The Runaway Summer Read Online Free PDF Page A

be little, but they don’t tell lies.’
    ‘Lying’s worse’n stealing,’ Poll said smugly, finishing her Crunchie and wiping her hands all over her front.
    ‘Look what you’re doing!’ Mary said, hoping to divert the boy’s attention. He was supposed, wasn’t he, to be looking after Poll and Annabel, and stop them getting dirty? But it was no use. He just glanced briefly at Poll and said it couldn’t be helped now. And anyway, chocolate washed out easily, not like tar.
    Then he turned back to Mary. He had blue-green eyes with brown flecks in them, like pebbles. Mary noticed people’s eyes. She had found that she could often tell from them what they were thinking—which was sometimes quite different from what they said.
    But this boy’s eyes baffled her. They were puzzled and, in a funny way, sorry. Mary couldn’t think why he should be sorry for her.
    He said, ‘Were you hungry?’
    This was so unexpected that Mary didn’t reply.
    His face had gone red again. ‘I just thought you might have been.’
    Annabel was clutching at his sleeve. ‘Please Simon, let’s have a Trial. We oughter have a Trial.’
    Poll jumped up and down. ‘Please Simon. I c’n be a Witness and she can be the Prisoner in the Dock.’
    ‘ I want to be a Witness,’ Annabel said. ‘I never been a Witness, not in my whole life. It’s not fair.’
    Mary stared at them.
    Simon said, ‘It’s a thing we do at home sometimes, when someone’s been naughty and won’t own up …’ He looked embarrassed, as anyone might, having to explain a private family custom to a stranger, but there was something else in his expression as well; a kind of shyness, or shame. He turned on the twins and muttered, ‘It isn’t a game. Can’t you see, she’s a poor, hungry girl? I don’t suppose she had any breakfast this morning.’
    Poll said, ‘I ate up my breakfast. I had cornflakes and eggy toast and milk and an apple.’
    ‘Shut up,’ Simon said, very fiercely, and she blinked and put her thumb in her mouth.
    Mary, who had been holding her breath, let it out in a long, rushing sigh. Of course. Before she had come down to the sea she had rolled in the dirt in the shrubbery and rubbed it all over her face and into her hair. Some of the leaves and earth would have blown out in the wind, but she must still look like some kind of tramp or gipsy. Someone terribly poor …
    That was why Simon was sorry for her.
    For a moment, this seemed a terrible insult and she wanted to shout that it wasn’t true; even if she wasn’t rich herself, her father and mother were. Rich enough, anyway, to buy her as many old Crunchie Bars as she wanted.
    But she didn’t say anything. She opened her mouth, looked at Simon, and shut it again. She was afraid, she suddenly realised, not of anything he could do — she could run away from him quite easily, since he was lumbered with Polly-Anna and the shopping basket—but of what he might think.
    That she should mind about this, rather surprised her.Usually she didn’t care a fig what people thought about her, except for a few special people like her grandfather, and a teacher she had once had called Miss Phipps, who had been extra kind when she first went to school. And there was nothing obviously special about Simon.
    She hung her head and watched him through her lashes. He was just a thin, sandy boy, with eyes like speckly pebbles. Very ordinary to look at, and yet she knew—or felt, rather, because since she had just met him it couldn’t be a matter of knowing—that he was a person to be reckoned with. All she really knew was that she would rather he was sorry for her, than he should despise her.
    Poll said, ‘Didn’t you really have any breakfast? Not even cornflakes?’
    Mary shook her head. Her long hair flew across her face and hid it.
    ‘Why didn’t your Mummy give you some?’ Annabel said.
    ‘Or your Dad?’ Poll added. ‘Our Dad gets breakfast Sundays and when our Mum’s in bed having a baby. She