The Box of Delights Read Online Free Page A

the same moment the woman shook the plaid back from her face, so that Kay
saw a pair of eyes so bright that they seemed to burn in the head. She looked keenly at Kay. At the instant there was nobody very near. Kay looked at her. His heart beat as he said in a low voice,
‘The Wolves are Running.’ She looked hard at him, gave a very, very slight nod, and, as Kay went on into the shop to buy the muffins, she slipped away sideways, walking very swiftly
with an erect bearing. An old woman coming out of the shop with a basket shoved Kay aside, so that he lost sight of her at that point. She had moved into the thickest of the crowd in the
market-place.
    ‘Well, it’s very odd,’ Kay thought to himself. ‘I wonder what on earth he meant by “the Wolves are Running”, and why it was so important that she should
know?’
    When he had bought his muffins, he stood on Bob’s steps for a moment trying to get the packet into his pocket. He looked out with relish at the street, thinking how good it was to be home
for the holidays. ‘Well, I’m blest,’ he said. ‘There are some more of those Police Dogs . . . working a cold scent.’
    Indeed, some Alsatian dogs were at the cross-roads, testing the air with their noses, swaying their heads with the motion of a weaving horse, as though trying to catch a difficult scent. There
were three or four of them. They padded about, casting this way and that, sometimes lifting, sometimes dropping their noses; somehow he did not like the look of them.
    ‘I wonder who it is who has Alsatians?’ he said to Caroline Louisa.
    ‘Oh, a good many people have them,’ she said. ‘I never like them: they are too like wolves.’
    ‘Yes, they are like wolves, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘Are they the sort of dog that they have as Police Dogs?’ But this Caroline Louisa did not know.

 

Chapter II
    W hen they reached Seekings, there were the Joneses; Jemima very smart, Maria very untidy, Susan like a little fairy and Peter, a good honest sort
of chap.
    At lunch, Kay said, ‘What asses we were not to ask that Punch and Judy man to come here to give his show. Don’t you think we might go down and find him and ask him to come? Do
let’s; we could have him in the study.’
    ‘Yes, certainly, you can have him, if you can find him, and if he will come.’
    ‘Then I vote we have tea at about half-past four,’ Kay said, ‘and have the Punch and Judy man at about half-past five, if we can get him, then.’
    ‘I do wish,’ Maria said, ‘that we could hear of a gang of robbers in the neighbourhood, come down to burgle while people are at dinner, and hear all their plans, and be ready
waiting for them and then have a battle with revolvers.’
    ‘I hope we may get through Christmas without that,’ Caroline Louisa said.
    ‘Christmas ought to be brought up to date,’ Maria said; ‘it ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.’
    After lunch, Kay went out with Peter to look for the Punch and Judy man. It was a dark, lowering afternoon, with a whine in the wind, and little dry pellets of snow blowing horizontally. In the
gutters, these had begun to fall into little white layers and heaps.
    ‘I say, it is a foul day,’ Peter said. ‘I’ll go back and get a coat. You go on; I’ll catch you up. Which way will you go?’
    ‘Down towards Dr Gubbinses,’ Kay said. ‘But you’d better ask for the Punch and Judy man: and look for him, not for me.’
    Kay went on alone into the street. He thought that he had never been out in a more evil-looking afternoon. The market-place had emptied, people had packed their booths, and wheeled away their
barrows. As he went down towards Dr Gubbinses, the carved beasts in the woodwork of the old houses seemed crouching against the weather. Darkness was already closing in. There was a kind of glare
in the evil heaven. The wind moaned about the lanes. All the sky above the roofs was grim with menace, and the darkness of