Читать книгу Six Bad Boys - Enid blyton - Страница 3

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Donald and Jeanie ran to the window when they heard the sound of heavy wheels outside. They pulled back the curtain.

“The new people are moving in next door!” said Jeanie. “The van has come, Mother. I wonder who they are. Will there be children, do you think?”

“I expect so,” said their mother. “No, Pat, you can’t go to the window and look out till you’ve drunk up your milk. Drink it quickly!”

Pat drank her milk so quickly that she spluttered. Then she ran to the window too. All the Mackenzies watched the big van draw up at the bungalow next door.

Donald and Jeanie were twins, eleven years old. Pat was their seven-year-old sister. They lived in Barlings Cottage with their mother and father, and their dog Frisky.

Frisky was at the front gate, his paws up, his nose through the bars of the gate. He was watching too.

“He’s hoping there will be a dog to play with!” said Donald. “Look—they’re opening the van doors.”

“Only the removal men are there,” said Jeanie, disappointed. “Where are the family?”

“Oh, they’ll come by train, I expect,” said their mother, busy clearing away the breakfast. “They’ll be here soon, because someone will have to tell the men where to put the furniture. Jeanie, aren’t you going to help clear away for me?”

Jeanie ran to help, trying to be as quick as possible because she wanted to go back and watch to see what family was coming to Hawthorn Cottage. She did hope there would be children. The last people in the bungalow had been two old ladies and they hadn’t liked children at all.

Then Donald gave a yell. “I say! There’s another van coming! Surely that little bungalow next door won’t hold two vans of furniture! Why, even we only had one van when we moved here, and that wasn’t a very big one.”

Mrs. Mackenzie came to the window herself, puzzled to hear about two vans for such a small cottage. Why, it had only two bedrooms!

“It’s not stopping at Hawthorn Cottage,” she said. “It’s going on; it’s going to the house on our other side—Summerhayes. Those people must be moving in to-day too.”

Summerhayes was a house, not a bungalow. It was not a very pretty house, but it was bigger than either Barlings or Hawthorn Cottage. The second van came to a standstill outside Summerhayes, and the men at the front got down and went round to the back. At the same moment a small car drew up beside the van.

“This is exciting,” said Donald. “Two families moving in on the same day, one on each side. What fun if they both have children! We shall have plenty to play games with then.”

“There are five people in the car,” said Jeanie. “Look, Pat—can you see them? There’s a mother—and a father—and are those children at the back?”

The back door of the car swung open and three children scrambled out. The Mackenzie family watched them eagerly.

There were two girls about twelve and thirteen, and a boy about ten. The boy pushed past his sisters and ran up the path to the Summerhayes front door.

“Hark at him banging on the knocker!”

“I don’t much like the look of the boy,” said Donald. “Hark at him banging at the knocker! He must know the house is empty.”

The mother shouted something crossly at the boy and he swung round and grinned. One of his sisters gave him a sharp push as she came up the path to the door, and he pushed her back.

Then the new family disappeared inside the door, and the removal men swung open the back doors of the van and began to pull out a table.

“Look—two people are going into Hawthorn Cottage now, on the other side of us!” said Pat. “Are they the family there, do you think?”

“Yes,” said Jeanie, and all three children looker closely at the good-looking woman with the equally good-looking boy walking up to the front door of the cottage near by. The woman took out a key and unlocked the door. She and the boy disappeared inside.

“A family of three children one side, and one boy the other side,” said Donald. “Not bad! We’ll be able to make some new friends, anyway. We haven’t had children for neighbours all the time we’ve been here. It’ll be nice, won’t it, Mother?”

“Yes,” said his mother, bustling round. “Jeanie, I shall want you to call in at both houses some time soon and offer to take them pots of tea—just to be neighbourly when they’re all in a muddle.”

“I’ll go with her,” said Donald, who was longing to get a closer look at the four new children.

“So will I,” said Pat.

“No. Three will be too many,” said Jeanie at once. Pat said no more, but her mother saw she was disappointed. Pat was so often left out by the twins, who were everything to each other.

“Poor little odd-man-out!” thought Mrs. Mackenzie for the hundredth time. “She’s always on her own. I hope one of these four new children will make friends with her—perhaps the only boy next door, at Hawthorns.”

