National Velvet Read Online Free Page B

the railings. The front door was open and Mr. Brown,bareheaded, was enjoying his after breakfast pipe.
    Â Â Â Â  “My girl,” he said when he saw Meredith, “yer fifteen, annt you?”
    Â Â Â Â  Meredith nodded and stood still before him.
    Â Â Â Â  “Seven years you’ve saddled that pony and put her bits of leather on her, and to this day you onny hang ’em round her like blind cords. She’s got a sore’ll take a week to heal.”
    Â Â Â Â  Miss Ada looked at Meredith with smug reproach.
    Â Â Â Â  “If it was canaries . . .” muttered Velvet, dabbing with a rag.
    Â Â Â Â  Meredith glowered at Velvet as she passed her to go in for her school books.
    Â Â Â Â  Inside the sitting-room Mi was telling Donald to get on with his porridge. It was cold porridge, turned out of a cup. There was a hole in the top and treacle was poured inside. Donald was laying a sap from the side in to the centre.
    Â Â Â Â  “You aren’t eating what you cut out,” said Mi, cleaning a rat-trap with emery paper and the rust covering the cloth in showers.
    Â Â Â Â  “I am,” said Donald. But he wasn’t.
    Â Â Â Â  “Donald done yet?” called Mrs. Brown. “I’m washing the plates.”
    Â Â Â Â  “He’s fiddling,” said Mi.
    Â Â Â Â  Mrs. Brown came to the door. “You get down and bring that porridge in here,” she said as she rubbed a plate.
    Â Â Â Â  The sweetness of Donald’s face remained unchanged.He watched the treacle run out down the sap. “I dooon’t . . .” he drawled.
    Â Â Â Â  Mrs. Brown gave no second chances. It was her strength.
    Â Â Â Â  She took Donald in one great arm and the plate of porridge in the other and removed him. The sweetness of his face was still unchanged.
    Â Â Â Â  “He’ll never eat that,” said Meredith. “You’re sitting on my atlas.”
    Â Â Â Â  Mi pulled it out from beneath him. “He never eats anything he’s fiddled with,” said Mi, “because it’s turned into something else in his mind. Hark to them hammering . . .”
    Â Â Â Â  “You’d never think, to look at the Green, that there’d be a Fair in twenty-four hours. Just a lot of old sticks and men hitting them in.”
    Â Â Â Â  “It’ll be ready. You won’t be though.”
    Â Â Â Â  “I’m just going. Last day. Holidays to-morrow.”
    Â Â Â Â  “All four hanging round the house all day. Life’ll be a joke.”
    Â Â Â Â  “This bit a millet, Mi,” said Meredith, dragging a length out of the sideboard drawer. “Stick it in for the male, Mi,
please
. . . .”
    Â Â Â Â  “Them birds . . .” Meredith blocked the light in the doorway and was gone.

    Â Â Â Â  “Blast and blast and hell . . .” said Mi softly. He had caught his finger in the rat-trap.
    Â Â Â Â  “Hell,” said Donald softly in the doorway. His silver hair hung in a lock over his forehead. His eyes werefilm-eyes and blue, with film-lashes. His platinum-blond, Hollywood head was set on a green jersey. His bottom was bare and his pants hung down unbuttoned.
    Â Â Â Â  “You’ve got off your pot!” said Mi threateningly. “Get on back.” Donald disappeared again into the inner room, his behinds gleaming like the white polish of two peeled and hard-boiled eggs.
    Â Â Â Â  Edwina went in to Worthing for a piano lesson. Mally, Meredith and Velvet waded through a last day of grammar and map reading behind the walls of the village school. The children’s voices droned behind the windows and the hammering on the Village Green increased. At break the children watched the hammers from the corner of the asphalt yard. The greasy pole was up,