Summer at World's End Read Online Free Page B

and Princess Margaret Rose right between the eyes.
    The girl came up to the fence and looked at Carrie andthe two horses with great contempt. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ Her way of talking was just as conceited as her way of walking. ‘What do you want?’
    ‘Nothing. My friend’s horse got loose, and I had to catch her.’
    ‘Fell off and let go of the reins?’ the girl jeered. ‘Some
people
!’
    ‘I’m glad he did,’ Carrie said angrily, ‘because I followed here and saw what you were doing to your horse. I could report you to the R.S.P.C.A. Man, you know.’ The R.S.P.C.A. Man was another friend. When he didn’t know what to do with animals he rescued, be brought them to World’s End.
    ‘If you’re thinking of the R.S.P.C.A., think again, you stupid little twerp,’ mocked the girl. ‘Where’s your evidence?’
    ‘I’d tell them.’
    ‘You think they’d
take your
word?’
    Carrie had met some pretty insulting girls in her life. This one took the prize. She must be the ‘very rude girl’ in Tom’s note.
    ‘Did you come and find your horse in our yard last week?’she asked.
    ‘Is that your place? I might have guessed you’d come from a dump like that. Someone in your village rang the police to say they’d seen Pretty Prancer go by. So my father and I were driving round there and saw him in your yard. Not very good taste on his part.’
    ‘Pretty Prancer? Is that his name?’
    ‘Any objection?’
    ‘It sounds too - too sort of fancy.’
    ‘Well, he’s not fancy any longer,’ the girl said. ‘My father is sending me away to some hell-hole of a school. He won’t keep Prancer for me while I’m gone, so I’mgoing to make sure that he’s so mean that nobody will buy him.’
    ‘You can’t!’ The girl
was
mad. She stood there calmly saying these terrible things, as if she didn’t care what Carrie thought.
    ‘Can’t what?’
    ‘Can’t ruin a horse by - by - It’s - it’s —’ Carrie was too upset to get the words out. If only Lester were here. He would know what to say to this brute of a girl. But Lester did not go riding with Carrie, because she knew more about it. It was the only thing she could do better than him.
    ‘Calm down, brat,’ the girl said. She flicked her fingers at John’s brown nose (
Bite her, John
!) and stepped back. ‘It’s my father’s problem, not yours. I’m off to school tomorrow. He’s got to spend the next three months trying to sell an unsellable horse.’
    ‘He could sell him to me!’ Carrie hadn’t got any money.
    ‘The price,’ said the girl, turning away, ‘will be very high. He’s too tricky to be worth that now, but my father’s too mean to take less than he paid for him.’ As she walked off, she picked up a stone and threw it at the chestnut horse. She was not only mad, she was a devil.
    By asking directions, Carrie got back on to a road she knew, and started for home. She rode John and led Princess, who pulled back sulkily, making John do all the work and almost dragging Carrie’s arm out of its socket.
    Twilight was closing in when they saw ahead of them a broad, dejected figure, slogging along at the side of the road. When he heard the sound of hoofs behind him, he straightened his shoulders, cocked his hat and took his whip out of his boot, holding it smartly under his arm like an army officer’s cane.
    Mr Mismo must have been glad and relieved to seeCarrie, but all he said was, ‘If you’re leading on the off side, you should be on the other side of the road.’
    He couldn’t get on. Princess had pulled off stirrups and leathers when she plunged through the wood. He climbed on a low wall, but she kept moving away. He led her under a bank, but the soft bank crumbled under him and he could not get enough footing to push himself into the saddle. Carrie got off to give him a leg up. Puffing and panting as much as Mr Mismo, she finally got him on to the mare’s broad back.
    When he was on board, he said rather