Читать книгу House-at-the-Corner - Enid blyton - Страница 4

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It was the Easter holidays. They were almost over, and soon all the five Farrell children would go back to school. The twins hated that, because it meant that they were parted all day. David went to the big Grammar School for boys, and Delia, his twin, went to the same big girls’ school as her elder sisters, Lizzie and Pam. Tony, her elder brother, went to the Grammar School with David.

Now all five children were in their big play-room downstairs, waiting for Greta to bang the gong for lunch.

“Is she here?” asked Tony, coming in last.

“Who? Aunt Grace?” said Pam. “Yes, she’s here all right, worse luck. Going to put everyone in their places as usual, I suppose. Well—she won’t put me! I’m seventeen and a half, almost grown up, going to college in September—she can’t order me about any longer.”

“She jolly well won’t order me about, either,” said Tony.

“She will. You’re only fourteen,” said Pam.

“I may be only fourteen, but I’m as tall as you,” said Tony. He was. He looked about seventeen, with his fine tall body, and big shoulders. He was a handsome, well-built boy, and Mrs. Farrell was very proud of him. He was as clever as Pam, and had just as good a memory and could as easily be top of his form as Pam was of hers—but he preferred to play the fool and make the others laugh. “Plenty of time to work hard when I want a scholarship,” he said, when his father wanted to know why he was so low in form. “I could lick the others easily if I wanted to. I’ll work hard as soon as I get into old Snorty’s form, Dad. I’ll have to.”

He would have to. The master there was what the boys called a Snorter, a hard-driving, determined man, anxious to make the very best of his boys’ brains. But the master of the form below him was Blinky, or Mr. Holmes, a short-sighted, mild-tempered master on whom the boys played endless tricks. Tony had great fun in Blinky’s class, lazed his time away, played jokes and tricks, and altogether enjoyed himself.

“Still,” said Mrs. Farrell, who was far too proud of her tall son, “he’s only fourteen. He’s got good brains. He’ll work hard as soon as he has to. It’s his master’s fault for being so easy-going.”

She spoilt both Tony and Pam. Pam had always been so pretty and so clever. She had really never needed to work for anything, for her good brains put her at the top of her form and kept her there without much effort. Pam was proud of her looks and her brains. She meant to do well in the world!

“I shall win my scholarship, go to college and do brilliantly there!” she thought, as she looked at herself in her mirror, seeing the deep blue eyes, the wavy golden hair and the long curly eyelashes. She didn’t see the hard little mouth that spoilt her pretty face, nor the little frown-lines that told of bad temper. She only saw a very pretty face, clever and attractive. “I shall do very well at college and then I shall take a fine job somewhere, and make a lot of money, and then I shall marry a very rich man, and have poor old Lizzie to stay with me,” she thought.

Nobody thought much of Lizzie. It was partly her own fault because she would hide herself away so much. She was shy of visitors, shy at parties, shy of going anywhere. She thought herself so plain and stupid—why should anyone want to talk to her or make friends with her?

She had never been brilliant at school, except in her literature class. There she always had good marks—but what was the good of being first in only one subject if you were never above the middle in all the others? It only made people say that you gave too much time to Literature and not enough to things like Arithmetic or Geography.

But Lizzie was kind and patient with others in a way that Pam and Tony would never try to be. She did not talk very much herself, but other people liked to talk to her. They told her all about themselves.

Old Mrs. Twitchen down the lane told her about the children she had had and what had happened to them all. It was like a story, to Lizzie. The woman in the sweetshop told her about the cats she had had—every one of the thirteen she had kept during her long life—and they came alive for Lizzie, and she listened so patiently that Miss Cullen loved her and had always given her more sweets for her money than any of the other children. And even now Lizzie slipped into the little shop to see Miss Cullen’s latest cat, Rumpy. He was a Manx and had no tail, and the tale of his misdeeds would have filled a book.

The twins, David and Delia, were always wrapped up in their own affairs. They were ten years old and seemed real babies to the others. Pam had no time for them at all.

“Always bringing in half-dead birds and keeping smelly caterpillars and horrible mice!” she would say.

“Well, didn’t you, when you were our age?” demanded David. “Have you forgotten?”

“Don’t be cheeky, now,” said Pam. “No, of course I didn’t do the awful things you do. Catch me keeping mice!”

“You’re silly, you’re afraid of mice,” said Delia. “You think you’re wonderful, Pam, but you don’t even know the names of the commonest wild flowers or birds, and you don’t know the difference between a swede and a turnip!”

“Well, who wants to?” said Pam, annoyed. “You and your nature lore and your gardening! You make me tired. Why don’t you play proper games, like we used to—Red Indians and flying kites and things like that. You’ve always got your head in bird-books, or are collecting weeds, or hobnobbing with old Frost the gardener, pretending to help him!”

“We don’t pretend. We do help him,” said David. “You ought to see how our lettuces are coming on, under the cloches! You’ll be having early salad soon, and when you do, you jolly well think of all the hard work Delia and I have done in the garden. You never do a thing. You don’t even make your own bed.”

