Read The Tale of Hill Top Farm for Free Online Page B

loved.”
    “She’s thinking of Norman,” said Mrs. Tiggy, an incurable romantic who always spoke from her heart. “She misses him awf’ly.”
    “You’re right, Mrs. T.” Mopsy licked a paw and smoothed her gray whiskers. “A terrible tragedy, and so soon after they were engaged.”
    Tom sniffed. “She’ll never love anyone else. Just as there’ll never be anyone for me but my dear, sweet Hunca Munca. My precious little mouse-wife.” He began to sob loudly .
    “Oh, piffle!” exclaimed Josey with an impatient stamp of her hind foot. “She’ll find someone else to love, someone who’ll love her just as much as Norman did.” She twitched her nose at Tom. “You will, too, Tom. Just you wait and see.”
    “Never!” cried the little mouse dramatically . “Never, never, never! My heart belongs to Hunca Munca!”
    “What a conversation you’re all having,” Beatrix said with a smile. “But you’ve had a long day, and it’s time you went to sleep. Tomorrow we’ll have lots of adventures.”
    She gave them each another quick kiss, then sat down and wrote a dutiful letter to her parents—not so much because she wanted to, but because she knew they would telegraph if they didn’t hear that she had arrived safely. That chore done, she took out the exercise book in which she kept her journal, turned up the wick in the paraffin lamp, and began to write.
    Beatrix had begun her journal when she was fourteen. Because she was a very private person and didn’t want her brother or the nursery maids to read what she wrote, she had invented her own secret code inscribed in miniature, a kind of cipher shorthand. The writing was entirely secret and she never expected that it would be read, so she always wrote with complete honesty, about all her feelings. Tonight, she wrote about the tiring journey, and the sad, shocking news of Miss Tolliver’s death, and her discomfort at dinner. But she also wrote about her hope for the future, and her plans for an exciting day tomorrow.
    After a while, Beatrix put down her pen, put away her journal, and got ready for bed. But she didn’t go to sleep right away. Instead, she pulled the curtains open so that the moonlight spilled over the wooden sill and onto the braided rag rug on the floor. Then she lay very still, watching the flickering shadows and thinking.
    Tomorrow, she would walk over Hill Top Farm’s fields, get a good look at the barns and the animals, and try to formulate some sort of plan for the future of the place. She felt very much at sixes and sevens where the farm was concerned. She had long wanted a little place of her own, and she had no doubt that Hill Top was exactly right. But there were a great many puzzles yet to be sorted out, and they all seemed rather daunting, especially since she was not used to making such important decisions.
    For one thing, she had hoped to take possession of the farmhouse as soon as the final papers were signed next month, so she could begin to furnish the house and arrange it against the day when she would no longer have any obligation to her parents and could choose for herself where to live. But it was currently occupied by a tenant farmer named John Jennings, his wife, and their two children, with another on the way. She had considered asking the Jenningses to leave, but she knew nothing about farming and could not hope to be here often or long enough to learn properly, at least while her mother demanded so much of her time and attention. She had also considered keeping the Jenningses on to manage the farm, but asking them to move so that she could have the house. But she knew it would be difficult for them to find a nearby place at a rent they could afford, and she hated the thought of turning them out, especially with a baby on the way.
    But if the rapidly multiplying Jennings family filled up every room of the little farmhouse, where could she stay? She had thought perhaps she might arrange a more or less permanent lodging