The Picts & the Martyrs. Arthur Ransome

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ had a queer feeling that they had never gone away. Over the telephone in the hall, just where it had been last year, was Colonel Jolys’s card, giving his telephone number in case of fires on the fells. He pointed it out to Dorothea.

DROUGHT

FELL FIRES

      IN CASE OF FIRE RING FELLSIDE 75

      T. E. JOLYS (LT.-COL.)

      Nancy laughed. “Nothing for him to do this year,” she said. “Too much rain. I bet he’s simply praying for somebody to light a fire on purpose … No more telegrams?” she asked, turning to Cook.

      “No,” said Cook. “One’s enough.”

      “Good,” said Nancy, and explained to Dorothea. “It’s only our Great Aunt. She found out somehow that Mother was away and sent a telegram. I squashed her all right. Come along upstairs and look at your rooms.”

      “What do you think of it?” said Nancy, as she flung open the door.

      There was a moment of startled silence.

      “We’ll have them death’s heads down in two shakes, if you like,” said Cook. “I wouldn’t care to sleep with them myself.”

      “But they’re simply splendid,” said Dorothea.

      “Just to remind us that piracy and all that’s only put off for a bit,” said Nancy.

      And then Dorothea saw the beetle flag.

      “Dick! Dick!” she cried. “They’ve made the flag for Scarab. I’d been thinking about it at school but I wasn’t sure how it ought to be made.”

      “Peggy made it,” said Nancy. “I only made the flagstaff.”

      “Thanks most awfully,” said Dick and Dorothea together.

      “Is it the right kind of beetle?” asked Peggy.

      “I’m not sure about the legs,” said Dick. “Scarabs are mostly made of clay or stone, and I think their legs are tucked up against their bodies.”

      “But our scarab’s alive,” said Dorothea.

      “Of course it is … she is … ,” said Dick. “The legs are just right.”

      Then there was Dick’s room to see, but, though he admired the skulls, he admired still more the big telescope that made his own look small. “I say,” he said. “You can see a lot of sky from here. I’ll look at stars to-night.”

      “You’ll be asleep before it’s all that dark,” said Cook from the doorway. “And now, Miss Nancy, I’ve supper ready, and they’ll be wanting it.”

      “All right,” said Nancy, remembering that she was in charge. “I dare say you’ll want to wash your hands after the journey. Come down as soon as you can.”

      At supper, in the Beckfoot dining-room, Nancy sat at the head of the table, Peggy at the foot, their guests on either side. As Dorothea said to Dick afterwards, “No one ever would have thought that Nancy could be so polite.” It was clear that, in spite of skulls and crossbones, plans, for the present, were for a quiet house-party, with reformed pirates entertaining the most civilized of visitors.

      After supper, however, memories of the past kept crowding in. Dick, thinking of the work he was going to do with Timothy, wanted to have a look into Captain Flint’s study. Their hosts took them in and, remembering the tall, lean man who had met them at the station, they laughed at seeing the hutch that had been made for him when they had thought that he was probably an armadillo. The hutch was now used as a boot-cupboard, but it still had Timothy’s name painted on its door. That, of course, reminded them of their pigeon post, and they went out into the yard to see the pigeons. Dick climbed the steps to the loft to find out if his bell was still working. He set the gate with the swinging wires but found that nothing happened when he pushed his hand through.

      “It’s not broken,” said Nancy. “We undid the wire from the battery. We’ll use it again this summer when Uncle Jim and Mother come back and we start stirring things up.”

      As it was growing dusk, they went out over the ridge to the end of the promontory, and hauled down the skull and crossbones. Just for a moment, on their way back into the house, they had a glimpse of the old Nancy.

      “There’s something different about the house,” said Dorothea. “It wasn’t quite like that. Was that trelliswork there last year?”

      “No,” said Peggy. “It’s for climbing roses. Uncle Jim had it done for a present for Mother.”

      “Jolly useful,” said Nancy. “Of course, when the roses grow up ….”

      “It’ll be lovely,” said Dorothea.

      “It won’t be so much use,” said Nancy. “Too beastly prickly. But now … ”

      She put the folded flag between her teeth, ran up the trellis like a monkey, and disappeared into her bedroom window.

      “Uncle Jim says he’s sorry he had it made so strong,” said Peggy.

      From inside the house came the noise of someone coming downstairs in flying leaps, and, a moment later, Nancy was at the garden door. “Pretty good, isn’t it?” she said and then, remembering again her good resolves, she became the hostess once more. “You must be very tired after your journey,” she said. “I should think, for the first night, you ought to go to bed early.”

      And the reformed pirates took their visitors upstairs to their bedrooms, lit their candles for them, asked them if they had everything they wanted, and left them for the night. In spite of the big telescope lying handy, Dick decided not to wait for the stars. Dorothea blew out her candle and settled herself in the middle of the big spare-room bed. An owl called in the woods. “Not a barn owl, but a tawny,” thought Dick, listening to the sharp “Gewick! Gewick!” as he fell asleep. A smell of new-mown hay drifted from the meadows on the further side of the river. “There isn’t a lovelier place in all the world,” thought Dorothea. London last night, and now Beckfoot. The summer holidays had begun.

      A GREAT IMPROVEMENT TO THE HOUSE

CHAPTER III

      OUT OF THE BLUE

      NO ONE could have guessed from the way the day began how differently it was going to end. There was a dip in the river before breakfast, when Dick added three more birds, waterhen, wagtail and swan, to the list he had begun the night before. Breakfast, like supper, was a formal meal, with hosts being polite to guests and guests refusing to be outdone in courtesy by their hosts. They talked of plans, but these were all of the tamer kind.

      “You do understand, don’t you?” said Nancy. “It’s no good thinking of anything tremendous. It’s got to be plain ordinary life, to show Mother it was perfectly safe to leave us by ourselves.”

      “Of СКАЧАТЬ