Читать книгу Linnets and Valerians - Elizabeth Goudge - Страница 9

Lady Alicia

BREAKFAST WAS AT eight o’clock in the kitchen, and Ezra told them that at nine o’clock punctually they were to go in the library to be educated. Nan had feared as much and had put them into clean clothes and seen to it that their hands were clean and their hair well brushed.

‘Come in,’ said Uncle Ambrose in a terrible voice when they knocked at the library door. They entered timidly and found him standing with his back to the fireplace. His hands were clasped under his coat tails and his eyebrows beetled. Hector was perched on the clock behind him. The writing table had been cleared and was out in the middle of the room, with the big high-backed chair at one end and four smaller chairs, two on each side of the table. There was one cushion on Timothy’s and two on Betsy’s.

‘Girls to the right, boys to the left,’ thundered Uncle Ambrose and when they had taken their places he stalked forward and seated himself in his chair. Hector spread his wings and glided from the clock to its high back, where he drew himself up to his fullest height and winked at the children over Uncle Ambrose’s head. His wink was wonderfully reassuring. Evidently he liked them now and in this business of education was on their side.

‘I observe that you are slightly more prepossessing in appearance than I had previously supposed,’ said Uncle Ambrose, his glance resting with stern pleasure upon their clean clothes and sleek hands. ‘You are not bad-looking children. If I can succeed in inserting a little knowledge into your vacant heads you may yet bring honour upon the name of Linnet. An old and honoured name and a charming bird. Linnets and nightingales sang in the enchanted groves that clothed the lower slopes of Mount Hymettus, that sacred mountain above Athens that in the summer season is as purple with heather and as musical with bees as our own Lion Tor above Linden Wood. Where’s Athens?’

The question shot out at Robert as though from a pistol and Uncle Ambrose’s terrible bright glance seemed to reach right down into his head like a hook. It groped about there and came up with something.

‘In Greece, sir,’ gasped Robert.

‘Where’s Greece?’ Uncle Ambrose shot at Timothy.

‘In the Mediterranean,’ was hooked out of Timothy. He stumbled over the long word, but he remembered Father using it on the ship that brought them home.

‘Do you, child, know anything whatever about Greece?’ Uncle Ambrose asked Nan.

‘It has a wine-dark sea,’ said Nan. It was a phrase she had heard once and forgotten. It had needed Uncle Ambrose’s brilliant hooking glance to make her remember it again.