Read Online Kelsey and the Quest of the Porcelain Doll by Rosanne Hawke - Free Book Online Page B

nicely.’
    She lifted Amy Jo down and took her to the counter.
    The shop assistant said, ‘Shall I wrap the doll? Is it a gift?’
    â€˜Yes,’ the lady said. ‘She has to travel a long way.’
    The shop assistant lay Amy Jo in a box lined with tissue paper. ‘It will be sad to see her go,’ he said. ‘She’s such a fine doll.’
    When the lid went on, Amy Jo didn’t like the dark. She enjoyed the sunlight and now she couldn’t see a thing.
    The doorbell rang as they left the shop and the box shook as the lady carried it. Amy Jo hoped she could get out of the box soon. She imagined a girl holding her, a girl who wouldn’t mind that she was hard to cuddle.
    Suddenly the shaking stopped. Amy Jo’s stomach felt very strange and then she was standing on her head.
    The lady said, ‘I need to send this box by airmail. It’s fragile.’
    â€˜Put it in this bubble envelope,’ a man said. Then he added, ‘That will be twenty-five dollars.’
    â€˜How long will it take?’ the lady asked. ‘It mustn’t be late.’
    â€˜No worries,’ the man said. ‘It will arrive in a week.’



T he next day Kelsey went with her mum and a lady, who also looked like a nurse, to a clinic. The lady was called Seema and she opened the clinic door for them. Kelsey thought it would be like the hospital where Mum worked in Australia but it was just a room with a desk, a few chairs, a cupboard and two charpais .
    â€˜Sit here and do your schoolwork,’ Mum said. She set the laptop on the desk for Kelsey. ‘You can send your work to Mrs Penner later.’
    Kelsey grumpily turned on the laptop to find her first maths sheet. She was picturing herself in Mrs Penner’s class with Chantelle when a lady wearing baggy trousers and a long top came through the door. Her baby boy was sick so Kelsey’s mum took his temperature and gave the lady some food and medicine. Seema explained to the lady everything Mum said. The baby was so tired, he didn’t even cry.
    A stream of women and children came in one after the other. They sat on the charpais . One boy had a broken arm and Kelsey’s mum put a cast on it. Kelsey took the laptop over and showed him how to play a game so he wouldn’t get upset.
    All the patients wore the same outfit of baggy trousers and long shirts. Her mum wore it too; she had bought it at the airport. But no one’s clothes looked as fresh as her mum’s. Everyone else’s looked as if they’d been swimming in mud.
    At one o’clock Kelsey’s mum thanked Seema. ‘We’ll go home now.’ She wrote on a list. ‘We’ll need more medicines and sewing machines too.’
    â€˜Why sewing machines?’ Kelsey asked.
    â€˜I think the women’s spare clotheshave been lost in the flood. They need new shalwar qameezes .’
    â€˜What’s that?’ Kelsey asked.
    â€˜The loose trousers and long tops everyone wears.’
    Mum glanced at Kelsey. ‘Did you get much schoolwork done?’
    Kelsey shook her head.
    â€˜Maybe you can write what you saw today when we go home.’
    Kelsey thought she’d rather write a story about a porcelain doll.



T hat afternoon Kelsey sent an email to Mrs Penner with her maths sheet and a journal entry about the clinic. Then she clicked on Skype to ring Nanna Rose.
    â€˜I went with Mum this morning. Everyone’s sick,’ Kelsey said as soon as Nanna’s smiling face appeared on the screen.
    â€˜Have you been to a clinic?’
    â€˜Yes.’ But Kelsey didn’t feel like talking about it. ‘Nanna, can you tell me what Amy Jo is doing now?’
    â€˜She’s flying on an aeroplane far away from where she was made.’
    â€˜Won’t she be lonely?’ Kelsey asked.
    â€˜Yes, I think she is,’ Nanna said.
    There was a dog howling. It sounded worse than the growling bears. Often there had