Hills End Read Online Free PDF Page B

was at the bottom of it, the big show-off.
    â€˜It’s hot,’ said Paul, ‘isn’t it?’
    Adrian shrugged. ‘Cold’s the word, more like it. Talk about the cold shoulder!’
    â€˜Well, you’ve asked for it,’ Paul said angrily.
    â€˜Please,’ appealed Frances. ‘We’ve all been silly. Don’t let’s make it worse. Mr Tobias told us to make the best of it and I think that was good advice. Why spoil Miss Godwin’s day along with everyone else’s?’
    â€˜That’s right,’ agreed Butch.
    â€˜Where is Mr Tobias, anyway?’ asked Paul. ‘He mightn’t have even found Miss Godwin.’
    â€˜I saw him go down to the mill five minutes ago.’ Adrian took his first pace up the road. ‘Let’s get started, eh? I want to get to those caves and listen to your apology?’
    Gussie flared in her loyalty to Paul. ‘You’re the one that’ll be apologizing, Adrian Fiddler. You’re just a big fibber.’
    â€˜Them’s fightin’ words,’ squealed Harvey, shaping up. ‘Who wants a fight?’
    â€˜Please, please,’ said Frances.
    â€˜Yes, pipe down, Junior,’ growled Paul. ‘You, too, Gussie. We don’t want Miss Godwin to know we’ve been scrapping.’
    â€˜That’s right,’ said Butch.
    They started up the road towards the schoolhouse, not very friendly one towards the other, in a straggling line.
    â€˜What are we going to tell Miss Godwin, anyway?’ said Maisie mildly. Maisie was like that. She often came out with the awkward question, probably because she took more time off to think.
    Adrian faltered in his stride, and stopped. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What?’
    â€˜Golly, I don’t know,’ said Paul. ‘We—we can’t tell her the truth. She’d feel awful.’
    â€˜Any more awful than we feel?’ suggested Frances.
    â€˜That’s different,’ said Paul. ‘She’s bound to find out sooner or later, but not now. She’ll find out when we get up there and can’t find the drawings. I reckon that’ll be soon enough.’
    â€˜But there are drawings.’ Adrian was getting angry again. ‘I told you I wasn’t a liar. The drawings are there. You’re not fighting fairly. You won’t even believe me. You won’t even give me a chance.’
    â€˜I believe you,’ said Frances, ‘and Paul isn’t fair. He’s being very unkind.’ It hurt Frances to say that, but she had to be honest. ‘If you don’t give Adrian a chance to prove himself, Paul, you’ll be even more in the wrong.’
    â€˜I’m not in the wrong now. I could punch him in the jaw, the great big show-off.’
    Harvey started shaping up again, grinning all over his face, and Butch backed away, a couple of quiet paces down the hill, but Maisie saved the day. Maisie had asked the question and she answered it. While everyone else had been arguing, she had worked it out.
    â€˜I think,’ said Maisie, ‘you’d better tell her, Adrian, that we’d planned it as a surprise for her, but it wasn’t until this morning that we could persuade our parents to let us go with her. It’s not a real fib, you know, is it?’
    â€˜That’s right,’ said Butch.
    Perhaps it wasn’t a real fib at that.
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    Miss Godwin heard them coming and continued to read her book, or continued to make out that she was reading it. She was very nervous. For the first time in her life she was frightened of a few children—not of what they could do to her, but of what they had probably done already. She didn’t even try to believe Mr Tobias’s story any longer. Perhaps a little of it might have been true, but she was sure its whole meaning had been changed. Perhaps the whole thing had been staged. Perhaps these children had been forced by their parents to go with her