National Velvet: Part 1

By ENID BAGNOLD

Unearthly humps of land curved into the darkening sky like the backs of browsing pigs, like the rumps of elephants. At night when the stars rose over them they looked like a starlit herd of divine pigs. The villagers called them Hullocks.

The valleys were full of soft and windblown vegetation. The sea rolled at the foot of all as though God had brought his herd down to water.

The Hullocks were blackening as Velvet cantered down the chalk road to the village. She ran on her own slender legs, making horse-noises and chirps and occasionally striking her thigh with a switch, holding at the same time something very small before her as she ran. The light on the chalk road was the last thing to gleam and die. The faints slipped and flashed under her feet. Her cotton dress and her cottony hair blew out and her lips were parted for breath in a sweet metallic smile. She had the look of a sapling-Dainty as she ran through the darkness downhill.

Publisher: Mammoth

Price: $16.95

Age group: 9 plus yrs


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