Witch Of Blackbird Pond Quotes

What a pity every child couldn't learn to read under a willow tree...

All the way up the river she's been holding back somehow, waiting. Now you'll both have to wait. I'm not going to disappoint her, Kit. When I take you on board the Witch, it's going to be for keeps.

She snatched at the dream that had comforted her for so long. It was faded and thin, like a letter too often read.

There is no escape if love is not there," Hannah had said. Had Hannah known when she herself had not even suspected? It was not escape that she had dreamed about, it was love.

After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth...The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her...In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.

There is no escape if love is not there

Tis a strange thing, that the only friends I have I found in the same way, lying flat in the meadows, crying as if their hearts would break.

From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own.

Hannah's magic cure for every ill," he teased. "Blueberry cake and a kitten.

People are afraid of things they don’t understand.

How right- how incredibly, utterly right- and how impossible!

There was something irresistible about popcorn.

Who would guess," he teased, "that I'd ever see you on a rooftop with straw in your hair?" Kit giggled. "Are you saying I've turned into a crow?" "Not exactly." His eyes were intensely blue with merriment. "I can still see the green feathers if I look hard enough. But they've done their best to make you into a sparrow, haven't they?

When I take you on board the Witch, it's going to be for keeps.

Have you noticed her name?" Kit leaned sideways to see the letters painted jauntily on the transom. "The WITCH! How did you dare? Does Hannah know?" "Oh, she's not named after Hannah. I hadn't gone ten miles down the river that day before I knew I'd left the real witch behind.

If you ask me, it's all that schooling. It takes the fun out of life, being cooped up like that day after day...Books, now that's different. There's nothing like a book to keep you company of a long voyage.

A man's first loyalty is to the soil he stands on.

She rolled over and stretched, blinking up at the blue sky. The tips of the long grasses swished gently in the breeze. The hot sun pressed down on her so that she felt hot and empty. Slowly, the meadow began to fulfill its promise.

Because they have never tried to get to know her. People are afraid of things they don’t understand.

She saw now that she could not tell him about the books she had loved any more than she could make him see the palm trees swaying under a brilliant blue sky.

CHAPTER 4 A

Hannah’s magic cure for every ill,” Nat had said. “Blueberry cake and a kitten.” Kit smiled to see it working its charm on Prudence. But there was an invisible ingredient that made the cure unfailing. The Bible name for it was love.

The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her. The dried brown leaves crackled beneath her feet and gave off a delicious smoky fragrance. No one had ever told her about autumn in New England. The excitement of it beat in her blood. Every morning she woke with a new confidence and buoyancy she could not explain. In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.

From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own. As

Kir

The girl looked about her. “’ Tis a pretty room,” she said without thinking, and then wondered how that could be, when it was so plain and bare. Perhaps it was only the sunlight on boards that were scrubbed smooth and white, or perhaps it was the feeling of peace that lay across the room as tangibly as the bar of sunshine.

The one small room the house contained was scoured as a seashell. There was a table, a chest, a bedstead with a faded quilt, a spinning wheel, and a small loom. A few ancient kettles hung about the clean-swept hearth. From a square of sunlight on the floor an enormous yellow cat opened one eye to look at them.

If only I could be here alone, without Judith or anyone, she thought with longing. Someday I am going to come back to this place, when there is time just to stand still and look at it. How often she would come back she had no way of foreseeing, nor could she know that never, in the months to come, would the Meadows break the promise they held for her at this moment, a promise of peace and quietness and of comfort for a troubled heart.

There was the Dolphin coming up the river with all her sails. The curving tail of the prow was chipped and dull, the hull was battered and knobby with barnacles, the canvas dark and weathered, yet how beautiful she was! In

The man did not even hear her. His eyes had gone straight to Mercy where she sat by the hearth, and her own eyes stared back, enormous in her white face. Then with a hoarse, wordless sigh, John Holbrook stumbled across the room, and went down on his knees with his head in Mercy’s lap.

Tell them the truth if you like," responded Kit airily, knowing quite well that Judith, for all her disapproval, would never give her away. The common bond of just being young together in that household was strong enough for that.

Tis so beautiful—flowers every day of the year. You can always smell them in the air, even out to sea.

