Under the Green Hill Read Online Free Page A

wouldn’t sleep for another twelve hours at least. They felt almost as though they were dreaming, sleepwalking through a crowd of strangers, looking for the one who had come to collect them.
    Dickie fumbled in his bag and retrieved a small contraption, which he held to his mouth and quickly inhaled.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Silly asked.
    â€œIt’s for my asthma,” Dickie replied in a small voice. “I don’t feel an attack coming on, but since it’s new air here, I figured I better be careful.”
    Silly, who didn’t know much about asthma but was intrigued by the word “attack,” began to press him for details on his condition as they went through customs and looked around for whoever was supposed to meet them. Some of the passengers marched straight on, as though their future was perfectly mapped out before them; some lingered at the gate, greeted by smiling and squealing loved ones. But no one showed any interest in the children.
    Finn, straddling a chair off to one side, was ostentatiously thumbing through his new checkbook. “If no one comes in ten minutes,” he said, “I’m getting a hotel. Someplace modern enough to have electricity.”
    Just then Meg saw a figure striding, almost charging, down the nearly empty corridor. He was tall and dark and seemed to be moving in shadow even under the fluorescent light of the airport. At first glance, Meg thought he must be rather old, fifty or more, for though she could not yet see his features there hung about him a dourness she associated with age, and though he moved quickly his shoulders seemed somewhat hunched, as if he might be hiding an old pain. He wore high boots that looked as if they belonged outdoors, and the low heels clicked as he walked straight toward them.
    â€œI’m late,” he said in a gruff, gravelly voice, not apologizing but almost as if he was challenging them to object. “But not very. You’re the children?” He looked them up and down with no sign of approval, and Meg saw that he was much younger than she had first thought, perhaps not even thirty. His hair was wild, looking as if it had been chopped with a knife, and his eyes were a peculiar light brown that Meg would almost have called orange, if she’d thought it was possible for anyone to have orange eyes. They looked like a fox’s eyes, but the rest of him made her think of a dark, shaggy wolf.
    â€œI’m t’ take you to the Rookery,” he said. He didn’t seem very friendly.
    â€œIs it a long drive?” Rowan inquired politely, as the man of the family. But their chauffeur looked around at the children, seeming to take a long time counting. At last he said, “There’s more’n four of you. Supposed to be four.”
    â€œWell, yes, you see…,” began Rowan, but Finn stepped forward, holding out his hand to the man as if they were both wearing suits and standing in a bank lobby.
    â€œI’m Finn Fachan. Pleased to meet you,” he said, more nicely than the others had ever heard him speak. “Dickie Rhys and I have come along for the summer. Don’t worry, it’s all been arranged.” His hand still stuck out before him, ungrasped, as the man looked disapprovingly down at him. At last the man turned away, and said only, “Come along,” without looking back to see if they were following.
    â€œThe nerve of him!” Finn said to Rowan as they set out. “Who does he think he is? He’s just a gardener or someone, or a filthy gamekeeper, or whatever they have around here. Bet I can get him sacked when I tell your relatives.”
    Somehow, Rowan didn’t think so.
    They trudged behind the man to collect their bags. Dickie and the Morgans rented little trolleys with pound coins they’d exchanged before coming, and Finn, true to his word, found an elderly man in airport livery to load his bags and push them along. But Finn balked