Witch's Business Read Online Free PDF

hidden there by a bush and some newly sprouting flags, but he could see Buster and the gang. Jess hesitated, then followed him. They crouched side by side, watching the gang come nearer.
    â€œBut it’s all right,” said Jess. “They’ll not dare lay a finger on you, Frank, after Wilkins’s tooth.”
    â€œThat’s what you think,” said Frank. “I’m not taking any chances.”
    â€œThey’ll come over the bridge, though,” said Jess. “Hadn’t we better go across first? Otherwise, they’ll be between us and the Adamses’ house, and then we’ll have to go back past Biddy’s hut and I don’t think I can bear to.”
    â€œShut up,” said Frank. “I bet the Adams kids went past it. If they can, you can.”
    â€œBetween the devil and the deep blue Buster,” said Jess. “Oh, dear!”
    To their intense relief, the gang turned aside when they were about ten yards off, and went calling and cursing and splashing down into the river. It seemed they were going to ford it. Maybe it was more manly or more exciting, or both, that way. Jess and Frank waited agonizingly, until the smallest boy, in the last go-cart, had been, with cursing and tremendous difficulty, lugged through the water and onto the bank out of sight. Then they stood up and sprinted over the bridge and out into the field beyond. Halfway to the bare, lonely Adams house, they looked back. The gang appeared not to have noticed them. They were milling about in the bushes and rubbish just above Biddy’s hut, and no one was looking their way. Rather nervously, Frank and Jess followed the path over to the peeling door in the side of the cheese-colored house, and knocked.
    The door was opened, after a lot of hollow-sounding treading about, by a thin, tall, vague-looking lady in a dangling smock. Jess at first thought the lady was covered with blood. Then she saw it was only paint. There was paint on the lady’s hands, too—so much that the lady did not seem to be able to touch the cigarette she had in her mouth. She talked round it, through puffs of smoke, and the cigarette wagged.
    â€œWhat do you kids want, eh? No jobs going, I’m afraid. Bohemian household and all that.”
    â€œCould we see Frankie and Jenny, please?” asked Jess.
    â€œOh, yes. Sure. This way.” The lady left the door open and simply walked away inside the house. Frank and Jess, a little doubtfully, stepped inside and followed her down a cold stone passage smelling of mildew and lamp oil. They could not tell which smell was the strongest. Jess thought mildew and did not wonder that Jenny had rheumatism. Frank thought lamp oil. There seemed to be no electricity in the house.
    The lady pushed open a door. “Frankie. Friends for you,” she said. Then, with her cigarette still untouched and wagging, she went off into another room. Before the door to it shut, Frank glimpsed an easel, with a painting on it.
    The two little girls were in a small room that smelled, distinctly, more of mildew than of oil. There were toys about, so it must have been a playroom. But it was, Jess thought, almost as cheerless as the potting shed, and certainly as dark. The reason for the darkness was that outside the window stood a great wooden mill wheel, so old that grass grew on it in clumps, and so big that very little light got past it into the room.
    Frankie bounded to meet them, looking so excited that Jess felt mean. “What happened? What did you do to her?”
    â€œNothing yet,” Jess said awkwardly.
    Frankie just looked at her, with her great big famine eyes. Jenny, who was crouched up on the windowsill, said, “I knew you wouldn’t. Nobody dares to.” She was not jeering. She just said it as a matter of fact, rather sadly. She made Frank feel terrible—even worse than Jess was feeling.
    â€œThis is—this is a sort of progress report,” he said.