Free The Tale of Holly How by Susan Wittig Albert Page B

sketches of the kitchen and bedroom for the interior scenes. She had already written out the tale in a penny exercise book and calculated that she’d need a couple of dozen paintings to illustrate it. She was hoping to finish the project within the next few months, and was already thinking ahead to the next book, which she had decided would be a story about the rats that seemed to be everywhere, and into everything.
    Making the indoor sketches was not as pleasant as it might have been. Beatrix very much enjoyed going into the house whenever she got the chance, but Mrs. Jennings—who had never been enthusiastic about staying on at Hill Top Farm after Beatrix took possession—always made her feel uncomfortable, as if she were intruding. And when she did go in, she couldn’t help noticing that the place needed a good airing and cleaning, top to bottom, something that was understandably hard for Mrs. Jennings to do, with two small children and a new baby to care for. And then there was Mrs. Jennings’s cheap machine-made furniture and religious pictures and bric-a-brac, which made the old rooms look cluttered and shabby.
    Beatrix could hardly wait until the new extension was finished and the Jenningses had moved into it, and the main part of the house was her very own. She would furnish the rooms with authentic antiques that would fit the spirit of the old house, and she already was happily looking for the curtains and rugs, the dishes and fireplace implements and pictures that would make Hill Top her home. Her very first home—in spite of the fact that she wouldn’t be able to live there the year round, as she desperately longed to do.
    So, all things considered, Beatrix was just as glad when Mrs. Jennings didn’t ask her to stay to lunch. She went back to Belle Green and ate a sandwich and a bowl of soup. A little while later, Mr. Jennings brought the pony cart—pulled by Winston, a shaggy brown pony with an alert, self-confident air—to collect her for their drive to Holly How Farm, to have a look at the sheep she had bought.
    The Crooks’ dog Rascal trotted out to the cart with her. A fawn-colored Jack Russell terrier, he lived at Belle Green but counted the village as his home-at-large. And since she boarded at Belle Green when she came to the village, he seemed to have appointed himself as her escort.
    “I’d like to go along,” said Rascal politely, giving her fingers a lick to show his respect.
    “Do you mind if we take the Crooks’ dog?” Beatrix asked. “I think he’d like to go with us.”
    The farmer grinned. “’Spose if I said no, he’d just trot along behind. Jump in, Rascal.”
    The narrow track of Stony Lane glistened in the afternoon sunlight as they drove along. The thick green hedge was filigreed with the delicate tracery of honeysuckle and blackberry and veiled with feathery plumes of travelers’ joy, whilst beyond the hedge, the green bracken climbed the shoulder of the hill. The little road snaked upward and out of the village and draped itself across the slope of Oatmeal Crag, above the emerald green water meadows on either side of Wilfin Beck, dotted with the plump white shapes of grazing sheep. Beyond lay a stubble-field where the men and their massive draft horses had just finished cutting the summer’s hay, the haystacks as golden and proud as temples in some exotic land. It had been a dry, hot summer thus far, the best kind of weather for haying, so most of the hay had been cut and stacked. The next regular farm chore, sheep-shearing, would begin in another week or so.
    With Rascal on the seat beside her, every now and then giving her chin a quick lick, Beatrix looked around with pleasure. She had loved the countryside since her earliest childhood, when her family went to Scotland for their summer-long holiday. Then, nothing was sweeter than a long walk through the meadows and woods, listening to the wind through the fir trees and watching for a glimpse of the fairies that came