The House at World's End by Monica Dickens Page A

long avenue to the house where Mrs Potter had three small children for her to take care of, she soon found out why Em had been so nice.
    Mrs Potter breezed off in her car after giving Carrie only a few vague instructions, the chief of which was, ‘Let them do more or less what they like. I don’t believe in restricting children.’
    What they like! What the three Potter brats like was sliding down the front stairs on tin trays, throwing stones at the greenhouse, swinging the cat by the tail, chucking food at the pictures on the dining-room walls, and finally locking Carrie in a garden shed.
    She got out by climbing on a heap of coal and wriggling through a tiny window. Filthy and dishevelled, her hands and skirt black with coal dust, she was chasing the Potter children round a flower bed, when Mrs Potter drove up the avenue.
    Carrie had just caught the youngest. It bit her and she took a swipe at it, missing, because she was blind with rage.
    ‘She hit me!’ The child broke away and ran across the flower bed, trampling petunias and zinnias, and hurled itself at its mother, clawing at her dress.
    ‘I dare say you asked for it.’ That was one thing about Mrs Potter. She was not strict, but not sentimental either.
    ‘Dear me,’ she said, as she saw the wreck of the front hall, where the trays had pushed up rugs and scratched the floor and toppled over a bust of Julius Caesar. ‘They seem to have had a lot of fun.’
    ‘We hate her.’ The middle child made a face like a toad.
    ‘I dare say she hates you too,’ Mrs Potter said amiably. ‘I don’t suppose she’ll come again.’
    ‘Hooray,’ said the eldest child.
    ‘But I
must
go to London tomorrow. Would you come, Carrie dear? I’ll give you extra money if they actually hurt you.’
    Carrie showed her tooth-bruised hand.
    ‘Draw blood, I mean. Please, dear.’
    Carrie wanted to say, ‘Get someone else to do your dirty work,’ but while she was locked in the garden shed, she had seen something. In the far corner, covered with dust and cobwebs, there was a saddle, obviously not used for ages, but it was a good make and the right size.
    ‘You see, I can’t get your sister Esmeralda,’ Mrs Potter was saying. Em used her full name when she went onjobs, to sound more dignified. ‘Little Jocelyn pushed her into the fish pond, and she wasn’t very sporting about it, was she, my darling?’
    ‘Esmeralda stinks,’ said little Jocelyn.
    ‘So please help me, Carrie. I can’t miss my appointment.’
    ‘Well, I might— ’ Carrie began, and the middle child said, ‘Don’t bother.’
    ‘I might come tomorrow, but if I didn’t take the money, would you—’
    ‘Give it to
me!’
yelled the eldest child. ‘I’ll baby sit for Carrie. Whack! Whack!’ She thumped the dog who was asleep in the sun. ‘You bad Carrie baby, you nasty brat.’
    ‘Would you let me have that old saddle that’s in the shed?’
    ‘That old rubbish? My dear, I’ll be glad if you take it away. I mean,’ added Mrs Potter quickly, as Carrie started for the shed, ‘if you’ll come tomorrow.’
    It was worth it. The children gave her such a bad time the next day that Mrs Potter gave her not only the saddle, but an old snaffle bridle that was hanging on a nail.
    One of the Potters had stuck a pin in the rear tyre of Old Red, so Carrie wheeled him home with the saddle on the handlebars.
    She spent her toothpaste money on a bar of glycerine soap and cleaned the saddle and bridle, leaving them in the kitchen afterwards, as she had always wanted to do. She had always wanted a kitchen where there was a saddle on the back of a chair and at least one bridle on the knob of a cupboard door.
    She began to ride John all over the countryside, exploring, getting lost, coming back sometimes after dark, with a luminous glow round the edges of John’s home-goingears and Charlie trotting right behind his heels like a coach dog. She taught John things and he taught her. She finally learned how to make