Читать книгу The Children of Willow Farm - Enid blyton - Страница 4

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Nothing is quite so exciting as moving house. Everything is strange and thrilling and upside-down. Stairs sound different. Meals are taken just anywhere, at all kinds of queer times. Furniture stands about in odd places. The windows are like staring eyes with no eye-brows, because the curtains are not yet up.

It was like that at Willow Farm when the family moved in. Penny thought it was too exciting for words. Everything was fun. It was fun rushing through the different counties to get to Willow Farm. It was fun to pass Cherry Tree Farm on the way and stop for a few minutes’ chat with Uncle Tim and Auntie Bess.

“Wouldn’t you like to get rid of the children for a few days and let them stay with us?” asked Aunt Bess. But for once the children did not smile at the idea of staying at their beloved Cherry Tree Farm.

They looked quite dismayed. Mother laughed. “Look at their faces!” she said. “No thank you, Bess dear—they are all looking forward so much to settling in at Willow Farm. It is true that they will get in the way and be under my feet all the time—but ...”

“Oh Mummy, we won’t!” cried Penny. Then she saw the twinkle in her mother’s eye and laughed.

“Aunt Bess, we love Cherry Tree Farm, but we wouldn’t miss arriving at Willow Farm, our own farm, today, for worlds!” said Benjy.

“Have you seen Tammylan lately?” asked Rory.

“The wild man?” said Aunt Bess. “Yes—let me see, we saw him last week, didn’t we? He wanted to know when you were coming, and said he would love to see you all again.”

“Oh good,” said Benjy, pleased. “He’s got my pet squirrel for me. He’s been keeping it for me while I was at school. I shall love to see Scamper again.”

“Well, we mustn’t stay longer,” said their father. “Goodbye, Tim, goodbye, Bess. We’ll come over sometime and let you know how things go.”

Off they went through the lanes. The hedges were just beginning to leaf here and there. Celandine turned smiling, polished faces up to the sun. Primroses sat in rosettes of green leaves. Spring was really beginning!

The car turned a corner and came in sight of a rounded hill. Glowing in the afternoon sun was an old farmhouse built of warm red bricks. It had a thatched roof, as had Cherry Tree Farm, and this shone a deep golden-brown colour, for it had been re-thatched for the new owners.

“Willow Farm!” shouted Rory, and he stood up in the car. “Willow Farm! Our farm!”

Willow Farm

Benjy went red with pleasure. Sheila stared in silence. Penny gave little squeaks, one after the other. All the children gazed with pride and delight on their new home.

It was a lovely old place, three hundred years old, long and rambling, with queer tall chimneys, and brown beams that showed in the walls.

The windows were leaded, and there were green shutters outside each. The old front door was made of heavy brown oak, and had a curious little thatched porch above it, in which stood an old bench. Not far from the front door was the old well, rather like a Jack and Jill well. The water was not used now, but in the olden days there had been a bucket to let up and down.

Little gabled windows jutted from the thatch. The children stared up at them, wondering which windows belonged to their bedrooms. How lovely to peep out from those little windows in the early morning, and see the green fields and distant woods and silver streams!

Many streams flowed in and about Willow Farm. Along the banks grew the many many willows that gave the farm its pretty name. In the spring-time the pussy willows broke into gold when the catkins became the lovely golden palm. Other kinds of willows grew there too, and the bees murmured in them all day long later on in the spring-time.

“Daddy! Hurry up!” cried Rory. “Oh, let’s get to the farm quickly!”

The car ran down a winding lane, with high hedges each side—then up on to the hillside beside a gurgling stream. Then into a big gateway, whose great wooden gates always stood open.

And there they were at the farmhouse door! Behind the farmhouse were the farm-buildings—great barns with old old roofs, big sheds, stables and pens. The farmyard lay at the back too, and here the hens pecked about all day long.

The children tumbled out of the car in great excitement. They rushed to the door—but it was shut. Their father came to open it with a very large key. The children laughed to see it.

The door was thrown open and the children gazed into a large hall, with great beams in the rather low ceiling, and red, uneven tiles on the floor. Beyond lay open doors leading to the fine old kitchen and other rooms. How marvellous to explore them all while they were empty, and to arrange everything in them!

Everyone trooped in, chattering and exclaiming in delight. The place was spotless, for two village-women had been in to rub and scrub the whole week. The windows shone. The floors shone. The old oak cupboards, built into the walls, glowed with polish and age.

“Mummy! This farmhouse has such a happy, friendly feeling!” said Benjy, slipping his arm through his mother’s. “People have been happy here. I can feel it.”

So could they all. It was lovely to stand there and feel the happiness of the old house around them. It seemed glad to have them, glad to welcome them.

“Some houses have a horrid feeling in them,” said Sheila. “I remember once going to see somebody in an old house down at the seaside, Mummy—and I was glad to come away. It made me feel unhappy. But other houses feel so content and friendly—like this one.”

“Yes—I think people have loved Willow Farm very much, and have worked hard and been happy here,” said their mother. “I hope we shall work hard too and be happy. It takes a lot of time and hard work to make a farm pay, you know, children. We must all do our bit.”

