Читать книгу The Children of Willow Farm - Enid blyton - Страница 3

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One wild March day four excited children looked down from the windows of a tall London house, and watched three enormous vans draw slowly up in the square outside.

“There they are!” cried Rory. “They’ve come at last!”

“The moving has begun!” said Penny, jigging up and down beside the window-sill.

“Won’t it be funny to see all our furniture going into those vans!” said Sheila.

“I shouldn’t have thought that we would have needed three vans!” said Benjy, astonished.

“Oh, there are three more coming after these, too,” said Sheila. “Oh goodness—isn’t it lovely to think we are going down to Willow Farm! A farm of our own! A farm as nice as Cherry Tree Farm.”

“Nicer,” said Benjy. “Much nicer. It’s got more streams. And it’s built on a hill so that we get a marvellous view, not down in a hollow like Cherry Tree Farm.”

The four children were very happy indeed. The year before they had all been ill and had been sent for some months to live on their uncle’s farm. The life had suited them well at Cherry Tree Farm, and all the children had grown strong and red-cheeked.

Then, when the time had come for them to return to their London home, their father had found that his business was bringing him in very little money—and Uncle Tim had suggested that he should put his money into Willow Farm, five miles away, and take up farming for his living.

The children’s father had been brought up on a farm, and knew how to run one. The children, of course, had been mad with delight at the idea—and here it was, really coming true at last! They were all going to move into Willow Farm that very week!

It had taken three months to buy the place and arrange everything. Rory and Benjy, the two boys, had been to boarding-school, and had just returned home in time to move down with the girls, Sheila and Penny. Their mother had been very busy packing, and everyone had helped. It was such fun!

“I like London if we just come up for a pantomime or a circus,” said Rory. “But the country is best to live in!”

“I’m simply longing to see Tammylan again,” said Penny. “Oh, won’t he be pleased to see us!”

Tammylan was a great friend of theirs. He was a strange man, who lived in a hillside cave in the winter months, and in a tree-house made of willow branches in the summer. He was called the ‘wild man’ because he lived alone with animals and birds. Most people were afraid of him, but he was the children’s greatest friend. He had taught them all about the birds and animals of the countryside, and now they knew more about all the big and small creatures than any other children in the kingdom. It would be marvellous to see Tammylan again.

Mother put her head in at the door. “It’s time for you to put your things on,” she said. “Daddy will soon be bringing the car round. Say goodbye to all the nooks and crannies here that you have known since you were babies—for you won’t be seeing them again!”

The family were going down by car, and the vans were following. Mother wanted to be ready for them when they came. The children looked at one another.

“I’m glad to be leaving here,” said Benjy. “But we’ve had some good times in this tall old London house!”

He ran out of the room.

“Benjy’s gone to say goodbye to the plane trees he can see from his bedroom window!” said Rory. “He always loved those.”

It was true. Benjy leaned out of his bedroom window and looked at the trees with their last year’s balls hanging from bare boughs.

“Goodbye,” he said. “I’ve known you for eleven years, and you are nice all the year round! I like you now, with bare boughs. I like you when you are just leafing, with bright green leaves shining in the sun. I like you in the summer when you are thick and dark green. I like you in the autumn when you turn yellow and throw your leaves away. Goodbye, plane trees! I’m going where there are no plane trees, but willows, willows, willows all around, growing along the banks of silver streams!”

The plane trees rustled in the wind as if they were whispering back to Benjy. He drew in his head and suddenly felt a little sad. He would never forget those London trees—and he would always remember the little grey squirrels that sometimes ran up and down the branches.

Sheila went to say goodbye to every room in turn. “I don’t want to forget anything,” she said to Rory, who was with her. “I always want to remember our first home, though I am going to love our second home much much better. Goodbye, drawing-room—you look funny now with all the furniture just anyhow! Goodbye, study. I won’t forget how often I’ve slipped down to you to take a book to read out of your bookcases! Goodbye, dining-room, I never liked you very much because you are so dark!”

