Brides of Aberdar by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online

you said you’d just as soon have the blue.’
    ‘Yes, but she knew I wouldn’t just as soon. She likes you best. I don’t mind, Lyn, I think you are the best.’ She said after a pause: ‘Lyneth, did you—feel that the hands were here today?’
    ‘A little bit. Just a brush of them, like grown-ups pass their hands over your hair. When Hil helped Miss Tetterman down from the pony-carriage. It was only because Hil was there.’
    ‘Hil says there are no hands. He says we imagine them touching us, sometimes. But they do: it’s like soft feathers—’
    ‘Yes, soft. But cold—a little bit frightening. Other people don’t know about the hands brushing against us out of the darkness—’
    ‘Not only in the darkness.’
    ‘No, I mean out of the darkness—out of a darkness: somewhere we don’t know about. But Hil says—’
    ‘I don’t see how we can just imagine them, when we both feel them at the same time, without saying anything to each other. And I don’t think Hil does believe that we imagine them. I think he sometimes feels them too.’
    ‘Not the hands. Only the cold, sometimes when he’s here, at Aberdar. We never seem to feel the cold outside. But I think in the porch today, he felt the coldness. And—I think Miss Tetterman a tiny weeny bit felt it too.’
    ‘I do think she’s nice. I love her.’
    ‘So do I. And I love Hil too. Do we still love Tante Louise?’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Christine. ‘We have to. I think she’s sad, really, and lonely. We have to love her. I don’t think we need like her, if we can’t manage that. But that’s different.’
    ‘I love Miss Tetterman and I like her. And I love Papa and I love Hil: and the other people I love too, Tomos and Menna and all the servants; but not like Miss Tetterman and Papa and Hil.’
    ‘I love Hil,’ said Lyneth. The drowsy voice faded away into murmuring. ‘And I love Miss Tetterman…’
    ‘But do you think Hil likes her?’ said the other drowsy voice. There came no reply out of the darkness. The children slept.

CHAPTER 3
    W ELL, YES, THE INVALUABLE Miss Tetterman knew how to ride a horse and despite the injury inflicted by her accident some months earlier, seemed content to try again. So a search was made for suitable mounts and on the children’s joint birthday, a day when the summer greens were making way for the greys and sepias, the umber and gold of autumn, two fine little ponies were led out into the stable yard, Hil walking between them. Shrill cries of excitement and joy, and immediately: ‘I want the white one!’ ‘No! I want the white one!’
    ‘Now, now, children, you can’t both have the white one! And look how pretty the other is, as black as jet with his lovely black mane and tail!’
    ‘Oh, yes, he’s sweet, he’s lovely. Only, Tetty, I like the white one best. Christine can have the beautiful black one.’
    ‘We had better toss up, which shall have which,’ said Miss Tetterman, ready to resort as ever to a small trickery which she hardly acknowledged even to herself. Lyneth wanted what she wanted with so much greater an urgency than her sister ever showed; and even now Christine was saying, automatically, ‘All right, Lyn, you can have the white one. I love the black one too.’
    ‘No, no, that’s wrong, Christine. We will toss up for it. Lyneth, you must learn not to be selfish, my dear.’
    ‘Oh, Tetty, please, please, I do want the white one more than she does! She says she doesn’t mind.’
    ‘Of course she minds, Lyn,’ said Hil. ‘She’s a foolish child, because the black is a much better pony, look how proudly he holds his head and lifts his pretty little hooves. But the silly girl doesn’t want him.’ He said off-handedly, ‘His name is Ebony.’
    ‘Oh, yes, he is pretty, he is sweet, and Ebony, what a lovely name! All right, Christine, you can have the white one if you really want to…’
    ‘The white one is called Ivory,’ said Hil.
    Christine looked on in an agony of