“Of course!” said Rory. “I’m going to work like anything! I learnt quite a lot on Uncle’s farm last year, I can tell you!”

“Let’s go all over the house!” said Penny running to the stairs. They ran up to a wide landing. There were seven rooms upstairs, one fine big room that their mother and father were going to have, one big room for the children’s own playroom, a small room for Rory, a tiny one for Benjy, a bigger one for the two girls, a spare-room for friends, and a room for Harriet, the cook, who was coming in the next day.

And over the bedrooms was a queer attic, right under the thatch itself. It was reached by a funny iron ladder that slid up and down. The children went up it in excitement.

“Oooh!” said Penny, when she saw the dark cobwebby loft. “It smells queer. Oh look—this is the thatch itself. Put your torch on, Rory—have you got it?”

Rory had. He took it out of his pocket and switched it on. The children gazed round the loft. They could only stand upright where the roof arched. They touched the thatch. It was made of straw. There was nothing between them and the sky but the thick straw—no plaster, no tiles—just the straw.

“The thatcher hasn’t finished thatching the kitchen end of the house,” said Sheila. “I heard Daddy say so. We’ll be able to see exactly how he does it. Isn’t it fun to be going to live in a thatched house? We shall be lovely and warm in the winter-time!”

The children climbed down the loft ladder. Rory slid it back into place.

“I do like all these black beams,” he said, looking round. “I think they look exciting. Daddy says they came from old wooden ships. When the ships were broken up, the beams were used in houses—so once upon a time all the wooden part of Willow Farm was sailing on the sea!”

“I like to think that,” said Benjy, touching the black oak beam near him. “Funny old beam—once you knew the fishes in the sea, and you creaked as great waves splashed over you. Now you live in a house, and listen to people’s feet going up and down the stairs.”

The others laughed. “You do say odd things, Benjy,” said Rory. “Come on—let’s go down. I want to see the rooms below too.”

Down they went. The big dark hall they had already seen. There was a large room that Mummy said would be a lounge or living-room. It had an enormous stone fireplace. Rory looked up it. He could stand on the hearth and look right up the chimney, and see the sky at the top. It was really enormous.

“I could climb up this chimney!” said Rory, in surprise.

“Little boys used to,” said Daddy, with a laugh. “Yes—you may well stare. It’s quite true. In the days when most houses had these big fire-places and chimneys, little boys used to be forced to go up them to sweep them.”

“I do wish I could climb up and sweep it when it needs it,” said Rory, longingly.

“You might want to do it for fun, but you wouldn’t want to do it every day of your life!” said his father.

The children went into the next room. It was a long dining-room, panelled with oak. “I wonder if there are any sliding panels!” said Benjy, at once. He loved reading stories of hidden treasure, and in the last one he had read there had been a most exciting sliding oak panel, behind which a safe had been hidden.

“The one over there by the door looks as if it might slide!” said his father. Benjy stared at it. Yes—it really didn’t seem to fit quite as well as the others. It might slide back! In great excitement he tried it.

And it did slide back! Very silently, very neatly it slid back behind the next panel. Benjy gave a yell.

“Daddy! Look!”

And then everyone laughed—for behind the sliding panel were four electric light switches! The people who had lived at Willow Farm before had hidden their switches there, rather than spoil the look of the panelling by the door! So poor Benjy didn’t find hidden treasure or anything exciting.

The kitchen was a very big room indeed, with plenty of leaded windows, opening on to the farmyard at the back. It had an enormous door that swung open with a creak. The sinking sun streamed through it.

“It’s got the biggest fireplace of all!” said Sheila.

“Yes—many a fine meal has been cooked there!” said her father. “And look here—at the side is a funny bread-oven, going right into the thick wall. Harriet will be able to bake her bread there!”

“I like the uneven floor,” said Penny, dancing about over it. “All these nice red tiles, higgledy-piggledy. And I like the great old beams across the ceiling. Just look at all the hooks and nails, Mummy!”

Everyone gazed up at the big beams, and saw the rows of hooks and nails there.

“That is where people have hung up hams and onions, herbs and spices,” said Mummy. “It’s a shame to see all the kitchen beams empty and bare—but never mind, soon Harriet will use them, and then our kitchen will look a most exciting place!”

Off the kitchen was a great cool room with stone shelves—the dairy. Here the milk was set for the cream to form, and the eggs were washed, graded and counted. The butter-churn was there too. All the children tried their hands at it.

Here the milk was set for the cream to form.

“Oh Mummy! Won’t it be fun to bring in the eggs and sort them, and to make the butter, and see the cream coming on the big bowls of milk!” cried Penny. She danced about again and fell over an uneven tile in the floor.

“Well, it’s a good thing you weren’t carrying eggs just at that moment!” said Sheila. “That would have been the end of them!”

There was just one more room downstairs—a tiny cubby-hole of a room, panelled in black oak—and Daddy said that was to be his study and nobody was to use it except himself.

“Here I shall keep my accounts and find out if Willow Farm is paying or not!” he said.

“Of course it will pay!” cried Rory.

“Farming isn’t so easy as all that,” said his father. “You wait and see!”