"Mamma won"t know," Prudence replied calmly. "She never looks at my bed, and, if she did, she would forget it had ever had a striped blanket on it. Come on, Mollie, we"ll get the things and smuggle them across while no one is looking."
Mollie felt shocked for a minute. Doing things behind backs was all against Guide Law, and at home she would almost as soon think of chopping up her own feet as of cutting up Mother"s blankets to play with. But, she reflected, different times have different ways; there was no Guide Law in 1878, and perhaps Prue"s mother was very extra strict, in which case "all"s fair in love and war", so she followed Prue into the house. It was, to her eyes, an unusual sort of house, all built on the ground floor, so that there was no staircase. The front door opened into a square hall with doors on all sides. Prue pushed one open and they pa.s.sed through into a bedroom, very plainly furnished with two little beds, two chests of drawers, a wash-stand, and a chair. They pulled the white cover off one bed and hauled away a blanket, cheerfully striped in scarlet, purple, yellow, and green, with a few black and white lines thrown in here and there. Mollie thought it would be rather a difficult blanket to forget about. Prue replaced the white cover, spreading it smoothly and neatly, rolled up the blanket, and made for the door again.
Hugh had disappeared. They walked down the veranda, pa.s.sing several open French windows through which Mollie caught a glimpse of sitting-rooms, and crossed a paved courtyard, at the farther side of which was a red brick house with a wooden porch in front of it.
"The schoolroom is here," Prudence explained, "because Mamma doesn"t like noise. It"s a very good plan for us; we can do lots of things we couldn"t do if we were in the house. Miss Wilton is our governess; she has gone home to-day to nurse a sister with bronchitis. I"m sorry for the sister, but it"s a treat for us, especially as Hugh has got a half-holiday. Mamma is out, Bridget has taken Baby for a walk, and Mary is talking to her sweetheart across the fence, so we"ll get the hearthrug without any questions."
As she talked, Prudence led the way into the schoolroom. It was plainly furnished and not very tidy, but it had a homely look--in fact it reminded Mollie of the nursery in North Kensington, so that, for one very brief moment, she almost felt homesick. But Prudence gave her little time to indulge in this luxurious sensation (because having a home nice enough to be sick for is a luxury in its way), and Mollie had merely taken in a general impression of books, toys, and shabbiness, when Prudence called her to help with the hearthrug.
It certainly was shabby and by no means added to the beauty of the room. They rolled it up with the blanket inside, and, carrying it between them, they left the schoolroom, crossed the courtyard again, scrambled over a low stone wall, and arrived at the foot of a tall tree.
It was a very large tree. Its trunk, grey, smooth, and absolutely straight, rose from the ground for fourteen feet without a branch or foothold of any description. At that height its thick boughs spread out in a broad and even circ.u.mference, and across two of these boughs was built a hut, perhaps five by seven feet in area, and high enough for a child of ten to stand upright in. It had a floor, four walls, and a roof, an opening for a door, and three smaller openings for windows. At the door sat Hugh, waiting for the girls and their bundle. When they came to a standstill below him he let down a rope.
"Tie the things on and I"ll haul them up," he ordered; "and then you two climb up and give me a hand. Better send Mollie up first, as the ladder is a bit shaky till you know it, and Prue can hang on to it below."
Mollie noticed then that a narrow green ladder leant up against the smooth trunk; it looked as if an unwary step would send it flying, and she put a reluctant foot on the lowest rung. The ground below was hard and stony, most uninviting for a fall.
"You are quite safe so long as you push and don"t pull," Prudence a.s.sured her. "I am holding on here, and the ladder is firmer than it looks."
Mollie mounted with gingerly tread, but reached the top safely and crawled into the hut through the little door. She was quickly followed by Prudence, and the two girls examined the interior with interest. There was not very much room; two could sit down with comfort, three would be slightly crowded, and four would be a tight fit but not impossible.
"You won"t be able to lay the carpet with all of us inside," said Mollie, as she felt the big roll at her back.
"One of you had better stay out," said Hugh. "There are seats all over the tree."
Mollie put her head out at the door and looked up into the branches.
They were very much forked, and upon every difficult branch Hugh had nailed steps and made a railing. In some of the forks he had inserted wooden seats, others he had left to nature. The topmost seat was almost at the summit of the tree, and behind it was firmly lashed a flagpole, with a Union Jack hanging limply in the still air, and a lantern with green and red gla.s.s on two of its sides.