As Kit reached the part about the schoolmaster and his cane, to her amazement a rusty chuckle interrupted her. Hannah’s face had crumpled into a thousand gleeful wrinkles.

There was something strange about this country of America, something that they all seemed to share and understand and she did not.

I can still see the green feathers if I look hard enough. But they've done their best to make you into a sparrow, haven't they?

glancing defiantly from one hostile face to another, Kit found a

restrictive life. What Kit

Outside the house, against a sheltered wall to the south, a single stalk of green thrust upwards, with slender rapierlike leaves and one huge scarlet blossom. Kit went down on her knees. “It looks just like the flowers at home,” she marveled. “I didn’t know you had such flowers here.” “It came all the way from Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope,” Hannah told her. “My friend brought the bulb to me, a little brown thing like an onion. I doubted it would grow here, but it just seemed determined to keep on trying and look what has happened.

Beside the plain blue homespun and white linen which modestly clothed Aunt Rachel and Judith, Kit’s flowered silk gave her the look of some vivid tropical bird lighted by mistake on a strange shore.

Yes, I do think William is serious. But you don’t need to be worried, dear. No one is going to hurry you, least of all William himself. He is a very fine young man. Of course you feel like strangers now. But I think you’ll find sufficient to talk about before long.

For Prudence was an entirely different child from the woebegone shrinking creature who had stood in the roadway outside the school. The tight little bud that was the real Prudence had steadily opened its petals in the sunshine of Kit’s friendship and Hannah’s gentle affection.

Then, unbelievably, out of the mist came the miracle. First two points of mast, then sails, transparent and wraithlike in the fog, then, as Kit strained her eyes, the looming hull, the prow, and the curved tail of a fish. The Dolphin! Glory be to heaven! The most beautiful sight in the world! The Dolphin, moving down toward Wright’s Island on a steady breeze.

somber

I just wish it hadn’t happened four days before Thanksgiving. It’s going to spoil the holiday to have everyone so gloomy.

Libraries were my places. I was that girl who maxed out her library card every week, starting with The Hobbit and The Witch of Blackbird Pond and moving up from there.

I'm sure they would," said Mercy promptly. "Besides, that's not the point. You'll give Kit a fine impression of us, Judith, and anyway, we'd better start on the work that's waiting right here." Judith did not move. Her attention had turned again to the row of trunks. "Do you mean to say that every one of those trunks is full of dresses like the one you have on?

She and Prudence sat on a cool grassy carpet. A pale green curtain of branches just brushed the grasses and threw a filigree of shadows, as delicate as the wrought silver, on the child’s face.

AS THE heavy door shut behind him the cloud gradually lifted from the room. Rachel moved nervously to the table and began to wrap the leftover corn bread in a clean linen napkin. "Before I do another thing," she said, "I must take this to Widow Brown. She's still far too weak to fend for herself. Forgive me for leaving you, Katherine, but I'll be back in no time at all." "In no time," echoed Judith bitterly, as her mother hurried out into the foggy morning. "Just as soon as she's built up the fire and made gruel and tidied the whole cabin. With more than a day's work waiting here at home.

THERE WILL BE no Thanksgiving this week,” announced Matthew when he came home at noontime the next day. “It seems we have no authority here in Connecticut to declare our own holidays. His Excellency, the new governor, will declare a Thanksgiving when it pleases him.

William seemed to find nothing lacking in those evenings. For him it was enough simply to sit across the room and look at her. It was flattering, she had to admit. The most eligible bachelor in Wethersfield and handsome, actually, in his substantial way. Sometimes, as she sat knitting, aware that William’s eyes were on her face, she felt her breath tightening in a way that was strange and not unpleasant. Then, just as suddenly, rebellion would rise in her. He was so sure! Without even asking, he was reckoning on her as deliberately as he calculated his growing pile of lumber.

There had been a rare afternoon when Judith had invited Kit to go with some other girls of the town to pick flowers and picnic along the shore of the river. At the last moment Kit had turned back to Mercy and cried impulsively, "Oh, if only you could go, too, Mercy! How can you bear it, always staying behind?" And Mercy had answered serenely, 'Oh, I settled that a long time ago. I remember it very well. Father had carried me to the doorstep, and I sat there watching the children playing a game in the road. I thought of all the things I would never be able to do. Since then I've just never thought much about it.