A great bustle went on all the morning. The removal men carried the furniture into the houses, and staggered under an enormous wardrobe for Summerhayes, and a piano for Hawthorns. They took in tables and chairs and sofas and pictures, a washing-machine for Summerhayes, and an ordinary wash-tub for the bungalow.

“It’ll be funny to see all that furniture set out neatly in the rooms!” said Jeanie. “Mother, is it time for me to go and offer the new people tea?”

“Yes. It’s past eleven,” said her mother. “Just say that Mrs. Mackenzie next door would be pleased to send in a pot of tea, because they must be feeling the need of something!”

Jeanie and Donald set off. Pat watched them go. “Would you like to go and ask at Hawthorns next door if they would like some tea?” said Mrs. Mackenzie to Pat.

“Oh no!” said Pat, at once. “I’d be much too scared to go to people I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have minded going with Donald and Jeanie. But they never want me.”

“Oh yes they do,” said her mother. “It’s just that they’re twins, and twins are always like that. They wouldn’t be without you for the whole world!”

“I wish I’d been a twin too,” said Pat. “Look, Mother—they’ve gone right inside Summerhayes!”

Donald and Jeanie had walked up to the front door, and had rung the bell politely. But nobody had answered. There was a great deal of noise going on upstairs, as if furniture was being shifted round and about. A girl’s voice called something, and then there was the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor again.

“They’ll never hear us ringing the bell,” said Donald, peering into the hall. “Look, they’ve got the carpets down already. Let’s go in and find the people and give them Mother’s message.”

They went into the hall. They heard voices in the kitchen and decided to go there. But outside the kitchen door they stopped.

A woman’s voice was raised in anger. “You said you would arrange about having the gas laid on ready—and it isn’t! And there’s no lino down here, either. What’s the good of you, I’d like to know? Here I’ve been slaving away for the last two weeks, packing and getting ready, and making new curtains—and leaving just a few things to you. And as usual they’re not done!”

The voice was sharp and harsh. Donald and Jeanie moved back quickly into the hall. “Was that the mother?” said Jeanie. “Who was she talking to? One of the removal men?”

“I don’t know,” said Donald. “What a horrid voice! Shall we go upstairs and find someone else?”

But before they could decide what to do the kitchen door swung open and two people came out, a man and a woman. The woman looked angry, and the man looked sullen. They stopped in surprise when they saw Jeanie and Donald.

“Please excuse us for coming in,” said Donald hastily, “but we live next door—and our mother sent us in to say she would be glad to send in a pot of tea if you’d like it. She knows what a muddle moving-in is.”

“Well, that’s kind of her,” begun the man, but the woman interrupted him.

“Please thank your mother,” she said, stiffly, “but tell her we won’t trouble her for the tea. We can easily boil a kettle on the gas-stove. You’re the children next door, you say?”

“Yes,” said Donald. “We’re twins. We live at Barlings.”

There was a clatter on the stairs and three children came down at top speed. “Mother, where’s my little chair? It hasn’t been left behind, has it?” shouted one of the girls.

Then they saw Jeanie and Donald and stared at them curiously. “These are the children from next door,” said their mother. She turned to Jeanie and Donald. “Well, you run along home,” she said. “And give your mother my thanks.”

“Here, what are your names?” said the boy, as they turned to go. His mother frowned at him and waved him back. The twins heard quite well what she said, though her voice was low.

“We don’t know what the family is like yet. I may not want you to know them.”

The twins were scarlet with fury when they got to the gate. “Horrid woman!” said Jeanie. “And she told a lie too. She said she would boil a kettle on the gas-stove—and we heard her telling her husband there wasn’t any gas! I don’t like her one bit.”

“I didn’t like the boy much, either,” said Donald, cross and disappointed. “Let’s go and tell Mother.”

They ran into their own front gate, and soon Mrs. Mackenzie heard of their experience next door. She laughed at their furious faces.

“Don’t be so cross! They’re probably all hot and bothered with moving in, and may think we’re poking our noses in too soon.”

“I don’t want to go and ask at Hawthorns if they would like tea,” said Jeanie. “They might be just as rude!”

“You won’t need to,” said her mother. “Here comes the next-door boy himself!”