“Shut up,” said Pam, angrily. “I won’t have you talking to me like that. I’ll smack you both!”

The twins spoke the truth when they said that they really did help old Frost and didn’t just pretend. They both had a real passion for out-of-doors, for flowers and birds and animals, and for gardening. Frost was getting old. He needed a boy to help him in the garden, but Mr. Farrell could not afford one for him. So the twins had come to his help, and worked as hard as any garden boy in the holidays and whenever they could spare the time during term.

“It amuses them!” said Mrs. Farrell, who could not seem to think of the twins as anything but children just out of the kindergarten. “I hope they won’t get into Frost’s way, that’s all!”

She didn’t know all they did out there in the garden. She hadn’t seen David using Frost’s heavy spade valiantly for an hour at a time. She didn’t know how Delia spent a whole evening reading up all Frost’s old flower catalogues. She hadn’t heard the questions the twins asked the gardener, or seen the delight in the old fellow’s eye as he patiently explained this and that to the solemn pair before him.

“They’re the only ones that take any interest!” he told his bent old wife. “Miss Pam, she never even sees me or the garden. Master Tony, he only thinks I’m somebody to play silly jokes on. Tied a bit of string to a paint-pot, he did, the other day, and when I opened the shed door, the string pulled the paint all over my feet. Ho, he thought that was a fine joke, he did—wasting his father’s paint, and spoiling my boots!”

“He’s a bad boy,” said Mrs. Frost. “Spoilt too. Miss Lizzie’s the one for me. She do come and listen to my old tales as patient as you please. I’ve told her all the old tales my Granny told me, and old they must be, for my Gran got them from her Gran. Ah, my Gran was a fine story-teller, she was!”

“Oh, Miss Lizzie’s all right,” said old Frost. “Got a lot more in her than folks think. But she’s so shy-like—like a little bird that flies off as soon as you look at it. And the others just make her do what they want her to do. She’s too weak with them, she is. Why, she’ll soon have those twins ordering her about! Landsakes, you should have seen them to-day, cleaning out the tomato house with me. Good as ten garden boys, they was!”

“You’re real set on those twins, aren’t you?” said old Mrs. Frost. “And I’m real set on Miss Lizzie. But that Miss Pam and Master Tony—well, for all their handsome ways and smarty talk I’ve no time for them. And what’s more I know someone else who’s got no time for them, either. And that’s their great-aunt, that’s just come to stay! Ha, she’ll put them in their places all right!”

But it was growing difficult to put either Pam or Tony “in their place” now. Even Aunt Grace would find that out. Pam felt herself to be almost grown-up, and Tony could not check his cheeky tongue. Only with his father was he really polite now. Always teasing, always laughing, always up to some joke or other, Tony, in his own words “had a jolly good time,” from morning to night, looked up to by the other boys of his class, feared by Blinky, the master of his form, and admired by all the smaller boys—except David, his small brother, three forms below him.

David had no time for Tony. Solemn, serious David thought scornfully of him. Tony teased David and Delia unmercifully, labelled them babies, set their pet mice free, and threatened to give their silkworms to Sukie the parrot. The twins retired into themselves, and seemed to cut themselves completely off from their family, living in a little world of their own.

This was the family that Aunt Grace had come to visit. She had loved them all when they were little. Now they were growing up. Her fingers itched to meddle with them and set them right. She knew she shouldn’t interfere. She had made up her mind not to, whatever happened. But she wasn’t at all sure she would be able to keep her word!

The lunch-gong sounded, banged vigorously by Greta. The children trooped out of the play-room into the dining-room. Mrs. Farrell was there and she beamed at them.

“Have you w——” she began, but Tony interrupted her.

“Mother, have you washed your hands and done your hair?” he said, cheekily. “Did you wipe your shoes when you came in?”

The others laughed. Tony was cheeky, but it did sound so funny.

“Here’s Aunt Grace,” said his mother, and the old lady came hurrying into the room, her grey, wavy hair neatly brushed, and a band of black velvet round her neck.

“Well, my dears,” she said, “here’s your tiresome old great-aunt back again. Pam, child, you look quite grown up! And bless us all, is this Tony? Why, Tony, you’re a head above me! And I remember you a squalling baby in your pram! I’ve seen you, Lizzie dear—and here are the twins! It’s a good thing you’re boy and girl, or I should never be able to tell you apart!”

The greetings over, the family sat down to their meal. Lizzie helped her mother with the serving. It was on the tip of Aunt Grace’s tongue to ask why Pam didn’t help too, but she stopped herself in time.

“What delicious greens,” she said, as Lizzie took off the lid of the vegetable dishes.

“We helped to grow them!” said David proudly.

“You must show me round the garden, David,” said Aunt Grace, remembering how interested the twins were in gardening. “Oh, it’s good to be back with you all. We’re going to have a good time together—aren’t we?”

“Yes, Aunt Grace,” said Lizzie. But she was the only one who answered!