Theatre Shoes Read Online Free Page A

the old man doesn’t lie.”
    Mark’s eyes screwed up at the corners when he was cross. He drew himself up to look as tall as possible.
    â€œIf you are at all interested I’m exactly like my father, and he was exactly like his grandfather, who was an admiral. We know that he was an admiral because there was a picture of him in the dining-room in the vicarage.”
    Alice rolled out another laugh.
    â€œWell, I’m not going to quarrel, but you have a look at the picture of Sir Joshua sometime, and one afternoon we’ll go and see your uncle on the pictures and then we’ll see who’s right.”
    Sorrel had wandered up the passage having a look round. She came hurrying back at Alice’s last words.
    â€œHave we an uncle on the pictures?”
    Alice seemed startled. She opened her mouth and then closed it, and then opened it again.
    â€œDidn’t you know Henry Warren was your uncle?”
    Sorrel could see that Alice thought they must have heard of Henry Warren; she spoke gently as she did not want to seem rude to her uncle.
    â€œWe didn’t know we had an Uncle Henry, so of course we didn’t know if he acted for the films. As a matter of fact we haven’t been to any films since the war. Except ‘Pinocchio’ when Daddy had leave.”
    â€œAnd that ‘Wizard of Oz,’” Mark reminded her.
    â€œWe don’t go to films at school,” Sorrel explained, “because of infection, and there wasn’t a cinema in Martins.”
    Hannah and the taxi-driver had the luggage in the hall. Alice examined it. She looked in a friendly way at Hannah.
    â€œYou and I can manage that. If the box is too heavy you can unpack it down here.” She waited while Hannah paid the driver, then she took Holly’s hand. “Come on, follow us up the old apples and pears.” She saw Holly’s face was puzzled. “Stairs to you. You’ll get used to me in time.”
    It was a queer house, grand in a way, but shabby. There was a thick purple carpet all up the stairs but it was getting very worn in places. Half-way up to the first floor there was an alcove with plants in it; this had stiff yellow satin curtains in front of it, but the satin was full of dust and in places was torn. All up the stairs were framed advertisements of old plays, yellow and queerly printed. Some of them had their glass cracked. In the top passage, where were their bedrooms, there was an enormous velvet sofa with a piece of brocade thrown over it. Alice kept up a running commentary on what they were passing.
    â€œThose curtains were in the drawing-room set of ever so comic a comedy. This carpet was used in the front of the house when Sir Joshua had the Georgian Theatre. They’re going off a bit now, of course, but they must have been ever so nice in his day. Some of these play bills were cracked when the bomb got Number 11. This sofa was in a season we did of that Ibsen. Proper old whited sepulchre it is now. Got a hole in the velvet you could put a big drum in. That’s why I keep the brocade there; that brocade was a bit of our third-act dress in a play by Somerset Maugham.” She opened a door and her voice softened. “This room is for Sorrel. It was Miss Addie’s.”
    Sorrel went in first. It was the queerest feeling. “It was Miss Addie’s.” Her mother’s room. Somehow, although her father was always talking about their mother she had never come as alive before. In Guernsey everything had been as she had planned it, but it was grown-up planning. This room was the room of a girl, someone of about the same age as herself. Sorrel walked round. Unconsciously she walked on tiptoe. It was a pretty room. A white wooden bed with a powder-blue eider-down. Tied to the bed head was a felt doll with wide skirts and silk thread plaits. Lying on the eider-down was a pillowcase made like a large white cat. There were blue shiny chintz curtains and