Octavia Read Online Free Page A

years.
    ‘Very well then,’ Papa said. ‘It’s settled. Just be sure not to worry your mother.’
    But as the days went by Mama didn’t seem to be worrying about anything. She was just cheerfully busy. First, she ordered a removal van and escorted two strange men in overalls all over the house, explaining things to them while they made notes in a dog-eared pocketbook. Then she spent days and days packing all Papa’s books into enormous tea chests, and checking while Molly and Mary emptied the linen cupboard and folded up their clothes and stacked piles and piles of things into the travelling trunk. And then she was onhand while Mrs Wilkins took everything out of the cupboards in the kitchen and wrapped all the china in newspaper until there was nothing left on the dresser, and when that was done Mama went from room to room tying labels on all the furniture, as happily and easily as if she’d been doing it all her life. Now and then she even broke into a song. And now here they were in a cab smelling of leather and horses, clopping through the streets to a place called Hampstead, because that was where they were going to live. It was right near the school and next to a fine common called Hampstead Heath, where there were ponds and trees and they could go for some splendid walks, and a town where there were lots of shops that sold everything you could possibly think of. Mama was so excited the tip of her nose was pink.
    ‘Here we are,’ she said, leaning forward to look out of the window. ‘This is the street.’
    It was a very long street built on the side of a hill and the houses were all very grand, three stories high with great sloping roofs covered in grey tiles and huge windows – not straight flat ones like they’d had in their old house, but curved into bays with three window frames in every one – and a white porch over the front door with two white pillars to hold it up.
    ‘Isn’t it splendid?’ Mama said, admiring it. ‘What do you think of it?’
    Octavia looked at it too. ‘It’s not like our old house.’
    ‘No,’ Mama agreed as the driver reined in his horse. ‘It isn’t. This is a new house with a bathroom and a garden and everything just as it ought to be. We’re only the second family to live in it. Think of that. It will be much, much nicer than our old house.’
    It was certainly much, much bigger. And very grand. Therewas a path of black and white tiles leading to the front door, like a long chequer board, and the door itself was like a stained glass window in a church, all reds and blues and golds in oblongs and diamonds and shapes like flattened flowers. But there wasn’t time to admire it because the removal van had drawn up beside the gate and one of the removal men was carrying Papa’s great leather chair into the house, holding it in front of him and staggering under the weight of it. Octavia and Mama stood together on the little front lawn while he struggled with it into the hall, and after a while she saw a shape approaching from the darkness at the end of the hall and there was Aunt Maud. She was wearing a thick holland apron and her hair had fallen out of its bun and was curling in damp strands onto her cheeks.
    ‘Such a to-do,’ she said, as they stepped into the hall. ‘I don’t know where they think they’ve put the tea chests. They’re all over the shop. I can’t find a thing.’
    ‘Well, I’m here now,’ Mama said. ‘It’ll be better with the two of us. Where are the children?’
    ‘I put them in the garden,’ Aunt Maud said. ‘We don’t want them under our feet all the time.’
    ‘Very sensible,’ Mama agreed. ‘Octavia can go and join them, can’t you, Tavy? Is Baby there too?’
    ‘All the lot of them,’ Aunt Maud said. ‘One thing I will say. Mrs Wilkins has done marvels in the kitchen. Come and see. That’s the back door, Tavy. Just go through.’
    It led into a garden like a little park. Octavia could hardly believe her luck. There was