Read I Capture the Castle for Free Online

veined by weather-bleached wood. It had all sorts of odd little lattice windows, bright gold from the sunset, and the attic gable looked as if it might fall forward at any minute. This belonged to a different kind of fairy tale—it was just my idea of a “Hansel and Gretel” house and for a second I feared a witch inside had stolen Father. Then I saw him trying to get in at the kitchen door. He came running back through the overgrown courtyard garden, calling that there was a small window open near the front door that he could put Rose through to let us in. I was glad he said Rose and not meI would have been terrified to be alone in the house for a second. Rose was never frightened of anything; she was trying to scramble up to the window even before Father got there to lift her. Through she went and we heard her struggling with heavy bolts.
    Then she flung the door open triumphantly.
    The square hall was dark and cold and had a horrid moldy smell. Every bit of woodwork was a drab ginger color, painted to imitate the graining of wood.
    “Would you believe anyone could do that to fine old paneling?” exploded Father. We followed him into a room on the left, which had a dark red wallpaper and a large black-leaded fireplace. There was a nice little window looking on to the garden, but I thought it was a hideous room.
    “False ceiling,” said Father, stretching up to tap it.
    “Oh, lord, I suppose the Victorians did their worst to the whole place.” We went back to the hall and then into the large room which is now our drawing-room; it stretches the whole depth of the house. Rose and I ran across and knelt on the wide window seat, and Father opened the heavy mullioned windows so that we could look down and see ourselves in the moat. Then he pointed out how thick the wall was and explained about the Stuart house having been built on to the ruins of the castle.
    “It must have been beautiful once-and could be again,” he said, staring across to the field of stubble.
    “Think of this view in summer, with a wheat field reaching right up to the edge of the moat.” Then he turned and exclaimed in horror at the wallpaper-he said it looked like giant squashed frogs. It certainly did, and there was a monstrosity of a fireplace surrounded by tobacco-colored tiles. But the diamond-paned windows overlooking the garden and full of the sunset were beautiful, and I was already in love with the moat.
    While Rose and I were waving to our reflections, Father went off through the short passage to the kitchen we suddenly heard him shouting “The swine, the swine!” Just for an instant I thought he had found pigs, but it turned out to be his continued opinion of the people who had spoilt the house. The kitchen was really dreadful. It had been partitioned to make several rooms-hens had been kept in one of them; there was a great sagging false ceiling, the staircase and the cupboards were grained ginger like the hall. What upset me most was a bundle of rags and straw where tramps must have slept. I kept as far away from it as possible and was glad when Father led the way upstairs.
    The bedrooms were as spoilt as the downstairs rooms -false ceilings, horrid fireplaces, awful wallpapers. But I was very much fetched when I saw the round tower opening into the room which is now Rose’s and mine. Father tried to get the door to it open, but it was nailed up so he strode on across the landing.
    “That corner tower we saw from outside must be somewhere about here,” he said. We followed him into Thomas’s little room, hunting for it, and then into the bathroom. It had a huge bath with a wide mahogany surround, and two mahogany-seated lavatories, side by side, with one lid to cover them both. The pottery parts showed views of Windsor Castle and when you pulled the plug the bottom of Windsor Castle fell out. Just above them was a text left by the previous tenants, saying:
    “Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.” Father sat down on the side