Melody Trumpet chapter sampler

She looked over one shoulder, then the other. Her parents were nowhere to be seen. On the other side of the lawn, the groundskeeper, Mr Bloom, was crouched in the dirt and whispering to his beloved roses. Melody listened to him happily whistle and hum as he tickled their petals and watered the soil around them. He sounded as out of tune as she did in Mr Pizzicato’s private tutoring sessions. Behind Mr Bloom, his three wild-haired children lazed on the grass under an old tree, watching a group of ducklings marching towards a small pond. Today they were barefoot, and, as always, they were laughing. The eldest, a boy around Melody’s age, stood up, plopped his baseball cap on his little sister’s head, then launched into a wobbly cartwheel. His siblings’ eyes widened with delight and they clapped. It wasn’t the first time Melody had seen Mr Bloom’s children playing in the grounds of Trumpet Manor. She’d overheard Miss Sprinkles telling Royce in the kitchen one night that Mr Bloom was a widower, which was why the children spent many afternoons by his side or playing in the manor’s famous garden maze. Melody often saw them while she was curled up in the shade, scribbling poems and daydreams into her brown leather-bound notebook. But, like everyone else in the world, the Bloom children were forbidden to talk to her,

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