Rose 3: Rose and the Magician's Mask Read Online Free PDF Page A

the size of my hand. Well, find it, boy! Go!’
    It was easy for Mr Fountain to say it, but simply knowing what the book looked like didn’t actually help. Except that now they also knew that it was tiny, and might have been pushed to the back of a shelf.

    *
    ‘Perhaps you’ve lent it to someone, sir?’ Freddie asked wearily, as he shoved the last book back into its place. ‘It isn’t here.’
    ‘I’d remember, I’m sure,’ Mr Fountain muttered, massaging his temples with his fingers and scowling. ‘Where is the dratted thing?’
    ‘You’ll have to go back to scrying.’ Gus swiped a paw over one of his ears with a triumphant air. Then he gave a little sniggery purr. ‘Perhaps you could scry for the book.’
    ‘Oh, out, all of you!’ Mr Fountain snapped, hurling a book at Gus – or at least close enough to make it look like he wanted it to hit the white cat. Gus jumped gracefully from the windowsill, and the book slid, spine sagging, down the glass.
    As Rose looked back, the master was picking it up, stroking it tenderly, and the pages were sealing themselves back together. He laid it on the tallest pile, and sank back in the chair, staring out at the darkness again.

THREE
    Even though Rose knew the mask was still missing, and they had no idea where Gossamer and Venn had got to, and that the master was fretting away in his study, she couldn’t help singing to herself as she dusted the rooms, and blackleaded the drawing-room grate. The whole house seemed to have been infected with Christmas, as though the garlands of greenery all the way up the banisters had brought it with them. It was an entirely new feeling for Rose. It wafted through her every time she caught her reflection in the gleaming leaves, or sniffed the exotic spices that Mrs Jones had been mixing into the mincemeat. It was Christmas Eve, already!
    Christmas at St Bridget’s orphanage had dependedentirely on the generosity of benefactors, and they tended to give bales of cotton for new pinafores, instead of Christmas pudding and goose. The Christmas Rose remembered with intense pleasure had been the one where an eccentric old lady, who worshipped at the church the little orphans marched to in crocodile every Sunday, had given Miss Lockwood an enormous reel of maroon velvet ribbon. She had said it would be nice for the dear children to have hair ribbons for Christmas. There was enough for each of them to have a large bow, she had suggested, and it was clear that she expected to see the girls wearing it at the Christmas service.
    It was lucky that there happened not to have been an outbreak of lice for quite a while, and most of the orphans had enough hair for a ribbon to be attached to. Miss Lockwood had gone about muttering about ridiculous luxuries, and how it would have been better to have had the money, but the orphans had walked to church preening. Rose had treasured that ribbon until it finally fell apart.
    Christmases at the Fountain house, it was becoming very clear, were an entirely different kettle of fish, or perhaps oven of goose. The geese were in the chill marble-floored larder, hanging up most pathetically by their ugly yellow feet. The puddings had been madewith great ceremony a few weeks before. Bella and Freddie had even been invited – although suspiciously – down to the kitchen to stir the mixture, and cast in sixpences, and a scattering of tiny porcelain dolls.
    The grocer’s shop that Rose was sent to so often had been full of Christmas goods for weeks. Boxes of dates were piled high on the counter, and there had been so many interesting additions to the jars of sweets that Bill took a good ten minutes longer than usual to finish his errands.
    Rose didn’t complain, for she took as long as he did, staring at the centrepiece of the sweet counter, which the grocer’s daughter told them proudly had been sent for all the way from Bohemia. ‘Which is a dreadful long way. Near to Russia, and the Americas, you know. It came