The Children's Book Read Online Free Page A

managed not to. It would have been most insulting.
    Olive Wellwood turned the question to Philip
    “What do you
want
to do?”
    “Work,” said Philip. It was an easy answer and it was largely right.
    “Not to go back?”
    “No.”
    “I think—if Major Cain agrees—you should come home now, with me and Tom, for the weekend. I imagine he has no thought of prosecutingyou for trespass. This weekend is Midsummer Eve, and we are having a midsummer party at our house in the country. We are a large family, and friendly, and one more or less makes no difference.” She turned to Prosper Cain.
    “And I hope that you too will come over to Andreden from Iwade, for midsummer magic, and bring Julian, and Florence too, to join the young folk.”
    Prosper Cain bent over her hand, mentally cancelled a card party and said he would—they all would—be delighted. Tom looked at their captured boy, to see if he was pleased, but he was staring at his feet. Tom was not entirely sure about Julian coming to his party. He found him intimidating. It would be good to have Philip, if he would consent to enjoy himself. He thought of adding his voice to his mother’s, and was embarrassed, and did not.

2
    They took the train to Andreden, in the Kentish Weald, and took a fly at the station. Philip sat opposite Tom and his mother, who leaned against each other. Philip’s eyes kept closing, but Olive was explaining things to him, to which he knew he should attend. Andred was the old British name for the forest. Andreden meant a swine pasture in the forest. Their house was called Todefright. In fact they had changed it from Todsfrith, but the change was etymologically sound. Fryth, in the old language of the Weald, was a word for scrubland on the edge of a forest. The local Kentish word for that was “fright.” They supposed Tod meant toad. Philip asked stolidly, were there any toads, then? Lots, said Tom. Big fat ones. Spawn in the duckpond. Frogs too, and newts, and tiddlers.
    They drove between hawthorn and hazel hedges, along curling lanes between overhanging woods of beech, and birch, and yew. Philip had felt the shift in the air as the train pulled out of the London pall. You could see the edge of the darkness. It was not as bad as the thick dark air full of hot grit and melted chemicals that poured from the tall chimneys and bottle ovens in Burslem. His lungs felt nervous and overdilated. Olive and Tom did not take the fresh air for granted. They exclaimed ritually about how good it was to get out of the dirt. Philip felt dirt was engrained in him.
    Todefright was an old Kentish farmhouse, built of stone and timber. It had meadows and a river before it, woods rising uphill behind it, and a wide view to the high edge of the Weald across the river. The house had been tactfully extended and modernised by Lethaby, in the Arts and Crafts style, respecting (and also creating) odd-shaped windows and eaves, twisting stairs, nooks, crannies and exposed roof-beams. The front door, solid oak, opened into a modern version of a mediaeval hall, with settles and alcoves, a large hand-crafted dining-table, and a long dresser, shining with lustreware. Beyond this were a (small) panelled library, which was also Olive’s study, and a billiard-room, which was Humphry’s, when he was at home. There were many outhouses—kitchens, sculleries, guest cottages, stables with haylofts, inhabited by scratching hens and nesting swallows. A wide, turning staircase rose out of the hall to the upper floors.
    A large number of people, adults and children, came running and strolling to welcome Olive and Tom. Philip took them in. A short,dark-haired woman in a loose mulberry-coloured dress, printed with brilliant nasturtiums, was carrying a baby—maybe a year old—whom she handed to Olive to be kissed and hugged, even before Olive had taken off her coat. Two servants, one motherly, one girlish, stood by to take the coats. Two young ladies in identical indigo aprons, long