The Oracles Read Free

even if you had no hat?’
    Serafina scratched her leg and mumbled something about breakfast.
    ‘You cooked the breakfast? All by yourself?’
    ‘I do all the cooking.’
    ‘Ah, poor child!’ cried Miss Byrne, quite softened. ‘You do your best, I’m sure. Quite a little mother to them all, I’ll be bound! I’ll pray for you.’
    ‘Thank you. When will I get the hat?’
    Miss Byrne was about to explain that prayers are more important than hats when an acquaintance, coming up to greet her, distracted her attention. The child immediately darted off.
    A little hat can mean different things to different people. Miss Byrne had in mind something rescued from the jumble-sale cupboard. For Serafina the words conjured up a flowery vision with an eye-veil, like Mrs. Dickie Pattison’s Easter bonnet. She skipped home in a transport of complacency, no longer frightened by the distant growling thunder.
    A little mother! Never before had it occurred to her to think of herself in so romantic a light. She perceived now that it was well earned. Who looked after the others, if she did not? Who saw to it that they were fed? Who dispensed justice among them? Who rang up the doctor when Mike got a bean in his nose?
    For grown-up people Serafina felt, as a rule, very little respect. She made an exception in the case of Mrs. Pattison, with whom they had all made friends on the beach one day, when Dinah had cut her foot on a piece of broken glass. That kind, pretty lady had brought some Elastoplast out of her bag and dressed the cut. She was like nobody else. She told them stories and could play like a little girl; she had made a wonderful switchback in the sand for them, down which they hadrolled golf balls. Once they had gone to tea with her in her beautiful sparkling house. Even her little baby had his own basket, lined with blue, for his powder-puff and safety-pins.
    But she had never called Serafina a little mother. The commendation of Miss Byrne opened up new vistas. What a pity that more people did not know about this! How glorious it would be when everybody knew! There she goes, they would say. There she goes, that sainted child! Where? Who? Why? Serafina Swann, to be sure, in her lovely little hat.
    The house seemed to be deserted when she got home. It stood up bleakly under the heavy yellow sky, a mean, small box of a house, in a garden choked with weeds. All the doors and windows were wide open, as though the inhabitants had just rushed out in a panic and deserted it for ever. She did not go in because she knew that the others would probably be up at the tree.
    This great oak tree was their favourite refuge and hiding-place. It stood higher than the house, in the middle of a meadow adjoining the back garden, and was more like a little town than a tree. Each child had a particular house, or branch—Serafina had even managed to contrive a sacking roof for hers. Their treasures and toys they kept in their houses, suspended in baskets.
    The ascent was particularly enchanting. They could not have reached the lowest bough without the aid of a derelict ladder which they had found in the garage. Most of its lower rungs were gone, but they could achieve the upper by climbing on to an old green metal garden chair, which had been knocking about in the field ever since they came to Summersdown.
    The greater part of their life was spent in this tree. Sometimes they fell out of it, but nobody had, as yet,been seriously hurt. They would sit for hours in their houses, or climb slowly from branch to branch, visiting one another. They felt it to be a friendly place. Up there they were safe, especially in the summer, when the leaves were so thick as to hide them from anyone not standing immediately below. They were all, except Serafina, timid, low-spirited children, easily terrified, and with a mania for concealing themselves.
    Nobody ever came to look for them in the field. Only cows gathered in the shade of the tree in hot weather, whisking