Free The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt

sleeves, around her hem. Phyllis said it was lovely. Dorothy said “It might get dirty if we go in the orchard.”
    Griselda said “It’s completely inappropriate. Charles calls it Little Bo-Peep.”
    “You do look like a china doll,” said Dorothy, “one in a fairy story, standing on a shelf, that’s loved hopelessly by a tin soldier or a presumptuous mouse.”
    “It would not be remarkable in Portman Square,” said Griselda, quite flatly. “I shall just have to endure.”
    A pony-trap arrived, which appeared at first sight to be carrying a troupe of ghosts and ghouls, white-faced and staring. The driver was Augustus Steyning, who lived in Nutcracker Cottage on the edge of the Downs. He stepped down on long long legs, pointing elegant toes like a dancer. He had a small silver beard, and an elegant moustache, and thick, well-cut silver hair. He was wearing a country suit, but turned out to be also dressed as Prospero, having brought a cabbalistic hooded gown and a knobby walnut staff. He was a theatre director and occasional playwright, whose best-known works were productions of
Peer Gynt
and
The Tempest
, although he had written a historical drama about Cromwell and Charles I. His ideas were advanced. He was interested in the new German drama and in German tales and imaginings. (His house, though it had nut trees in its garden, was not named out of English whimsy so much as for Hoffmann’s sinister tale of the Nutcracker and the Mouse King.) His trap was full of large theatrical masks.
    “I brought an ass’s head, my dears—Midsummer is incomplete without one and this one had the distinction of having been worn by Beerbohm Tree himself. We may take turns to disappear inside it and be metamorphosed. And I brought these delicious disguises from Venice—here are Pierrot and Columbine, here is a vulture who is really a plague doctor keeping away from bubos, here is a black enchantress with sequins. Here is the Sun, with flaming rim, and here is the Moon, with cloudy mountains and silver tears …”
    He turned to Olive.
    “I took the liberty of bringing my guest. He is driving himself, as he needs space. He is just behind me—”
    A shadow of irritation passed over Olive’s face. It was her party. Shewas the giver. And then the second trap arrived, with one man, and an inanimate company—in this case hidden in black boxes and brass-hasped cases.
    “He is an old friend of yours, I believe—” said August Steyning. (He liked to call himself August, in honour of the clowns.) “I hope I did well.” He had noticed Olive’s little grimace.
    Olive looked at the newcomer, hesitated and then swept forward with outstretched hands.
    “Welcome to our house. What an unexpected delight—”
    The stranger stepped down. He was small, thin and dark, clothed in black drainpipe trousers and a long black jacket, and a black felt hat with jay feathers in the band. He had a theatrical pointed beard and groomed moustache. His feet did not crunch on the gravel. He bowed briefly over Olive’s hand.
    “This is indeed an old friend, whom we met in Munich. Major Cain, let me introduce Herr Anselm Stern, who is an artist of a most unusual kind. Herr Stern, this is Mr. Wellwood, my brother-in-law, and Katharina Wellwood…”
    She did not introduce the children.
    Cathy was instructed to help Herr Stern with his boxes. Hedda touched them, and asked what was in them.
    “You shall see in good time,” said August Steyning. “With your mother’s permission, we hope to show you.”
    Herr Stern, supervising the stowing of the boxes, suddenly found his voice, and said, in halting English,
    “I have brought a gift for the little girls.”
    He looked uncertainly from Dorothy to the befrilled Griselda to pretty Phyllis, to the small black witch with the beetle-brooch. “The box with the red string,” Herr Stern told Cathy. “Please.”
    “What can it be?” said Phyllis.
    “Open it, please,” said Anselm Stern.
    It was in