Selected Stories by Katherine Mansfield Read Free Book Online Page A

donkey woefully.
    â€œWell, change! Be a dog instead! Bow-wow!”
    â€œOh yes. That’s much easier.” Lottie smiled again. But when she and Kezia both had one Kezia waited on purpose. The others made signs to Lottie and pointed. Lottie turned very red; she looked bewildered, and at last she said, “Hee-haw! Ke-zia.”
    â€œSs! Wait a minute!” They were in the very thick of it when the bull stopped them, holding up his hand. “What’s that? What’s that noise?”
    â€œWhat noise? What do you mean?” asked the rooster.
    â€œSs! Shut up! Listen!” They were mouse-still. “I thought I heard a—a sort of knocking,” said the bull.
    â€œWhat was it like?” asked the sheep faintly.
    No answer.
    The bee gave a shudder. “Whatever did we shut the door for?” she said softly. Oh, why, why had they shut the door?
    While they were playing, the day had faded; the gorgeous sunset had blazed and died. And now the quick dark came racing over the sea, over the sand-hills, up the paddock. You were frightened to look in the corners of the washhouse, and yet you had to look with all your might. And somewhere, far away, grandma was lighting a lamp. The blinds were being pulled down; the kitchen fire leapt in the tins on the mantelpiece.
    â€œIt would be awful now,” said the bull, “if a spider was to fall from the ceiling on to the table, wouldn’t it?”
    â€œSpiders don’t fall from ceilings.”
    â€œYes, they do. Our Min told us she’d seen a spider as big as a saucer, with long hairs on it like a gooseberry.”
    Quickly all the little heads were jerked up; all the little bodies drew together, pressed together.
    â€œWhy doesn’t somebody come and call us?” cried the rooster.
    Oh, those grown-ups, laughing and snug, sitting in the lamp-light, drinking out of cups! They’d forgotten about them. No, not really forgotten. That was what their smile meant. They had decided to leave them there all by themselves.
    Suddenly Lottie gave such a piercing scream that all of them jumped off the forms, all of them screamed too. “A face—a face looking!” shrieked Lottie.
    It was true, it was real. Pressed against the window was a pale face, black eyes, a black beard.
    â€œGrandma! Mother! Somebody!”
    But they had not got to the door, tumbling over one another, before it opened for Uncle Jonathan. He had come to take the little boys home.
X
    He had meant to be there before, but in the front garden he had come upon Linda walking up and down the grass, stopping to pick off a dead pink or give a top-heavy carnation something to lean against, or to take a deep breath of something, and then walking on again, with her little air of remoteness. Over her white frock she wore a yellow, pink-fringed shawl from the Chinaman’s shop.
    â€œHallo, Jonathan!” called Linda. And Jonathan whipped off his shabby panama, pressed it against his breast, dropped on one knee, and kissed Linda’s hand.
    â€œGreeting, my Fair One! Greeting, my Celestial Peach Blossom!” boomed the bass voice gently. “Where are the other noble dames?”
    â€œBeryl’s out playing bridge and mother’s giving the boy his bath. . . . Have you come to borrow something?”
    The Trouts were for ever running out of things and sending across to the Burnells’ at the last moment.
    But Jonathan only answered, “A little love, a little kindness”; and he walked by his sister-in-law’s side.
    Linda dropped into Beryl’s hammock under the manuka tree and Jonathan stretched himself on the grass beside her, pulled a long stalk and began chewing it. They knew each other well. The voices of children cried from the other gardens. A fisherman’s light cart shook along the sandy road, and from far away they heard a dog barking; it was muffled as though the dog had its head in a sack. If you listened you could