Near the door of the little house there hung from a stout branch a curious-looking canvas bag, broadly tubular in shape, and with a small bra.s.s tap at the lower end. The tree was thickly foliaged, but the leaves were delicate and lacy, and, though they formed an admirable screen for the climbers, a good view of the surrounding country was to be obtained between them, and even through them in some places. Mollie decided to climb to the top and look about.
"That"s our look-out," Hugh explained. "We can see the enemy from there a long time before the enemy can see us."
""O Pip", is what _we_ call it," said Mollie. "Who is the enemy?"
"It all depends," Hugh replied evasively. "Now, Prue, look alive."
Mollie was a level-headed climber when she had something reasonably solid beneath her feet; no one unfamiliar with the vagaries of the green ladder could be expected to climb it with enthusiasm. She crawled out of the house by the little door again, found her road to the nearest staircase, and climbed this way and that among the leafy branches till she reached the Look-out. There she settled herself comfortably and examined her surroundings near and far, whilst the other two laid the carpet and tacked up the blanket, now cut into three strips by Prudence.
"She looks as if she were hemming sheets for missionaries," Mollie said to herself, as she watched Prudence doing execution on the blanket with a large pair of scissors. "It would be almost impossible for any girl to be as good as Prue looks; it"s her eyelashes, and the way she does her hair."
After admiring the well-planned architecture of the tree Mollie turned her attention to the scenery. At her feet lay the garden with the long, vine-wreathed house and the red schoolroom at one side. It was a large garden, stretching far behind the house, and, as Mollie surveyed the rows of almond trees which outlined its boundaries, she felt some respect for Grizzel"s perseverance. "If she has laid a chain right round that she knows how to stick to a thing," she thought, as she caught sight of the little blue figure still sitting amongst the golden dandelions. "It"s a pity she doesn"t do something more worth while. She would make a good Guide." Looking beyond the garden, Mollie could see the town of Adelaide. It was a white town among green trees, with many slender spires and pointed steeples piercing the blue sky, many gardens and meadows, and a silvery streak of river winding across it like a twisted thread. A semicircle of softly swelling hills enclosed the town upon two sides, some of them striped with vineyards, some wooded, and some brilliantly yellow, for the dandelions seemed to be spread over the country like a carpet. Mollie shook a wise head at such waste of good land, for of what use are dandelions! In the far distance she could see a straight white road leading from the town into the hills. She thought she would like to follow that road and see what happened to it in the end. "I had not the least idea," she murmured to herself, "that Adelaide and Australia were like this; not the very least. There must be a great deal of world outside England, when you come to think of it. When I am grown-up--"
"Come down, Mollie," called Prue. "The house is beautiful now; come and see it."
It certainly looked very snug, with the carpet, whose shabbiness was not noticeable in the dim light, and the gaily striped curtains, which had been tacked up and fastened back from the windows. They had added a set of shelves made out of a box covered with American leather and bra.s.s-headed nails. A few books lay upon one shelf, and on another stood a collection of cups, saucers, and plates, cracked, perhaps, and not all matching, but suggestive of convivial parties and good cheer. In one corner lay a cushion embroidered in woolwork with magenta roses, pea-green leaves, and orange-coloured daisies, all upon a background of ultramarine blue. Mollie thought it gave an effective touch to the somewhat scanty furnishing--in fact, it was the only furniture there was, except the shelves.
"How perfectly _ripping_!" Mollie exclaimed enthusiastically. "If I had this house I would live in it all the time. It is _much_ nicer than a common house in a road. I do think Hugh is the cleverest boy I ever met."
"This is nothing much," Hugh said modestly, "you should see my raft--that _is_ worth seeing. I have invented a way of arranging corks so that it will float in the severest storm. It could not sink if it tried, unless, of course, it became waterlogged. But I can only work at that when we are down at Brighton."
"I wish my brother d.i.c.k could be a Time-traveller and come here,"
sighed Mollie. "He would adore this tree, and the raft too."
"How old is d.i.c.k?" Hugh asked with interest.
"He is my twin; we are thirteen and a half," answered Mollie, quite forgetting that in the year 1878 d.i.c.k was still minus twenty-nine.
"We do everything together in the holidays except football, and just now there isn"t any football, so d.i.c.k is rather bored at school. In term-time we hardly see each other at all, we are both so horribly busy. How do you find time to do all these things?"
"I don"t find it, I steal it," Hugh answered. "If I waited to _find_ time I should never have enough to be useful. To-day is a half- holiday, and I am supposed to be learning Roman history and writing out five hundred lines. But I"m not," he added unnecessarily.
