Free (3/20) Storm in the Village by Miss Read Page B

aunt in Caxley and he would be alone in the little house. She looked at her watch. It said twenty minutes past five. With any luck he would be at home, and perhaps he would speak to her. She quickened her pace, steadied Miss Clare's parcel which swayed across the bicycle basket, and entered the woods.
    It was like stepping into an old, old church from a sunny field. The sudden chill raised gooseflesh on the girl's scorched arms, and the sudden quiet gloom, after the singing brightness of the chalky fields, created a feeling of awe. The companionable murmuring of insects had gone and silence engulfed her. The trees stood straight and tall, menacingly aloof, and to the girl, in her highly-strung state, they appeared like watchful sentinels who passed and repassed each other in the distance as she moved nervously between them.
    On each side of the path festoons of small-leaved honeysuckle draped low branches of hazel bushes, and the cloying sweetness of its perfume blended with the moist fragrance compounded of damp earth, moss and the resinous breath of many close-packed trees. The path was damp beneath her feet and muffled the sound made by her sandals and the wheels of the bicycle. To give herself courage Miss Jackson looked at her watch again. Why, it was still really afternoon! Nothing to fear in a wood at five-thirty! If the watch had said midnight, now! She had a sudden terrifying picture of inky trees, a slimy path, and a furtive, leering, sickening moon sliding behind crooked branches. Owls would be abroad, screeching and cackling, and bats, deformed and misshapen, would leave their topsy-turvy slumbers and swoop out upon their horrid businesses. She took a deep, shuddering breath, pushed such fancies resolutely behind her, and, in two minutes had reached the bend of the lane which brought her within sight of die gamekeeper's cottage.
    It stood quite close to the path, tucked into the side of a steep slope which rose sharply behind it. The garden was narrow, and lay to the side of the house bordering the track through the woods. The currant bushes were heavy with fruit, and the acrid smell of blackcurrants was wafted to the girl as she dawdled past. She noticed the tidy rows of vegetables, the two apple trees, sprucely pruned, and already bearing a crop of small green apples. A rough shed, painted with tar to protect it from the dripping of the surrounding trees, stood at the far end of the garden. Hilary could see that the door was shut and the padlock fastened as she passed by it.
    She looked at die cottage hopefully, but her heart sank as she noticed the closed windows and door. She could see no movement anywhere. The windows were dirty and the curtains looked grubby. Clearly the mistress of the house was here no more, and the neglected dwelling place contrasted strongly with the trim garden in which it stood.
    Disappointment flooded the girl's heart, but relief too, for she half-realised that she felt fear as well as infatuation for this odd soft-spoken man who had noticed her. She was now past the house, rising steadily, until in a few moments she could stop and look down upon its tiled roof, stained with lichens and bird-droppings and streaked with murky tears shed by the trees overhead. In a dappled patch of sunlight at the side of the house she could now see a small tabby kitten rolling luxuriously in some dry earth beneath a jutting window sill. It looked up, startled, as she chirruped to it, and fled helter-skelter out of sight.
    At the top of the hill Hilary Jackson paused for breath and looked down upon the hamlet of Springbourne scattered below in die valley. All, there was Mrs Chard's white house, with the pine tree at its gate, just as Miss Clare had said.
    She smoothed her yellow frock, adjusted the parcel once more, and clambered up into the saddle. The wind rushed past her, cooling her flushed face and quieting her restless heart. Within five minutes she was pushing open Mrs Chard's green gate and