LITMIR.BIZ

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with their suitcases.

      “Here you are,” said Nancy. “Hullo, Mrs Newby. Well, Roger, did you get the pigeon all right? Did you let it fly? Mother and I had to start before it got home. She’ll be here in a minute. Shopping. Gosh, I was nearly too late to meet you. You didn’t forget the basket. Good. Good. Shiver my timbers but I’m jolly glad to see you. Come on. Let’s get your boxes out of the van, and then we’ve got to go to the Parcels Office.”

      Everybody in the world seemed to be talking at once all round them, but presently their boxes came out of the van among the others, and Nancy, telling the porter to keep a look out for Mrs Blackett, was hurrying them along the platform.

      “Is Captain Flint in the houseboat?” asked Roger.

      “He’s still in South America, isn’t he?” said Titty.

      “He ought to be here, but he isn’t,” said Nancy. “His mine wasn’t any good and it serves him right, not being here in time for the beginning of the holidays. But he’s on his way home. Some of his things have come already, but not the most important. At least it hadn’t yesterday. It may be here today.”

      She took them into the Parcels Office.

      “You haven’t a crate or a cage with something alive in it?” she asked the man behind the counter.

      “Rabbits?” asked the man.

      “The trouble is we don’t exactly know.”

      “Miss Blackett, isn’t it?” said the man, running his finger down the columns of his book. “No, Miss, there’s nothing come for you. Not yet. Unless it’s come by this train.”

      “I’ve looked in the van already,” said Nancy. “Look here, we’ll be awfully busy tomorrow. So I won’t be able to come across. But could you telephone if it comes?”

      “Aye, Miss Blackett, I can do that.”

      “But what is it?” asked Roger.

      “It’s called Timothy, anyway,” said Nancy.

      “Another monkey?” said Roger.

      “Or a parrot?” said Titty. “He said he might be getting another.”

      “Can’t be either,” said Nancy, as they went back to the luggage. “He said in the telegram that we could let it loose in his room. It can’t be a monkey or a parrot. It must be something that can’t do much damage and doesn’t climb. Dick …” Nancy checked herself and went on. “We’ve been looking through the natural history books, and we’re pretty sure it must be an armadillo. But we don’t know. And we can’t find out, because Uncle Jim is on his way home and we don’t even know the name of his ship. Whatever it is, he must have sent it on in advance, or he wouldn’t have telegraphed…. Hullo, here’s mother.”

      A smallish, ancient motor-car with badly dinted mudguards had driven into the station yard. Mrs Blackett, round, small, no taller than Nancy, was talking to the porter. She turned as they came up.

      “Here you are,” she said. “The last of the gang.”

      “Except Timothy,” said Nancy. “He’s not here yet, but they’re going to telephone the moment he arrives.”

      “Yes, those two …” Mrs Blackett was looking at their boxes. “We’ll have them both on the back. You’ve nothing else, have you, besides those suitcases? And how’s your mother? And Bridget? Oh, I was forgetting you’ve come straight from school, too, and won’t know any more than John or Susan.”

      “We had a letter yesterday,” said Titty. “Bridgie’s only whooping about twice a day. So she’s all right, and so’s mother. At least she didn’t say she wasn’t.”

      “Hop in,” said Mrs Blackett, when the boxes were strapped on the luggage grid. “Thank you, Robert. You come in front with me, Titty. Don’t anybody sit on my parcels. There are eggs in that basket, and tomatoes in the paper bag. Slam that door, Roger. Give it a push from inside to see it’s properly shut. That’s right, Nancy … I’m glad your uncle didn’t hear me get into those gears … Yes, I’ve remembered to take the brake off …”

      There was a fearful crash and rattle, and the little old car swung out of the station gates and turned sharp to the left.

      “Don’t we have to go round the head of the lake?” said Roger.

      “You don’t,” said Nancy. “Not if young Sophocles flew straight.”

      Titty, sitting in front by Mrs Blackett, looked round. “Why did you call the pigeon Sophocles?” she asked.

      “You may well wonder,” said Mrs Blackett.

      “Oh, mother, do look out for your steering,” said Nancy. “You see, Uncle Jim gave us one, and called him Homer because he was a homing pigeon. And then when we got two more for company, we looked up Greek poets and found Sophocles and Sappho. And there you are. Phew! Mother. Lucky I caught the eggs …”

      Their adventures had very nearly ended before they had properly begun.

      “People ought not to go so fast,” said Mrs Blackett. She had braked the car so suddenly that Roger and Nancy had shot off the back seat and Titty had nearly bumped her nose on the windscreen. “The roads are crowded with dangerous drivers … It’s hardly safe to be on them at all. All very well, Nancy. You can laugh as much as you like. People are most careless. Now then, I ought to have sounded my horn, if only I hadn’t been listening to you …”

      “Did you see who it was?” said Nancy. “It was Colonel Jolys. He took off his hat … No, don’t try to turn round. He knows you didn’t see him, and I gave him a grin anyway.”

      “What’s he got a trumpet for?” asked Roger.

      “It’s a hunting-horn,” said Titty.

      “It isn’t,” said Nancy. “It’s one of the old coach horns. He’s been having a review of his fire-fighters. Didn’t you see those brooms on long handles sticking up out of the back of his car?”

      “It’s the drought,” Mrs Blackett explained. “We’ve had no rain for weeks, and if the fells should catch fire it would be a dreadful thing for everybody, and old Colonel Jolys has been organising so that the moment there’s a fire all the young men know where to go to be rushed off in motor-cars to help to beat it out.”

      “They sound coach horns,” said Nancy, “and then see how soon they can start. Everybody who’s got a motor-car is in it, and all the men … Oh do look out, mother.”

      Mrs Blackett, who had somehow got to the wrong side of the road, swerved back and straightened again. They were coming down the last steep drop into the little village that the Walkers and Blacketts called Rio. They turned the corner at the bottom. There was the sparkling water of the bay, with its landing-stages and its anchored yachts. Roger and Titty had seen it last in winter, frozen and covered with skaters. Mrs Blackett, with a screech of the brakes, pulled up. Nancy was out as the car stopped.

      “Come on, you two,” she said, and Titty and Roger got out and followed her, wondering, along a wooden boat pier that seemed strangely high out of the water.

      “What’s happened to the lake?” said Roger. “It used to be nearly up to the road.”

      “No rain,” said Nancy, looking eagerly out beyond the islands. “Half a minute. Yes, it’s all right. Sophocles has got home. You stick here and wait for them …”

      Already she was running back along the pier.

      “I say,” cried Roger, staring after her. “Mrs Blackett’s turned round. Nancy’s getting in. They’re off. Hi! I say, Titty! They’ve taken all our luggage!”

      But Titty hardly heard him. Far away over the water, glittering in the evening sun, she had seen the white speck that had sent Nancy hurrying to the car. Two years had slipped back in a moment,

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