Michael Malone - Weebly

her friend's death. Polly had refused to come out of her
room, and her father had simply sat all morning in the
kitchen drinking one cup of coffee after another, as if
the pain of having to tell his daughter about Joy had
dried his flesh away and left him dust. Miss Dingley said
she would go at once.
As she waited in her wheelchair by the white frame
fence at the foot of her lawn, she listened to an irascible
cardinal. In the middle of her yard there was a Victorian
birdhouse atop a pole; it was a replica of the ornate
mansion behind it and was the size of a large dollhouse.
The red-tufted cardinal chirped crankily out of a thirdstory
window. "What do you want?" Ramona asked
him. "A television set?" Ignoring his landlady, he flew off
to attach himself like a cluster of dusty berries to the
high shrubs that bordered Mrs. Canopy's white carriage
house.
Next door to Miss Dingley's was Otto Scaper's
house. Sebastian Marco sat there by the white wooden
fence that ringed the doctor's huge old mulberry tree.
The gardener sharpened his shears. "Mourning his
brother, God bless him," sighed Mrs. O'Neal as they