Читать книгу Ring O' Bells Mystery - Enid blyton - Страница 5

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For once, not one of the children awoke early. Mrs. Lynton was away before even Snubby had opened his eyes! They didn’t even hear her car purring down the lane, and they didn’t hear the hens clucking, Loopy barking, or the rooks cawing as they sailed overhead.

Snubby only woke because Loony insisted. Loony was tired of hearing everyone awake and astir, and of being shut up in a bedroom with two sleeping boys. He scraped at the door but nobody came. He heard Loopy barking and suddenly gave a loud answering bark.

Snubby awoke with a jump, but Roger went on sleeping peacefully, his head under the clothes. Snubby sat up and looked at the time. Twenty-five-past nine! Good gracious! Whoever heard of such a thing? He leapt out of bed, quite forgetting to test his legs as he usually did, since they had become so curiously jelly-like. However, they behaved very well, and didn’t let him down or even wobble. He went to the window, Loony licking him madly, his tail wagging nineteen to the dozen.

It was a brilliant morning in early May. Snubby’s bedroom looked out on the back garden of the house, and there was plenty to see there! Dozens of hens scrabbled about. Three great geese cackled in a corner. Ducks swam on a round pond in the field just outside the garden, up-ending themselves in their usual ridiculous way.

A cat sat sunning on a wall, keeping a wary eye open for Loopy, who was always under the impression that he could leap any wall. He couldn’t, but the cat was always afraid that he might. It stuck one leg up in the air and began to give itself its thorough morning wash.

“Now this is just the kind of place I like,” said Snubby, rubbing his hands. “Plenty going on. Is that a goat I see beyond the duck-pond—and two little kids? And surely that’s a grey donkey? I’ll have a ride on him to-day.”

“Woof,” said Loony, trying his hardest to see out of the window too. Snubby lifted him up. He caught sight of Loopy down below, sniffing hard at a smell of some sort, and almost leapt out of the window in his excitement. His sudden barking awoke Roger.

“Come on, Roger, get up!” said Snubby eagerly. “It’s awfully late. This is a wizard place. All kinds of animals and things. Loopy’s down there, longing for Loony to join him.”

“Well, let him then,” said Roger, fending off Loony as he tried to cover him with licks. “Can’t you teach your dog to stop washing everyone he loves? I’m dripping already. Shut up, Loony, keep your tongue in your mouth!”

Snubby opened the bedroom door, and Loony shot downstairs, taking the stairs in almost one bound. He slid across the polished hall on his four feet, neatly avoided a little table there, and gave Miss Pepper a real shock as she came in from the garden. Before she could say a word Loony was hob-nobbing excitedly with Loopy, who at once began to show off.

“Couple of mad creatures,” said Miss Pepper to herself. “I suppose that means that the children are now awake.”

Judging by the thuds upstairs, they were. Miss Pepper called to her cousin, “Hannah! The children are awake at last. I’ll get the milk out of the frig for them. They do so love it icy-cold.”

“Oooh,” said Snubby, who, in two minutes’ time, appeared dressed at the dining-room door, and was gazing with joy at the table. “Ham and tomatoes! And what’s this? Hot sausage rolls! For breakfast! I say—are we going to be fed up, like the doctor said? I heard him tell Aunt Susan to feed us up well.”

“Yes—you’re going to be fed up,” said Miss Pepper, smiling. “I hope I shan’t be—by the end of these few days here!”

“Ha ha—joke!” said Snubby politely. He sat down. “I don’t need to wait for the others, do I? Do I begin with porridge?”

“You do,” said Miss Pepper, helping him out of a dish on the food-warmer. “And take plenty of cream—plenty! Doctor’s orders. You’ve gone skinny and I don’t like you skinny.”

“Gosh! Can I really take as much cream as I like?” said Snubby, reaching for the big jug with its pattern of flowers all down it. “All my life people have been telling me to go carefully with the cream!”

Hannah Pepper came in after a while to see that everything was all right. She seemed pleased to see the three children tucking in. “They won’t be long putting a bit of flesh on again,” she said to her cousin, who was now knitting by the window. “But don’t let the dog have any cream. He’s fat enough as it is.”

“He’s only licking a drip off my fingers,” said Snubby. “Hallo, here’s Loopy. Have a lick, Loopy?”

But cream was no luxury to Loopy, and he disdained it. He sniffed at Loony’s mouth to smell what other food he had received. Loopy was very ready to welcome Loony, but he didn’t mean him to have anything more than his fair share!

“Can we go and have a snoop round the place, Miss Pepper?” asked Diana, when they could not possibly eat any more. “You don’t need to come,” she added hastily, feeling that it would be nicer to snoop round by themselves. “And is there a book about Ring O’ Bells we could read? A guide-book or something?”

