The Hundred Dresses Read Online Free

walk on Sunday afternoons. But now it did not seem beautiful. The brook had shrunk to the merest trickle, and today’s drizzle sharpened the outlines of the rusty tin cans, old shoes, and forlorn remnants of a big black umbrella m the bed of the brook. The two girls hurried on. They hoped to get to the top of the hill before dark. Otherwise they were not certain they could find Wanda’s house. At last, puffing and panting, they rounded the top of the hill. The first house, that old rickety one, belonged to old man Sven-son. Peggy and Maddie hurried past it almost on tiptoe. Somebody said once that old man Svenson had shot a man. Others said ‘’Nonsense! He’s an old good-for-nothing. Wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
    But, false or true, the girls breathed more freely as they rounded the corner. It was too cold and drizzly for old man Svenson to be in his customary chair tilted against the house, chewing and spitting tobacco juice. Even his dog was nowhere in sight and had not barked at the girls from wherever he might be.
    “I think that s where the Petronskis live,” said Mad-die, pointing to a little white house with lots of chicken coops at the side of it. Wisps of old grass stuck up here and there along the pathway like thin wet kittens. The house and its sparse little yard looked shabby but clean. It reminded Maddie of Wanda’s one dress, her faded blue cotton dress, shabby but clean.
    There was not a sign of life about the house except for a yellow cat, half grown, crouching on the one small step close to the front door. It leapt timidly with a small cry half way up a tree when the girls came into the yard. Peggy knocked firmly on the door, but there was no answer. She and Maddie went around to the back yard and knocked there. Still there was no answer.
    “Wanda!” called Peggy. They listened sharply, but only a deep silence pressed against their eardrums. There was no doubt about it. The Petronskis were gone.
    “Maybe they just went away for a little while and haven’t really left with their furniture yet,” suggested Maddie hopefully. Maddie was beginning to wonder how she could bear the hard fact that Wanda had actually gone and that she might never be able to make amends.
    “Well,” said Peggy, “let’s see if the door is open.” They cautiously turned the knob of the front door. It opened easily, for it was a light thing and looked as though it furnished but frail protection against the cold winds that blew up here in the winter time. The little square room that the door opened into was empty. There was absolutely nothing left in ic, and in the corner a closet with its door wide open was empty too. Maddie wondered what it had held before the Petronskis moved out. And she thought of Wanda saying, “Sure, a hundred dresses ... all lined up in the closet.”
    Well, anyway, real and imaginary dresses alike were gone: The Petronskis were gone. And now how could she and Peggy tell Wanda anything? Maybe the teacher knew where she had moved to. Maybe old man Svenson knew. They might knock on his door and ask on the way down. Or the post office might know. If they wrote a letter, Wanda might get it because the post office might forward it. Feeling very downcast and discouraged, the girls closed the door and started for home. Coming down the road, way, way off in the distance, through the drizzle they could see the water of the bay, gray and cold.
    “Do you suppose that was their cat and they forgot her?” asked Peggy. But the cat wasn’t anywhere around now, and as the girls turned the bend they saw her crouching under the dilapidated wooden chair in front of old man Svenson’s house. So perhaps the cat belonged to him. They lost their courage about knocking on his door and asking when the Petronskis had left and anyway, goodness! Here was old man Svenson himself coming up the road. Everything about Svenson was yellow; his house, his cat, his trousers, his drooping mustache and tangled hair, his hound