Love Among the Walnuts by Jean Ferris Page B

in your snowmen." She set to work fixing. "Isn't this fun? Look at all the people we've made. Wouldn't it be perfect if we could make a world exactly the way we want it, with just the people we want in it, the way we've done here? Then there wouldn't be any horrible conflicts and everybody would be happy." She sighed. "Sure, I know there's always conflict, even between people who love each other. But I look at that as good conflict. It's what you have to do to get problems worked out. You can't agree all the time, even with people you love. Think how boring that would be."
    That's how it had been at Eclipse,
Sandy thought. There was no conflict. And they'd all been happy, hadn't they? But Eclipse, from what he could tell, had almost no relation at all to the real world. Had he been bored at Eclipse? He hadn't thought so. But now, seeing just the little he had of what went on outside the estate's walls, he knew he'd never be satisfied to seclude himself in there again. It was
too
peaceful,
too
quiet. Now he knew there were lots of interesting places to go and interesting people to meet, even if going and meeting did lead to conflict.
    "I don't know much about conflict," he finally said.
    "Thank your lucky stars," Sunnie said. "But don't forget, you're getting a crash course in it from Bart and Bernie. When you're through with them, you'll have a Ph.D. in conflict."
    "You think so?"
    "You'd better if we're going to protect your darling family from them. And it's not just your family anymore, either. It's you and Opal—did you see the way Bart looked at her when she threw him out of Walnut Manor?—and probably all of us now that they know we're on your side. They're bad clear through, and they won't stop until they get what they want or until we make them stop."
    Sandy shivered.
    "Right," Sunnie said. "We've all been out here long enough. We need some hot chocolate—with marshmallows, of course—and a fire. But first I want to get my camera and take pictures of every one of these snow people. I feel like I know them all because I know their parents."
     
    That night, after dinner, Sunnie turned off the TV in the library, took up her copy of
The Wind in the Willows,
which she was reading for the second time because everybody loved it so much, and led the way upstairs to the sleepers' room. Sandy had lit the fire and arranged the chairs for her. It would be the first time she had read without the TV playing in the background. There were only the hiss and crack of the burning logs in the grate and the cottony silence that came from Walnut Manor's being enveloped in falling snow.
    The solemnity of sharing a room with four comatose fellow creatures affected all the inmates. They settled themselves quietly and, though the lack of a TV screen clearly made Virgil and Lyle uneasy, they all turned their faces expectantly toward Sunnie.
    She read the chapter where Rat and Mole are head ing back to Rat's riverbank home, where they both now live, through a mid-December snowstorm and stumble upon Mole's old home. Rat and Mole stay the night there—fixing a cozy supper for the mice who come along caroling—and Mole realizes that, though he has a new life now, "it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome."
    When Sunnie read those words and closed the book, there was a long thoughtful silence. Could any of the people in the room have said the words Mole had?
    Perhaps because of their preoccupation with their own thoughts about what constituted home, no one had noticed that while Sunnie was reading, Louie had jumped into L. Barlow Van Dyke's lap, curled himself up, and gone to sleep while Mr. Van Dyke scratched his ears.

CHAPTER 14
    Sometime during the night the power went off at Eclipse, and Sandy and Bentley awoke shivering. They dressed quickly and warmly. Bentley covered his chemistry