Then There Were Five: 3 (Melendy Quartet) - Softcover

Enright, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312376006 ISBN 13: 9780312376000

Publisher: Square Fish, 2008

Synopsis

With Father in Washington and Cuffy, their housekeeper, away visiting a sick cousin, almost anything might happen to the Melendy kids left behind at the Four-Story Mistake. In the Melendy family, adventures are inevitable: Mr. Titus and the catfish; the villainy of the DeLacey brothers; Rush's composition of Opus 3; Mona's first rhubarb pie and all the canning; Randy's arrowhead; the auction and fair for the Red Cross. But best of all is the friendship with Mark Herron, which begins with a scrap-collection mission and comes to a grand climax on Oliver's birthday.

Here is Elizabeth Enright's classic story of a long and glorious summer in the country with the resourceful, endearing Melendy bunch.

Then There Were Five is the third installment of Enright's Melendy Quartet, an engaging and warm series about the close-knit Melendy family and their surprising adventures.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Enright (1907-1968) was born in Oak Park, Illinois, but spent most of her life in or near New York City. Her mother was a magazine illustrator, while her father was a political cartoonist. Illustration was Enright's original career choice and she studied art in Greenwich, Connecticut; Paris, France; and New York City. After creating her first book in 1935, she developed a taste, and quickly demonstrated a talent, for writing. Throughout her life, she won many awards, including the 1939 John Newbery Medal for Thimble Summer and a 1958 Newbery Honor for Gone-Away Lake. Among her other beloved titles are her books about the Melendy family, including The Saturdays, published in 1941. Enright also wrote short stories for adults, and her work was published in The New Yorker, The Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, The Yale Review, Harper's, and The Saturday Evening Post. She taught creative writing at Barnard College. Translated into many languages throughout the world, Elizabeth Enright's stories are for both the young and the young at heart.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Then There Were Five

By Elizabeth Enright

Macmillan

Copyright © 1972 Nicholas W. Gillham, Robert Gillham II, and Oliver Gillham
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-312-37600-0

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Dedication, 
Introduction, 
I. All Summer Long, 
II. A Talent for Trash, 
III. Shakespeare and the Hot Spell, 
IV. The Arrowhead, 
V. Oliver's Other World, 
VI. The Citronella Peril, 
VII. The Twelve-Pound Cat, 
VIII. A Noise in the Night, 
IX. Mark, 
X. Women's Territory, 
XI. "Welcome Cuffy", 
XII. The Principle of the Thing, 
XIII. The Best Birthday of All, 
XIV. Admit One, 
XV. Opus Three, 
About the Author, 
The Melendy Quartet, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

All Summer Long

What a noise there was that day! It sounded like a pack of young sea lions.

But it was really only the Melendy children. They were building a dam.

Rush had thought of it. He had thought of it in the middle of the night in a dream, and this morning at breakfast he had told them about it.

"Listen, kids," he'd said. "I've been thinking for a long time that we needed a bigger swimming place. The one we've got now is too little; when we're all in it together the congestion is fierce. And it's too shallow. Every time I dive off the bank I'm scared I'll come up with concussion of the brain."

"Well, what are you planning to do?" inquired Mona with a tinge of sarcasm. "Widen the brook, or deepen it, or something?"

"Exactly, my dear Watson," replied Rush with a flourish of toast. "I propose to build a dam at the foot of the bathing pool where the waterfall begins."

Oliver and Randy greeted the idea with enthusiasm. Anything, work or play, that involved plenty of water and mud was agreeable to them. And even Mona could see that the idea had its points.

So there they were, hard at it, digging up rocks, hauling logs, and building them into a sort of walk across the brook. Everybody had ideas as to how the dam should be constructed. The air rang, quivered, with commands, directions, opinions, and arguments. Frequent arguments; and all carried on at an earsplitting pitch in competition with the noisy little waterfall.

The two dogs, Isaac and John Doe, added to the general pandemonium by running to and fro on the bank and barking. They always barked when voices were raised.

It was strange how the character of each Melendy was shown in his work.

Take Rush, for instance. He was fourteen and strong for his age. His bare ribs, like an Indian brave's, were striped with mud where he had slapped furiously at mosquitoes. He worked violently and fast: lugged the biggest rocks, lifted the heaviest loads, grunted, struggled, perspired, and from time to time was forced to give in and rest, from sheer exhaustion.

Mona was the eldest. She was very pretty and quite old: past fifteen. Her job was to stuff the chinks between the stones with dead leaves, wads of moss and grass, anything to keep the water from pouring through. This she did efficiently and quickly, pausing now and then to look at her own dark reflection in the pool or to wash the mud from her fastidious fingers. She was certainly the only one who bothered to do that.

Oliver, who was seven and three-quarters, worked like a little engine on a track. Back and forth he went, over and over, never getting tired because he never handled more than he could manage.

Randy, twelve, was the one who slipped and stumbled oftenest. Strange that Randy, who drew so well and danced like a fairy, should be so clumsy at manual labor. Already

Edition details

• Publisher: Square Fish
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312376006
• ISBN 13: 9780312376000
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 272