The Little White Horse Read Online Free Page B

been panelled with wood, as in Miss Heliotrope’s room, but the silver-grey stone was so lovely that Maria was glad. The ceiling was vaulted, and delicate ribbings of stone curved over Maria’s head like the branches of a tree, meeting at the highest point of the ceiling in a carved representation of a sickle moon surrounded by stars.
    There was no carpet upon the silvery-oak floor, but a little white sheepskin lay beside the bed, so that Maria’s bare toes should meet something warm and soft when they went floorwards of a morning. The bed was a little four-poster, hung with pale-blue silk curtains embroidered with silver stars, of the same material as the window curtains, and spread with a patchwork quilt made of exquisite squares of velvet and silk of all colours of the rainbow, gay and lovely.
    There was very little furniture in the room, just a couple of silvery-oak chests for Maria’s clothes, a small round mirror hung upon the wall above one of them, and a stool with a silver ewer and basin upon it. But Maria felt that she wanted no more than this. Heavy furniture such as Miss Heliotrope had, would have ruined this exquisite little room. Nor did she mind that the fireplace was the tiniest she had ever seen, deeply recessed in the wall. It was big enough for the fire of pine-cones and apple wood that burned in it, filling the room with fragrance.
    But when Maria started to explore her room she found that it was not without luxuries. Over the fireplace was a shelf, and on it stood a blue wooden box filled with dainty biscuits with sugar flowers on them, in case she should feelhungry between meals. And beside the fireplace stood a big basket filled with more logs and pine-cones — enough to keep her fire burning all through the night.
    It was all perfect. It was the room Maria would have designed for herself if she had had the knowledge and skill. For she realized that very much knowledge and skill had gone to the making of this room. Fine craftsmen had carved the moon and stars and fashioned the furniture, and an exquisite needlewoman had made the patchwork quilt and embroidered the curtains.
    This way and that she stepped, putting her pelisse and bonnet and muff away in one of the chests, smoothing her hair before the mirror, washing her hands in the water that she poured out of the little silver ewer into the silver basin, touching all the beautiful things with the tips of her fingers, as though caressing them, saying thank you in her heart to the people who had made them, and whoever it was who had arranged them. Was it Sir Benjamin? But it couldn’t have been, because he couldn’t have got through the door.
    A knock on the door, and the startled voice of Miss Heliotrope outside, reminded her that her governess, with her height and her hoop, would not be able to get through the door either, and in spite of her love for Miss Hellotrope she felt a little thrill of glee . . . This room was indeed her own . . . When she opened the door there was a mischievous dimple in her left cheek that had never been there before.
    ‘My dear! My dear!’ lamented Miss Heliotrope, who had now removed her outdoor garments and was wearing her mob-cap and her black shawl folded across her chest, ‘what a ridiculous little door! I shall never be able to get inside your room!’
    ‘No!’ giggled Maria.
    ‘But what shall we do when you’re ill?’ asked poor Miss Heliotrope.
    ‘I shan’t
be
ill,’ said Maria. ‘Not here!’
    ‘I certainly think that the air here is salubrious,’agreed Miss Heliotrope, and then her eyes fell upon the inside of Maria’s room and widened with horror. ‘What an extraordinary little place! So very odd! Oh, my poor darling Maria! However are you to sleep in a place like this? It’ll give you the creeps!’
    ‘I like it,’ said Maria.
    And Miss Heliotrope, looking at Maria’s rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes and that entirely new dimple, could not doubt that she spoke the truth. And