Eight-year-old Penny stayed up in the nursery. That was the room she knew and loved the best. It was not called the nursery now, but was known as the schoolroom, because it was there that the two girls worked with their governess. Penny loved it.

She ran her fingers over the wallpaper, which showed a pattern of nursery rhymes. It had been repapered for Penny, four years before. She had chosen the paper herself. She knew every single person on it, every animal, every tree. How often she had looked at Jack and Jill always going up the hill, and how often she had wondered how there could possibly be room in the Old Woman’s Shoe for all the children that were playing around it!

She opened the built-in toy cupboard and looked inside. It was empty now, for every toy had been packed in boxes. There were shelves there that had held trains and bricks and dolls.

“I wish you were coming with us, toy cupboard!” said Penny. “I’ve always loved you. It was always so exciting every morning to open your doors and see my toys looking at me again. And it has always been such fun to creep right inside you and shut the door and pretend I was a toy too!”

Penny was the baby of the family. Rory was a big boy now, fourteen years old, black-haired and brown-eyed. Sheila was thirteen, curly-haired and pretty. Benjy, dreamy old Benjy, who loved and understood all wild creatures so well, was two years younger—and then came Penny, three years behind him! She tried to be grown-up, so that the others would let her into their secrets and take her about with them, but it was sometimes rather difficult.

She looked round. She was quite alone. Rory and Sheila were saying goodbye to each room in turn. She could hear them in the spare-room now. Sheila was talking to Rory.

“Do you remember counting the cracks in the ceiling when we were both in here with measles? There’s one crack over in that corner that looks exactly like a bear with horns—look, there it is.”

Penny heard the two of them talking. She stared at the toy cupboard.

Should she just get inside the last time, and pretend she was a toy? Nobody would know.

She squashed herself in. It wasn’t so easy now as it used to be, for Penny had grown. She shut the doors and peeped through the crack—and at once it seemed as if she was only three or four years old again!

“I’m a big doll, peeping through the crack in the door at the children playing in the nursery!” she said to herself. “What a funny feeling it is!”

Before she could get out again, Benjy came into the room. He looked round. Where were the others?

“Sheila! Rory!” he called. “Where are you? Penny!”

Penny didn’t answer. She was too afraid of being called a baby to come out and show herself. She stayed as quiet as a mouse in the cupboard.

The other two came running in. They carried coats and hats for everyone. “Mother says we are to come at once,” said Sheila. “Here are your things, Benjy. Where’s Penny? Now wherever has she gone?”

Penny didn’t move. She stared out through the crack. It was funny to see the others through the narrow chink. They looked different somehow.

The three children put on their coats. Mother came in.

“Are you ready?” she said. “Where’s Penny?”

Nobody knew. “Oh dear!” said Mother. “Wherever can she have got to?”

Penny was suddenly afraid that everyone would go without her. She pushed open the doors of the toy cupboard and looked out. Benjy almost jumped out of his skin with surprise.

“I’m here,” said Penny, in a small voice.

Everyone burst into laughter. They all knew Penny’s old trick of getting into the toy cupboard and pretending to be a doll. Sheila was just going to call her a baby when she saw Penny’s red face and stopped.

“Come along,” she said, holding out her hand. “Daddy’s waiting for us. Hurry, Penny!”

Penny squeezed herself out and put on her coat in silence. All the children went downstairs, their feet clattering loudly on the bare stairs. The house seemed suddenly strange and unfriendly. It would soon belong to somebody else.

They crowded into the car. Daddy and Mummy looked up at the tall house, remembering many things. They had had happy times there. The children had grown up there. It was sad to leave—but how happy to be going to a lovely farmhouse set on a hill!

The engine of the car started up. They were off!

“Goodbye!” cried the children, waving to the old house. “We may perhaps call in and see you sometime in the future. Goodbye! We’re off to Willow Farm, Willow Farm, Willow Farm!”

And off they went, purring through the London streets on their way to a new life down in the heart of the country.