The Dragonfly Pool Read Online Free PDF

corridor. The girl with bare feet was hanging on to the window bars. She wore a green shirt with a rip in it and a gathered skirt with an uneven hem and looked very confident. Obviously the rip was in exactly the right place, and the hem needed to be uneven.
    The lavatory door was locked, but after she had banged several times it opened and a woebegone face appeared around it. In one plump hand the little boy held a bedraggled tie.
    â€œIt’s no good—I looked but the hole’s too small. No one’s wearing a tie. No one. And there’s a girl without any shoes, and I want to go to a proper school where they have prefects and play cricket,” he wailed.
    And a tear fell from one of his large blue eyes.
    â€œWe could throw your tie out of the window,” suggested Tally. “That would be simpler. Or I’ll keep it for you till you go home.”
    The idea that he might one day go home again cheered Kit up enough to stop him crying, and he followed her out into the corridor.
    â€œWait a minute,” said Tally. “Just let your shirt hang out over your shorts. And take off your socks. I’m going to take mine off, too; they’re a bit clean and white.”
    Back in the compartment they found the teacher with the clipboard. She seemed to have forgotten about Augusta Carrington and looked relaxed and cheerful. Her amazing russet hair tumbled down her back and her amber eyes were flecked with gold.
    â€œOh, there you are. Good,” she said, smiling at Tally and Kit. “Is everything all right? ”
    Tally nodded, and Kit, who had been about to repeat that he wanted to go to a proper school where they played cricket, decided not to.
    â€œWell, if you want anything I’m in the next carriage,” she said. “I’d better go and see how the other new people are getting on.”
    â€œIt’s not fair to make Clemmy take the school train,” said Barney when she had gone. “She hates all those lists and things, and somebody always does get lost. They could get someone boring and bossy like Prosser.”
    â€œWho is she? ” asked Tally.
    â€œShe’s called Clemency Short. She teaches art and she helps out in the kitchens. She’s a marvelous cook.”
    â€œI thought I’d seen her before, but I can’t have done.”
    â€œActually you can,” said Barney. “She’s in the London Gallery as the Goddess of the Foam, coming out of some waves, and on a plinth outside the post office in Frith Street standing on one toe—only that’s a sculpture.”
    â€œAnd on the wall of the Regent Theater as a dancing muse,” said Julia. “She looks a bit cross there because the man who painted the mural was a brute and made the girls stand about in the freezing cold dressed in bits of muslin, and Clemmy got bronchitis. That’s what made her decide to stop being an artist’s model and become a teacher.”

    It was a long journey. The children brought out their sandwiches; they grew drowsy. Julia had stopped turning the pages of her magazine. Tally thought she might be asleep, but when she glanced at her she saw that she was looking intently at one particular picture: a photograph of a woman with carefully arranged curls drooping on to her forehead, a long neck, and slightly parted lips. The caption said: “Gloria Grantley: One of the loveliest stars to grace the firmament of film.”
    â€œIsn’t she beautiful? ” said Julia, and Tally agreed that she was, though she didn’t really care for her. Gloria looked hungry, as though she needed to eat an admiring gentleman each day for breakfast.
    The train stopped briefly at Exeter and Clemmy came past again, checking that everybody was all right.
    â€œBy the way, you’re in Magda’s house,” she told Tally. “And Kit, too. Julia will show you; she’s with Magda, too.”
    â€œOh dear, that’s bad news,” said