilla, 'tell us the story of your middle name?'
    'It isn't a story; it's just a fact.'
    'What is it?'
    Although by daytime and if Cilla had teased him, he never would have told, the darkness of the night, the remoteness of the place where they sat, an affection he felt for the girls and they for him, made everything seem different.
    After a long pause he said, 'It is Lyte.'
    'So you are really John Lyte Tremain?'
    'No. My baptized Bible name is Jonathan. I've always been called Johnny. That's the way my papers were made out to your grandpa. I am Jonathan Lyte Tremain.'
    'Why, that's just like Merchant Lyte?'
    'Just like.'
    'You don't suppose you are related?'
    'I do suppose. But I don't know. Lyte's not a common name. And we are both Jonathan. Of course I've thought about it ... some—When I see him rolling around in his coach, strutting about with his laces and gold-headed canes. But I don't aim
ever
to think too much about it.'
    Isannah was almost asleep. 'Tell more, Johnny,' she murmured.
    'Merchant Lyte is so very rich...'
    'How rich? Like Mr. Hancock?'
    'Not quite. Almost. He's so rich gold and silver are like dust to him.'
    'You mean at Lyte Mansion Mrs. Lyte sweeps up gold and silver in a dustpan?'
    'Mrs. Lyte doesn't sweep, you silly, not with her own fair hands. For one thing, she's dead, and for another, if she weren't she'd just snap her fingers and maids would come running—in frilly starched caps. They'd curtsy and squeak, "Yes, ma'am," "No, ma'am," and "If it please you, ma'am." Then Mrs. Lyte would say, "You dirty sluts, look at that gold dust under the bed! I could write my name in the silver dust on the mirror over that mantel. Fetch your mops and rags, you bow-legged, cross-eyed, chattering monkeys." '
    'Diamonds, too?'
    'To clean up diamonds they need brooms.'
    'Oh, Johnny! Tell more.'
    'Once the rubies spilled and the cook (a monstrous fine woman—I've seen her) thought they were currants. She put them in a fruit cake, and Merchant Lyte broke a front tooth on one.'
    'A fact, Johnny?'
    'Well, it's a fact that Merchant Lyte's got a broken front tooth. I saw it as I stood watching him.'
    Cilla said, 'You watch him much?'
    He answered, a little miserably, 'It's just like I can't help it. I don't mean ever to think of him.'
    Isannah murmured, 'What do they do with their pearls?'
    'They drink their pearls.'
    'What?'
    'Like a queen of Egypt my mother told me of—before she died. She drank her pearls in vinegar—just to show off. That Lavinia Lyte is always showing off too.'
    Isannah was asleep.
    'You never speak of your mother, Johnny. She hadn't been dead more'n a few weeks when you first came here. You never talked about her at all. Was that because you liked her so much—or not at all.'
    There was a long pause. 'Liked her so much,' he said at last. 'We had been living at Townsend, Maine. She got a living for us both by sewing. But when she knew she had to die (she had death inside of her and she knew it), she wanted me taught skilled work, and all I wanted was to be a silversmith. That's why we came to Boston, so's to get me a proper master. She could still sew, but she coughed all the time. Even when she was so weak she could hardly hold a needle, she kept on and on, teaching me