The Little White Horse Read Online Free PDF Page B

said Maria. ‘And then if any mice come he can chase them away.’
    But Wiggins thought differently. Through the open door he had caught sight of the little four-poster with the patchwork counterpane, and it struck him that it was a much softer bed than Miss Heliotrope’s . . . Also he thought he could smell biscuits . . . He trotted in, took a flying leap, and landed on the bed.
    ‘Now isn’t that touching!’ said Miss Heliotrope, tears of sensibility coming into her eyes. ‘He knows that you are his little mistress. He feels that he must guard you now that you are to sleep by yourself for the first time.’
    Wiggins, curled up on the bed, wagged his plume of a tail, and his beautiful eyes shone softly in the candlelight.
    ‘Oh, my Wiggins, aren’t you sweet!’ cried Maria, running to kiss him after Miss Heliotrope had shut the door and gone away. ‘Such a loving, devoted little Wiggins. You shall have a biscuit, Wiggins. You shall have the largest of the sugar biscuits.’
    Maria, fetching Wiggins the largest biscuit, the round one with the pink sugar rose on top, noticed that the fire had been made up afresh, the silver ewer had been filledwith hot water, and that a glass of milk had been put on the shelf beside the biscuit-box. Now who had done that? Not the old coachman, surely. He was little enough to get in through the small door, perhaps, but there seemed no way to get to her room except through the hall, and she had not seen him pass through while they were at supper.
    Well, whoever it was, it gave her a lovely warm happy feeling to find herself so cared for. As she undressed, she sipped the milk, and it was warm and sweet, just as she liked it. And the sugar biscuit that she ate with it, a long-shaped one decorated with a green shamrock, was delicious too. So life in the country was not going to be so comfortless, after all. That ramshackle carriage had been quite misleading.
    She undressed, washed, put on her long white nightgown and her white nightcap with the lace frills, blew out the candles, and climbed into bed. One of the windows was open, and the night air that blew in was not cold but fresh and sweet. Her mattress, she found, was stuffed with the softest feathers, and her sheets and pillow-cases were of the finest linen and smelt of lavender. Earlier in the evening there must have been a warming-pan in her bed as well as Miss Heliotrope’s, because it felt lovely and warm when she put her toes down. It was a lovely bed, and with sighs of content she and Wiggins crunched up the last crumbs of their sugar biscuits and snuggled themselves down for repose.
    Wiggins was deeply asleep at once, but Maria lay for some time between sleeping and waking, thinking of the beautiful park through which she had driven to this lovely house and imagining herself running up one of its glades. And then her fancy became a dream and she was in the park, with the scent of flowers about her and spring trees talking to each other over her head.
    But in her dream she was not alone, Robin was with her, running beside her and laughing. And he was just the same — just as he had been when in her childhoodshe had been sent to play in the Square garden, and had felt lonely, and he had come running through the trees to companion her loneliness. He was just exactly her age — or perhaps a little older, because he was a head taller than she, and much broader.
    There was nothing ethereal about Robin — very much the opposite; which fact in itself proved to Maria that he was a real boy and no mere creation of her imagination. He was sturdy and strong and red-cheeked, with a skin tanned brown by sun and wind. His dark eyes sparkling with fun and kindliness were set in thick short black lashes beneath strongly marked dark eyebrows. His nose was tip-tilted and a little impudent above his wide, laughing, generous mouth and strong cleft chin. His thick chestnut hair grew low on his forehead, curled all over his head as tightly