Journey to the River Sea: Part 4

By EVA IBBOTSON

Miss Banks was sitting behind her desk; her sister, Miss Emily, stood beside her. Mr Murray was in a leather chair by a table, rustling papers. Mr Murray was Maia's guardian, but he was also a lawyer and never forgot it. Things had to be done carefully and slowly and written down.

Maia looked round at the assembled faces. They looked cheerful but that could mean anything, and she bent down to pat Miss Banks' spaniel, finding comfort in the feel of his round, warm head.

`Well, Maia, we have good news,' said Miss Banks. A frightening woman to many, now in her sixties, with an amazing bust which would have done splendidly on the prow of a sailing ship, she smiled at the girl standing in front of her. A clever child and a brave one, who had fought hard to overcome the devastating blow of her parents' death in a train crash in Egypt two years earlier.

Publisher: Macmillan

Price: $14.95

Age group: 11+