The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge

Author:Elizabeth Goudge
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2001-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

5

Maria had not driven this way since the night of her arrival, and she looked about her eagerly. It looked very different in daylight; but the glades that wound away between the trees were just as mysterious, and it would not have surprised her if she had seen the little white horse galloping up one of them. But she didn’t, and presently she left off looking and attended to Digweed’s conversation, for he had enjoyed himself at the market-town and wanted to tell her all about it. He had bought a new spade and a new scythe, ten new mousetraps, a bottle of cough mixture for his own use, a pig, a canary in a cage, an enormous meatbone, a bag of biscuits, a bunch of radishes, a paper bag full of bull’s-eyes and another full of bright pink boiled sweets, a cod’s head, and a large packet of tobacco. It was rather a noisy journey, for the pig was squeaking, the canary was singing at the top of its voice, the mousetraps leaped and rattled at every bump in the road, and the cod’s head had the sort of smell that one could almost hear. But Maria enjoyed the drive, in spite of the cod’s head, for Digweed was so kind and companionable and she loved him very much.

Sir Benjamin and Miss Heliotrope were walking together in the formal garden, and Digweed stopped the gig, so that Maria could get down and join them. When she was down he handed her the pink boiled sweets.

‘For you, little Mistress,’ he said very shyly.

And then, getting purple in the face, he handed the bull’s-eyes to Miss Heliotrope. ‘For you, Ma’am,’ he said. ‘I knows you be partial to peppermint.’

And then he handed the tobacco to Sir Benjamin, and drove quickly off before any of them had time to say thank you properly.

‘Always brings us presents from town,’ chuckled Sir Benjamin as the three of them strolled back towards the manor. ‘That canary, I think, is for Marmaduke Scarlet. Marmaduke is fond of birds, but his pets are apt to be rather short-lived, owing to Zachariah.’

Miss Heliotrope, Maria thought, was looking a little agitated, and Sir Benjamin now explained why.

‘I am taking Miss Heliotrope for a little walk in order to calm her nerves,’ he said. ‘For this morning Marmaduke decided to make himself known to her. Instead of drawing her curtains, and placing her jug of hot water in her basin in his usual noiseless fashion, which does not awaken the lightest sleeper, he did it so noisily that she woke up and saw him.’

‘It was a shock,’ quavered poor Miss Heliotrope. ‘A great shock. No man, except of course my father, has ever set foot in my bedchamber.’

‘Marmaduke Scarlet is scarcely a man, Miss Heliotrope,’ comforted Sir Benjamin. ‘He is — well — Marmaduke Scarlet. And his revealing himself to you is an enormous compliment, for as a general rule his dislike of the female sex causes him to avoid women like the plague.

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