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

the uncarpeted stairs, feeling distinctly unseasonal. The dream hadn’t helped. She fetched her firelighting box from the kitchen – which was empty, though she could hear Mrs Jones and Sarah fussing in the larder, probably fetching the geese – and tramped back up the stairs to light Bella’s fire. She was leaped upon as soon as she opened the door by a tiny devil in a pink lace-trimmed nightgown. ‘Rose! I have a present for you!’ Bella sang excitedly.
    Rose gazed at her in bewilderment. She had knownthat Bella was excited about Christmas, and giving presents, but she hadn’t expected her to be like this.
    ‘Open it, open it!’ Bella thrust a prettily wrapped parcel into her hands, and jumped about while she untied the ribbons. Inside was a china doll, the size for a doll’s house, dressed in a neat sprigged cotton dress, white apron, and a cap. It held a tiny sweeping brush, which was tied onto its wrist with a ribbon. It even had middling-brown hair, like Rose.
    Rose had never owned a doll. She almost didn’t know what to do with one, although Princess Jane had forced her to play with the enormous doll’s house that took up most of one wall of the princesses’ drawing room.
    ‘Do you like it? Do you like it?’ Bella couldn’t stop giggling.
    ‘Yes, miss.’ Rose stroked the china features admiringly, smiling at the little rosebud mouth.
    ‘It’s going to be very useful!’ Bella said, and she collapsed into giggles again. Rose shook her head. ‘Hold her for me, Miss Bella, while I light the fire, won’t you? She’s too clean to be real, you know,’ she added, smiling. ‘I don’t want coal dust on her.’
    Rose kept the little doll tucked in her apron pocket, as she dashed about the kitchen that morning, and every so often she put her hand in to stroke the pretty cotton dress.
    Mrs Jones was sleeping in her chair in the corner of the kitchen, recovering from sending up the most lavish meal that Rose had ever seen – most of which, she had been promised by Bill, would be coming back downstairs for the servants to eat – and Rose was admiring the little doll again, when there was a volley of shouting heard at the gate at the top of the rear steps. Two boys were standing there with a donkey cart, neatly painted with The London Toy Emporium .
    ‘Delivery!’ one of the boys bawled, when he saw Rose peering up at him.
    ‘Run up and let them in the front door, Rose,’ Mrs Jones said, straightening her cap and sighing. ‘It’ll be something else for Miss Bella, or that Freddie. Spoilt to bits, those children…’
    But when Rose opened the front door, the boys staggered up the steps with an enormous parcel wrapped in sacking, and handed her an envelope. It was inscribed in delicate black ink: Rose .
    ‘Oh, it’s come, it’s come!’ Bella ran out of the dining room, in her best Talish lace dress, curls flying. ‘Open it, Rose!’
    So there, in the middle of the black-and-white tiled hallway, Rose undid the wrappings, and found her Christmas present from Princess Jane.
    Her very own doll’s house.

    My dearest Rose,
    Papa assures me that a suitable recompense will be found for your unusual service. And of course, it is the duty of any loyal subject to serve me in any way I should require. However, I wished to send you a token of my appreciation more personal than ten gold sovereigns and a framed picture of myself, which I imagine is what Papa’s secretary is planning. I have conversed with Isabella upon this subject, and we felt that since you enjoyed playing with my doll’s house so much, and since it played such an important role in the whole affair, it would be appropriate to send you one of your own.
    With my most sincere wishes for the festive season,
    Jane (Princess)
    Rose sat back on her heels and stared. The doll’s house was huge. Not by the standards of Princess Jane’s, of course, but still. It was painted pale blue, but otherwise it looked rather like Mr Fountain’s house –