Rose by Holly Webb Read Free Book Online

large book, while the cat sat next to him and stared at Rose as she swept the floor. She could feel his eyes fixed on her. It made her feet feel twice their real size, and she almost tripped over her brush.
    â€œYou’ve missed a bit.” Freddie was peering over the book at the floor, and the cat was examining it too. Neither of them seemed to think Rose’s work was up to scratch.
    Rose carefully didn’t sigh. Instead she just murmured, “Yes, sir,” and swept the patch he seemed to be pointing to, which looked perfectly clean to her.
    Freddie lifted the book up to sit on its end, so he could snigger behind it, and Rose felt herself flushing angrily. Then she noticed the gold-embossed title on the scuffed black leather cover. Prendergast’s Perfect Primer for the Apprentice Mage . If only she could look at it! It would surely tell her what to do about odd pictures on baths, dancing houses, and talking cats—preferably how to stop seeing all of them, so she could concentrate on her job. She tried to look over the boy’s shoulder when she came around to sweep by the windows. He didn’t notice—he was far too interested in the book. Even the cat appeared to be reading it. Rose crept closer and discovered to her disappointment that Freddie was not reading the spellbook. He had a comic tucked inside the pages and was deep in the adventures of Jack Jones, Hero of the Seven Seas . Jack Jones was currently struggling with a giant squid. Rose sighed disgustedly, right behind Freddie, and he shut the book at once with a guilty snap. Rose ignored him. Briskly, she swept up her dust pile and made for the door. Perhaps tomorrow, when she was dusting, she could sneak a look at Prendergast’s Perfect Primer .
    As she left, the white cat and the white boy were still watching her with narrowed eyes.

Five
    After Rose had cleaned the workroom, she went down the stairs backward to see if it would confuse whatever the magic in them was, but it didn’t. Rose was sure she could hear the house giggling—but it seemed a friendly sort of noise, not a nasty, sniggering one. All the same, she stubbornly stayed backward all the way down to the kitchen, and it was tricky, especially as she was carrying the brush and the dustpan too. Turning the corner of the first-floor staircase—the last one before she got to the back stairs, which she was sure would be safe—Rose gleefully went too fast, and one foot slipped out from under her on the deep carpet, and got hooked in the sweeping brush somehow, and she went tumbling and bouncing down the steps. Rose squeaked with horror, thinking all at once of Mr. Freddie and the Ming vase, and being sent back to the orphanage in disgrace. However oddly magical the Fountain house was, she wasn’t going back—never, never, never! The house seemed to approve. As she thought it, defiantly, tears springing to her eyes, something caught her, and set her back on her feet.
    Something. Someone? Something with strong arms. Furry ones. Rose gulped, sat down on the deep-red, patterned carpet of the sixth step, and looked up cautiously at the stuffed bear in the deep embrasure in the wall. Its glass eyes stared off into the distance, and its paws were innocently folded on its fat, rather balding tummy. The gaslight shone on its enormous, hooked black claws, but its face was foolish and not fierce. Who, me? she imagined it asking. I’m stuffed, dear. Can’t move, me. No, you caught the banisters, that’s all. You be careful now, pet.
    But something was chuckling, just beyond her hearing, as she crept down the last few steps.
    That’s it, dear. You go forward this time. Safer that way, see?
    Rose crept into the kitchen, trying not to hear the bear’s voice whispering in her ears, and trying to look as though the house was just a large and boring place she had to clean, and not a mass of twisting staircases and talking furniture that scared and