Read I Am David for Free Online Page B

go sparingly with his precious soap. Then he ran down-hill again, nearly forgetting, in his eagerness to get back to his piece of paper, to look carefully up and down the road before he crossed it. That must not happen again! He made himself count to a hundred before he picked up his paper in order to remind himself how important it was never to do anything without thinking.
    The scrap of paper was difficult to read. The evening before he had read several notices in the town, but this was in proper sentences with many words together. David murmured the names of the letters to himself, first one by one and then running them together three or four at a time, and after a bit the sounds began to take shape as words he already knew. Then he began reading to himself what was on the paper. On the whole it proved disappointing: some of it was about things you could buy, but none of it was any use to a boy escaping. There was something about motor-cars, and the last bit was about a king. But at that point the paper was torn across, and David could not even find out where the king came from.
    From what he had heard in the camp, David had gathered that the countries that had kings were free and their people had no need to be frightened of them.
    But there were not many countries like that, and the knowledge was not of much use to him since he did not know where those countries were.
    However, his belief that he might perhaps avoid capture seemed to have grown stronger since the day before. He had seen so much in the town that he knew deep within himself that he would have to go down there again, but he would not yet admit it to himself. He was pulled both ways: he had a passionate desire to go back and learn more about what things were like outside the camp, and at the same time he was afraid he might forget to hide his fears.
    As long as it was still daylight he would think no more about paying another visit to the town. He had plenty of other things to occupy him: all that he had seen the previous day, all that he wanted to know and would have to find out for himself. And there was his piece of paper: even if it contained nothing of any use to him, he could always read the letters, comparing the words as they appeared in print with the way they sounded when they were spoken until he was sure he could read properly. And in between times, when his head began to buzz with the weight of too many problems that seemed to have no solution, there were all the things that he would never tire of looking at. The blue sea stretching farther than eye could reach and the land with its ever-changing coastline … the green hills, the bare red rocks … the brightly coloured houses gleaming like fruits here and there in the sun.
    When evening came David went down to the town again. And again the next evening, and the next … and each time he learnt something new, enough to occupy his thoughts all day long in his rocky hiding-place.
    He had hit upon a good story. During his second evening he had read something on a wall about a circus. He understood it was a kind of theatre that travelled about: if he was questioned he would say he came from one and was going to rejoin it somewhere else — somewhere far enough away to prevent people finding out immediately if it were true.
    But he had had no occasion to try his story out.
    He went down to the town again during the evening. He was gradually getting to know it inside out — the narrow crooked streets, the open space down by the seafront, the square where the church stood. He always went there last of all so that on the way back to the rock he would have fresh in mind the beautiful wall with its patterns of many-coloured stone. He had not summoned up enough courage to enter the church although he would have dearly loved to see what it looked like inside.
    David would sometimes stand in the shadows outside a shop and listen to the conversation within. It was easy enough for they always talked very