The Runaways by Elizabeth Goudge Read Free Book Online Page A

said Uncle Ambrose. ‘Tea is at five, with muffins and strawberry jam. You may come to meals or not, just as you please, but if you do not come to meals you will go without them. Be off with you.’
    They made off immediately. Nan, the last out, looked back as she closed the door. Uncle Ambrose had already disposed his great length in the biggest armchair and spread his large white silk handkerchief over his head. Hector had perched on the back of the chair and as Nan watched he slowly sank down and down into himself, his head sinking into his shoulders until he was nothing but a large round ball of feathers with two great eyes glaring out of it. Then one eye closed, but the other stayed open and winked at her. Then that closed too and Nan went out and shut the door softly behind her.

chapter three

emma cobley’s shop
    â€˜Today we will be back for tea,’ said Robert as he opened the front door. ‘Do you suppose there’ll be muffins every day?’
    No one answered him, for the front door had opened on a new marvel, the porch with four stone steps leading down from it to the village street. It was a stone porch, deep and cool with seats on either side. They sat down instantly, two aside with Absolom between them, looked at each other happily and swung their legs. ‘Free to go where you like and do what you like.’ Such a thing had never been said to them before. If a slight chill had touched their hearts at the thought of being classically educated it had been dispersed by that superb sentence. Wonderful adventures shone ahead.
    â€˜Not far today,’ said Timothy, ‘because of the muffins.’
    â€˜A reconnaissance today,’ said Robert. ‘Exploration of the terrain.’ He was rather fond of using long words picked up from his soldier-father. He always hoped the younger children would ask him what he meant, but they never did. They were not interested in self-improvement and neither was Robert. It was just that he liked to feel grand. ‘Come on.’
    They got up and climbed down the steps to the road. The door of the cottage opposite was open and just within it a very old man sat on a Windsor chair smoking a pipe. They smiled at him and he smiled at them and then they went on up the hill to the village green at the top. It was pocket-handkerchief size and had cottages grouped about it. One was an inn, the Bulldog, with a swinging sign of a fierce brindled creature, another had a pillar-box outside it and a window filled with boot-laces , bottles of boiled sweets, cakes of Windsor soap, birdseed, picture postcards, hairpins, onions, and a black cat asleep. Over the low green door beside the window was a board on which was painted,
Emma Cobley, Post and General Stores.
Also opening on to the village green was the lich-gate of the church and beyond it the churchyard.
    From the green a lane led away uphill under arching trees and disappeared into a wood that looked as vast as a forest in a picture. Rising high into the sky, above the wood, was the great hill with the outcrop of rock on top, like a castle, with below it the rock like a lion keeping guard, that they had seen last night. The Bulldog was on one side of this lane and the angle of the other was formed by stone walls, with tall iron gates facing towards the green. Within the gates a moss-grown drive disappeared into a dark mass of evergreens. There were pillars on each side of the gates, with stone lions on top of the pillars and sitting on top of one of the lions was a monkey, who chattered at them angrily. Apart from the monkey there was no one about.
    Robert summed it up. ‘There’s the shop, the Bulldog, that wood, the hill with the rocks on top and whatever is inside those gates. Where shall we go first?’
    â€˜I want some sweets,’ said Betsy.
    â€˜The shop, then,’ said Robert. ‘Has anyone any money? You have, Timothy. You have the threepenny bit Hector hicked