Free Wild Robert by Diana Wynne Jones Page A

one of the other guides came along with the next party. She was cut off from the tower. And by now the coach party would be filling the entrance hall and waiting to be taken up the main stairs.
    Heather ducked down a side passage and ran. If she went through the Long Gallery and the Feud Room, she might be able to make it to the back stairs before any tourists did. She raced along the polished floor of the Long Gallery, where white reproachful faces of dead Tollers stared out of thick gilt frames at her. She was just going to turn into the Feud Room, when feet shuffled again. This time Heather heard her mother’s voice.
    “We are now coming into the small gallery known as the Feud Room. This is because the portraits of the Tollers on your left and the portraits of the Franceys on your right are those of the two branches of the family who kept up a long and hostile quarrel for nearly one hundred years…”
    “More beastly sheep!” Heather said. She turned and looked at the big clock above the picture of Sir Francis Toller bowing to Queen Elizabeth I. It said five to twelve. She understood her mistake now.
    “Oh
bother
!” she said. “I hate tourists! I hate living at Castlemaine!”
    She went back through the Long Gallery and down the main stairs. Halfway down, she met thenext party of tourists coming up. It was like wading in a stream with the current the wrong way. Heather turned sideways and wriggled and fought her way down into the entrance hall. A glance was enough to show her that the shop at the side was crowded out and that Mrs Mimms was too busy to spare Heather a look, let alone any biscuits. Heather wandered gloomily out through the main door. Mr Mimms, sitting at his desk there to take tickets, did spare her a smile and a nod, but Heather was feeling so dismal by then that it did not help much.

    She wandered on, into the formal gardens. Here there were some girls and boys her own age eating ice lollies and dropping the wrappers on the gravel path. “They wouldn’t dare do that at home!”Heather muttered, and she took care to pass them in the distance. She went on into the walled garden, where Mr McManus usually was. Since things were so horrible anyway, she thought she might as well ask him for a tomato.
    The walled garden, for some reason, was always the place where the elderly couples went. Heather passed one set, where the lady was saying, “See, Harry. This one is the old thornless rose.” Then there was another foursome, where a man was lecturing the other three about pruning roses. And a third pair, where the lady was hooting, “That is simply not the way to plant roses! If the gardener here was mine, I’d soon tell him where to get off!”
    She was sure Mr McManus could hear this lady from the corner where he was working. When Heather found him, he was raking a seedbed as if it were the throat of an old lady.
    “Get you gone!” he said to Heather.
    “I only wanted to ask—” Heather began.
    “Laying down the law, tramping my lawns, messing up my paths with packets and papers and gum,” said Mr McManus. “Screaming, asking things—”
    “I hate tourists too,” said Heather. “There’s no need to take it out on me.”
    “Leaving bottles and tins,” said Mr McManus. “You’re worse than all the rest. Get you gone!”

    This was so unfair that all Heather could think of to do was to stump away through the nearest door, with her mouth pressed tight, hoping Mr McManus would tread on a rake and get concussion. She turned the corner into the ruined temple. Usually, nobody found the way there. But today was a bad day. Some very large and grown-up teenagers had found the temple and they were romping there among the pillars and the green mounds. Heather slithered on past, skirting a fallen statue where a pair of the teenagers were kissing, and plunged into the woods behind the temple.
    She only knew one other place that was likely to be private. This was the peculiar little mound right