"Building is much more important than Roman history," said Mollie decidedly, "and lines are absolutely rotten. I wonder why--"
"Hullo!" came a voice from below. "It"s me. I have finished my chain at last, and now I want to come up. Please come and hold the ladder, Prue."
Prudence crept out, tripped lightly down the ladder, and stood beside her sister.
"Hold tight, Grizzel, and do remember to push and not pull; if you pull I can"t hold the ladder up."
"I wish Hugh would cut steps in the tree-trunk like the blacks,"
Grizzel complained, as she proceeded rather nervously to climb the ladder. "I do hate this old tobbely old green old thing."
"I am going to make a rope-ladder and pull it up after me," Hugh said, watching her from the door of his castle in the air. "I don"t want steps that everybody could climb. Look out, Griz, you are pulling--" he stretched out a hand as he spoke, and held the top of the ladder, while Prudence steadied it at the bottom, until Grizzel had safely negotiated "the green pa.s.sage", as Hugh called it, and crawled in at his little front door.
"It is very, very, very, very nice," she said approvingly, "and it will make a lovely place to come and hate in when everybody is horrid. You can draw the curtains and shut the door, and light your lantern and sit here hating as long as you like, for no one can get up when you have your rope-ladder."
"It would be rather stuffy," Mollie said, looking at the thick blanket curtains. "If he went on hating very long he would be suffocated. I"d sooner have a tea-party myself, and pull all the tea up in baskets. The water would be the hard part."
"The water is in that canvas bag," Hugh pointed out; "Papa gave it to me; it"s the boiling that bothers me, because I don"t much like using a spirit-lamp in here."
"Get an old biscuit-tin and fasten it up in the tree and put your spirit-lamp in that," suggested Mollie the Guide. "Cut out the front; then you will have a nice little cave all safe and sheltered."
"That"s a jolly good idea," said Hugh; "I"ll do it to-morrow and we"ll have a party."
A bell in the distance warned the children that it was time to go in and tidy up for tea. Grizzel, however, was far too much enthralled by the little house to want to come down so soon. "I don"t want any bread-and-b.u.t.ter tea," she announced; "bring me three oranges and eleven biscuits, and the _Swiss Family Robinson_, and let me stay up here."
Tea was laid in the dining-room, where they found Baby already seated in her high chair. She was a very pretty baby, with large dark eyes, silky golden hair, and a dear little mouth parting over two rows of tiny pearly teeth. She gurgled melodiously to her family in the intervals of dropping bits of jammy bread into her mug of milk, and watching them bob about with absorbed interest.
"Good old Mary! She"s made potato scones _and_ almond gingerbread."
Hugh remarked approvingly. "If you"ve never tasted real Irish potato scones baked on a girdle, Mollie, you"d better chalk it up, as Bridget says. You split them in two, pop in a lump of b.u.t.ter, shut them up, and eat them. Too soon they are but a sweet dream of the past."
"They"ll soon be a horrid dream of the future if you gobble them like that," Prudence said warningly, "and you"ve forgotten Grizzel"s oranges; go and pull three fresh ones, and we"d better send her ginger cake."
The gingerbread was baked in thin oblong squares frosted with white sugar, each child"s name being written on its own cake in pink letters. They were most fascinating, and Mollie was charmed to see one with her own name on it. The delightful part about this most unexpected visit, she thought, was the way everyone had apparently expected her. She could not help wondering how the invitation had been sent, but decided that it was better not to ask too many questions.
Hugh departed with Grizzel"s oranges, biscuits, and gingerbread, elegantly arranged in a green-rush basket, the _Swiss Family Robinson_ forming the basis of the repast. He returned with a smile upon his face which disclosed two most engaging dimples.
"I"ve sneaked the ladder," he said. "Won"t Frizzy Grizzy be pleased when she finds out! Ha ha! More scones, please."
"She won"t mind," Prudence answered placidly, "she knows someone will have to let her down before Mamma comes in. You"ve had enough jam, Baby darling; let Prudence take off your bib now and wash your handy-pandys. You can have half my gingerbread if you like, Hugh-- hullo, there"s Papa!"
There was a sharp double knock at the front door, followed by the sound of someone entering. Prudence set Baby on her feet and bolted helter-skelter across the square hall, flinging herself into the arms of a stout man with a brown beard, who returned her embrace so warmly that Mollie wondered if he had been away from home for some time. He removed his tall silk hat, showing a head as thickly covered with curls as Grizzel"s, but the hair was dark and slightly touched with grey.