The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane [antikvár]

Jix WAS THE KIND of evening the little girl liked best. She stood at the window on this last night of October and looked out on the world shivering on the edge of winter. Cold wind rattled the dead flower stalks in the garden and scraped the maples' naked branches, sending the last of their dry leaves flying like torn black paper into the dark. Suddenly the girl pulled the window curtains and closed out the night. She ran on bare feet to a stone fireplace and with an iron poker prodded the logs till the red coals crackled into a blaze. She held out her hands to the fire s glow and felt it reaching out into the sitting room and kitchen of what had been, until a hundred years ago, a farmhouse. The owner of the house had put a new gas heater against the wall, but the girl loved the warmth of a fire and the sharp smoke-smell of burning maple logs. A few more steps took her around a coffee table and a rocking chair to the gleaming metal dials of a stereo. She raised the volume and sound flooded dovm from speakers