The Secret Passage Read Online Free Page A

happy again when Sara, who waswatching her, said, “You’ll catch it. You’re making an awful mess of your clean dress.”
    Mary looked down at her skirt and sighed. She did try to keep herself clean most of the time. After all, the clothes she was wearing were not her clothes, and she supposed it was reasonable that she should be expected to take care of them. All the same, having to keep clean was very difficult when you have never had to bother about it before. And if it was hard for her, it was harder still for John and almost impossible for Ben. He thought he would never get used to the grim expression on Mrs Epsom’s face as she took him to his bath every evening.
    â€œShe looks at me as if I’d got leprosy,” he complained, one evening just before bedtime. Mrs Epsom was giving Sara and Giles a music lesson and the Mallorys were on their own for once, sitting on the veranda. The sun was just about to disappear behind the blue hills; in a moment it would be dark.
    â€œPerhaps you have,” Mary said, and Ben giggled.
    â€œI wouldn’t mind having leprosy,” John said in a thoughtful voice. “Lepers don’t pay taxes. You know Dad is always saying how awful it is having to pay income tax.”
    â€œWhat an extraordinary idea,” Mr Epsom said. He had heard what John said as he came out on to the veranda to smoke his pipe—Mrs Epsom hated the smell of tobacco in the house. He stood looking down at the children with a puzzled expression on his fat, round face in which two small eyes seemed sunk, like two raisins in a piece of dough.
    â€œIt was only a joke,” John muttered. Mary knew that this wasn’t altogether true: John, who was rather lazy, was always thinking of ways in which he could avoid earning his living and paying income tax.
    â€œNot a very good joke, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Mr Epsom said. “How do you know lepers don’t pay taxes anyway?”
    â€œDad told me,” John said.
    â€œHmmm. For an uneducated boy, you seem to have collected a lot of curiously useless information. Your mind must be like a rag bag—full of odds and ends.”
    He laughed, but Mary and John stared at him stonily. The word ‘uneducated’, was one they had heard a great deal during the last week. Sara and Giles only lived with their parents during the holidays; during term-time, they went to a boarding school where they did English History and French and Latin. Mrs Epsom, who liked to think that her children were cleverer than anyone else’s, was always testing John and Mary to find out if they knew as much as Sara and Giles. When she found out that they didn’t know any French or Latin and hardly any History at all, she pretended to be surprised but she was secretly rather pleased. On the other hand, she wasn’t pleased, only fearfully shocked, to find that Ben couldn’t read at all.
    â€œHe didn’t want to learn yet,” Mary explained. “And Mother says it’s always better to wait until you really do want to learn something—she says it’s more fun that way.”
    â€œSo you think lessons should be fun, do you?” Mrs Epsom looked at Mary critically and gave a tired little sigh. “I’m afraid you’ve all been rather spoiled, dear. Learning isn’t fun—it’s very hard work. You’ll never get anywhere in this world unless you realise that.”
    The idea that she and John and Ben were spoiled and uneducated was quite new to Mary—and very strange. TheMallory children had lived rather a lonely, shut-off life with no one to criticise them and no other children to compare themselves with. Mary didn’t feel either spoiled or uneducated but she thought that perhaps the way you feel to yourself and the way you look to other people, were two quite different things. She decided that she didn’t really know what she was like at all. Probably Mrs