“No. But I dare say the woman at the old mansion we passed yesterday—Ring O’ Bells Hall, it’s called—can tell you all you want to know,” said Miss Pepper. “Can’t she, Hannah?”

“Yes, she can,” said her cousin, who was now clearing away the breakfast things. “It’s a pity she’s not a native here—she’s a stranger really, who read up all about the old place, and put in for the job as caretaker and guide to Ring O’ Bells Hall when it was decided to open it as a show-place. Still, she certainly knows all the history of the place, and explains it very well—better, maybe, than one of the villagers could have done it.”

“We’ll go and have a good look all round,” said Roger, feeling the sun warm on his face, as it streamed in through the window. “I’m going to enjoy this unexpected holiday. Can Loopy come with us, Miss Hannah?”

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Hannah thankfully. “Do take him. He’s under my feet all the time, and he will keep running off with the mats. Now just look out of the window—if he hasn’t got somebody’s towel too this morning!”

Snubby had a feeling that it was Loony not Loopy who was responsible for the sudden appearance of the towel. He got up in a hurry to fetch it, only to meet Loony running through the hall with another towel dragging behind him!

“Loony! This is not your home!” scolded Snubby, in a low voice. “It’s somebody else’s place. If you start dragging towels about, you’ll be sent away. Do you hear? Then we shall play with Loopy, not with you!”

Loony’s tail went down, and he put on his most mournful expression. Snubby put the two towels back in their places, and went downstairs. This time he met Loopy carrying a mat in his mouth, evidently taken from the dining-room, where there were many rugs laid down to cover the old wooden floor.

Snubby didn’t interfere with Loopy. Let him take his own rugs! It was no business of Snubby’s. Anyway, the more mischief Loopy got up to, the less Loony’s mischief would be noticed!

The three children set off together. They went down the sunny lane, already sweet with the scent of the first drifts of may-blossom. Cowslips danced in the nearby fields, and primroses lined the ditches by the road. The brilliant blue of the germander speedwell shone beneath the hedges. What a lovely place Ring O’ Bells was!

They came to the white stone cottage that Miss Pepper had called Hubbard Cottage. The name was on the gate. The children stood there staring. They supposed Mother Hubbard must have lived somewhere when she was alive—and why not here?

The door opened and an old woman in a red shawl and printed skirt appeared, shaking a duster. She looked so exactly like a Mother Hubbard that the children gazed in delight. She smiled at them.

“You visitors here?” she said in a pleasant brogue. “You’ve brought the good weather with you!”

Loopy scrabbled at the gate, trying to get in. This sounded like the kind of old woman who was generous with titbits. Loony put his paws on the middle bar and looked through.

“Ah—there’s Loopy,” said the old woman. “I’ll find him a bone—and one for the other dog too.”

“She really might be Mother Hubbard,” said Diana in excitement. “I wonder if she’s got a dog. We’ll ask her.”

They opened the gate and went up the tiny stone path, edged with polyanthus and wallflowers, and stood at the little door, waiting. They peered inside the cottage. It was dim, and they could hardly make out anything.

“Come away in,” cried a voice, and they went cautiously in, their eyes finding it difficult to get accustomed to the dim light after the brilliant May sunshine outside.

The front door opened straight into a little room. Mother Hubbard, as they all called her, was in a room beyond. Diana clutched Roger’s arm. “Look—the cupboard!” she whispered. “She’s got a cupboard!”

Mother Hubbard was at an open cupboard, that went back into the thick stone wall of the cottage. But it wasn’t bare! It was filled with pans and dishes and jugs of all kinds—it was, in fact, her larder, set in the cool stone wall. She brought out two bones for the dogs.

“Did you ever have a dog?” asked Diana suddenly, as the old lady came back into the sitting-room, or parlour.

“Dear me, no,” said Mother Hubbard, looking surprised at the sudden question. “Not of my own, if that’s what you mean. I’ve lived with my old grandad nearly all my life, and he don’t like dogs, never did. I like them, mind you—I’ve always got a bone for one that comes along. Old Grandad don’t mind, so long as they don’t go worriting him out in the garden there.”

It was astonishing to hear that this “Old Mother Hubbard” actually had a grandfather out in the garden. “Could we see him?” asked Roger. “I expect he’s very interesting, isn’t he? He could go a long way back in history, couldn’t he?”

“Well, he says he’s over a hundred years old,” said Mother Hubbard. “He’s asleep now, look—you come and talk to him some other time. He knows a rare lot about Ring O’ Bells—more than that woman at Ring O’ Bells has ever read or heard of, I can tell you that!”

This was interesting, and rather exciting. “We’ll certainly come back!” said Roger. “And thanks most awfully for the bones!”