The White Wolf's Son Read Online Free PDF Page B

promised you.
     I said I’d try as soon as the big men were settled. I got them down in our comfy leather sitting room chairs, admiring our
     pictures and our wonderful views. Their orders for tea were hearty and manly, though Colonel Bastable generously said that
     while he would also find Darjeeling or something like that splendid, it really didn’t matter to him if Assam was preferred
     by the others, so I went off to sort out what I could from our miscellaneous packets of antique teas. All we used at home
     was Yorkshire Gold. I decided to put that beside the big teapots Mrs. Hawthornthwaite was warming. Then I went up to our tower
     via the “secret” door through the upstairs bathroom, the highest point in the house, and tried to phone.
    I didn’t put the light on in the tower, because I wanted to enjoy the last of the evening. It was getting on for twilight
     now, and the mist was like a filmy blue blanket over the village below. Yellow lamps shone here and there from under twisted
     eaves and above rippling slate roofs touched blood red by the setting sun. Ingleton had never looked more beautiful and unworldly.
     In the other direction were the lights of villages all the way to Morecombe Bay: lights of homes, streetlamps, window displays,
     all burning the same dense yellow against the deepening blue. I could smell the fells as night came creeping up over the limestone
     shelves and rooks began to call out the evening roundup and turn for home.
    I dialed my mum’s number. It crackled and rang, crackled and rang. Then I thought someone picked up. In the hope that they
     could hear me, I told them we had visitors and who they were. Colonel Bastable and company had insisted they would not impose
     on us and had proposed taking us to supper at the Inglenook or, if we could order in time, the Hill Inn. The Hill Inn offered
     basic ham suppers, about the best in Yorkshire, and my vote was for the Hill. I always voted for the Hill, and I had a feeling
     I wouldn’t be overruled tonight if all went well. Visitors, especially if from the south, always got the ham tea and the Theakston’s
     Old Peculier. It was a sort of provincial showing off, I suppose. But it was hard to imagine a decent world which didn’t have
     at least one of those two things in it.
    Just before I opened the door to go down, I saw two figures on the main road up from the village, where it turned radically
     under the high limestone wall of the police station. It seemed that Sandy, our policeman,
really
wasn’t in. Usually you could see the light in his back room as he watched TV and pretended he was called on a case. I recognized
     the heavy cloak worn by one of the figures. He was the man I had met earlier. The second man filled me with alarm because
     he reminded me of my old dream. He wore that same kind of wide-brimmed black hat. I told myself not to be stupid. The two
     strangers had managed to meet, probably at the Bridge as I had suggested. I moved away from the window in case they looked
     up and saw me. Seeing their shadows still unmoving, I stared into the night and wondered what they were up to.
    I then went back to attend to our guests, not mentioning the strangers outside. I must admit I enjoyed playinghostess and having all those grown men responding with grave respect as I offered Eccles cakes and refilled their teacups
     with a brew they all agreed was the best they’d had since the various foreign parts they had all come from. I asked them if
     they had enjoyed their journeys.
    Colonel Bastable said they had all most recently traveled from St. Odhran’s place in the Highlands and before that, in his
     own immediate case, from Salisbury. They were surprised they had not been expected, since the message to meet had come from
     the count and countess, my grandparents. Just as they were tucking into a second round of Eccles cakes, homemade by Mrs. Hawthornthwaite,
     there came a knock at the door, and she went to answer it. Soft