Summer at World's End Read Online Free Page A

she got through the wood, twisting and turning and boring her way through.
    Torn at by brambles, ducking under low brandies, swerving round trees, John and Carrie followed her. When they came out on the other side, with half the wood in their mane and hair, the mare had clattered across a road and into a field of turnips. A man in the turnip field shook his fist and yelled at her, and shook his fist and yelled at Carrie, pounding after.
    Princess went through someone’s back garden, dragging down a laundry line, jumped a garden seat, and clattered out on to a main road with a line of baby clothes trailingfrom her saddle. The mother of the baby ran out of her house, flapping her apron and screaming. A car came to a screeching halt. When Carrie and John came through a gate on to the road, cars were stopped in both directions. Princess was standing in the middle of the road. A man had got out of his car, waving his arms and shouting. She shied away from him. A car hooted at her. She kicked a dent in its front wing.
    Carrie jumped off and hooked John’s reins over the gate-post. ‘Never tie your horse up by the reins if you don’t want to walk home,’ chanted the remembered voice of Mr Mismo, far behind now and probably walking home himself.
    ‘Come on, Princess. Come here, old girl.’ Carrie held out her hand and whistled Mr Mismo’s whistle, the notes of a blackbird’s call. The mare stood still, pricked her ears as far forward as lop ears can prick, and started towards Carrie. Just before she was close enough to reach the reins, a helpful man got out of a car, banging the door like a shot gun. Princess jumped, spun round, squeezed between two cars and galloped away down the road with a drum-rattle of hoofs.
    John and Carrie went after her on the grass verge, with everyone shouting advice at them, and the mother of the baby weeping with her apron over her face, because half a week’s laundry had gone with Princess Margaret Rose.
    When Carrie at last caught up with her, it was strange country. She had never been on this road, never seen this square stucco house with the gravelled drive and the neat painted stable and pasture fence.
    Princess had stopped on the brow of a hill with her head up, watching a horse in the pasture. Carrie came beside her and caught her reins easily, then got off, while thetwo horses put their noses down to the grass as casually as if the whole chase had been an everyday game.
    There was a girl with the horse. A good-looking girl with smooth hair, clean yellow riding breeches and glossy boots. She was holding the horse on a halter and chain. He looked nervous, backing away from her, but she stroked his neck and petted him until he stood still and dropped his head, then she suddenly pulled back her arm and hit him hard behind the ears with the end of the chain.
    He reared and pulled away, but she hung on, wearing gloves, while he wheeled round her, his small ears laid back. It was the chestnut horse that Michael had found in the vegetable garden.
    Carrie led John and Princess up to the white paddock fence. The girl had taken sugar out of her pocket, and was holding it out towards the chestnut horse, talking to him, coaxing him. Was she going to do the same thing again -pet him and make much of him, and then suddenly hit him?
    ‘Hi!’ Carrie was younger than the girl, but she couldn’t stand there and say nothing. ‘Don’t treat that horse like that, you’ll ruin him!’ she called across the field.
    ‘That’s the whole idea,’ said the girl. She let go of the chain, throwing it across the horse’s neck hard, so that he shied away in terror. She came towards Carrie. She had a swaggering way of walking, strutting in her shiny boots as if she owned the world, her face a mixture of pride and bad temper.
    ‘You
want
to ruin him?’ Carrie stared. Perhaps the girl was mad. She had put one hand into the pocket of her riding breeches. Perhaps she would whip out a gun and drill Carrie and John