Read The Great Gilly Hopkins Online
Authors: Katherine Paterson
The Great Gilly Hopkins (17 page)
I was humming with goodwill, “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace . . .” My grandmother was not going to get me today. I'd had a right smart haul.
Caroline was shelling peas at the kitchen table. I smiled at my sister benevolently.
“Mercy, Wheeze, you stink like a crab shanty.”
I gritted my teeth, but the smile was still framing them. “Two dollars,” I said to my mother at the stove, “two dollars and forty-five cents.”
She beamed at me and reached over the propane stove for the pickle crock, where we kept the money. “My,” she said, “that was a good morning. By the time you wash up, we'll be ready to eat.”
I liked the way she did that. She never suggested that I was dirty or that I stank. Justâ“By the time you wash upâ” She was a real lady, my mother.
While we were eating, she asked me to go to Kellam's afterward to get some cream and butter. I knew what that meant. It meant that I had made enough money that she could splurge and make she-crab soup for supper. She wasn't an islander, but she could make the best she-crab soup on Rass. My grandmother always complained that no good Methodist would ever put spirits into food. But my mother was undaunted. Our soup always had a spoonful or two of her carefully hoarded sherry ladled into it. My grandmother complained, but she never left any in the bowl.
I was sitting there, basking in the day, thinking how pleased my father would be to come home from crabbing and smell his favorite soup, bathing my sister and grandmother in kindly feelings that neither deserved, when Caroline said, “I haven't got anything to do but practice this summer, so I've decided to write a book about my life. Once you're known,” she explained carefully as though some of us were dim-witted, “once you're famous, information like that is very valuable. If I don't get it down now, I may forget.” She said all this in that voice of hers that made me feel slightly nauseated, the one she used when she came home from spending all Saturday going to the mainland for her music lessons, where she'd been told for the billionth time how gifted she was.
I excused myself from the table. The last thing I needed to hear that day was the story of my sister's life, in which I, her twin, was allowed a very minor role.
KATHERINE PATERSON
has twice won the Newbery Medal, for her young adult novels
Jacob Have I Loved
and
Bridge to Terabithia
, as well as the National Book Award, for both
The Master Puppeteer
and
The Great Gilly Hopkins
. She received the Hans Christian Andersen Award for the body of her work, and was National Ambassador for Young People 's Literature. Mrs. Paterson lives in Vermont. You can visit her online at
www.terabithia.com
.
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The Sign of the Chrysanthemum
Of Nightingales That Weep
The Master Puppeteer
Bridge to Terabithia
The Great Gilly Hopkins
Angels and Other Strangers
Jacob Have I Loved
The Field of the Dogs
The Same Stuff as Stars
Cover art © 2015 by Sophie Blackall
Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons
THE GREAT GILLY HOPKINS
. Copyright © 1978 by Katherine Paterson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN 9780061975172
Version 01082015
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