Читать книгу Secret Seven Fireworks - Enid blyton - Страница 4

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On Saturday morning Janet and Peter were down by their shed, together with two or three barrows of all sizes, ready to wheel away the onions stored there. The gardener hadn’t been at all pleased when he heard that his precious onions were to be taken out of the nice dry shed.

‘But, Gardener, we asked Dad, and he said we could put them into the old summer-house,’ said Peter.

‘Rain blows in there,’ said the gardener.

‘Dad said we could take the old tarpaulin sheet and cover them over with that,’ said Janet. ‘You see, Gardener, this really is our shed. We meet here. You know we do.’

‘Not for weeks you haven’t,’ said the gardener. ‘Well, I’m busy—you’ll have to move the lot yourselves. Take you a good time, too!’

‘Oh, there’ll be seven of us,’ said Peter. ‘Many hands make light work, you know.’

‘You be careful that too many cooks don’t spoil the broth,’ said the man, and walked off, his rake over his shoulder.

‘That was quite bright of the gardener,’ said Janet, astonished. ‘We’ll have to tell the others that. Now let’s see—three barrows; and look, wouldn’t it be easier to shovel up the onions, instead of picking them up in twos and threes as we said?’

‘Now you’re quite bright!’ said Peter. ‘I’ll go to the tool-shed and see what I can find. Hope the gardener’s not there. He’s a bit gloomy this morning. If the others come, ask them the password and see they’ve got their badges on.’

Janet began to put the onions into one of the barrows. She had put in about twenty when Colin and George came along.

‘Hallo!’ said Janet. ‘Password, please.’

‘It’s so long since we had a meeting that we’ve forgotten it,’ said Colin. ‘Anyway, we’ll hear it when the others come. It’s only when we enter the shed that we have to say it. Do you know it, Janet?’

‘Yes,’ said Janet. ‘But I had to look it up in my diary. I’d better not tell you it, in case Peter is cross. Come on—help me with the onions. Oh, wait a minute. Have you got your badges on? Good! Peter told me to look and see.’

‘This sounds quite like old times,’ said Colin. ‘We oughtn’t to have gone so long without a meeting.’ He began to scoop up onions in his hands.

‘Here are Pam and Barbara,’ said Janet, hearing footsteps. ‘Hallo, you two! Password, please!’

Colin and George pricked up their ears at once. Aha—now they would know it!

‘Wee Willie Winkie,’ said the two girls together, and Janet nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Er—password, boys?’

Colin and George repeated it solemnly, and Pam giggled. ‘You’d forgotten it,’ she said. ‘I say—what a lot of onions.’

Peter came back at that moment with Scamper at his heels. He carried one big spade and two small ones.

‘Password!’ said George, pointing at him. ‘And it’s not Jack the Giant-Killer!’

‘Quite right. It’s Wee Willie Winkie!’ said Peter, with a grin. ‘Isn’t it, Scamper?’

‘Wuff,’ said Scamper, pleased to see so many people.

‘Let’s see—Jack’s not come yet,’ said Peter. ‘Ah—here he is. Has he got his badge on? He said it had gone to the cleaner’s on his blazer, and hadn’t come back. I told him he’d have to ask his mother to make him another.’

‘Hallo, hallo!’ said Jack, coming up at a run. ‘Am I last? Sorry—but I quite forgot that I’d lost my badge. I went to ask Mother to make one and ...’

‘But that looks like your old one on your coat,’ said Janet. ‘A bit scruffy!’

‘It is my old one,’ said Jack. ‘And what’s more Susie found it for me! She said that when cleaners find brooches or badges or anything like that on clothes sent to be cleaned, they pop them into an envelope and put them in a pocket. And Susie looked in the breast pocket of my blazer, and there was my badge, inside a little envelope. I’d have been awfully late if she hadn’t found it.’

‘Well! Fancy Susie doing you a good turn!’ said George, astonished. ‘Good for her! We’re all here now—let’s buck up and move all these onions and get on with the meeting.’

It didn’t take long for the seven of them to shovel up the onions into the three barrows and wheel them away to the summer-house. Soon they were all neatly piled there and Peter and Jack pulled the old tarpaulin over them to keep them dry.

‘Now we’ll go back to the shed and hold our meeting,’ said Peter. ‘We’ll get a few boxes to sit on, and after the meeting we’ll clear up the shed and make it neat and tidy again.’

Back they all went to the shed. Peter was surprised to see that the door was now shut, and even more surprised to find Scamper there, growling at it! What was the matter with him?

Peter tried to open the door. It was locked from inside! A familiar voice came from the shed, with an aggravating little giggle at the end of it.

‘Password, please!’

‘Susie!’ yelled everyone, and Peter shook the door angrily.

‘Susie, how dare you? This is our meeting-place. Open the door at once.’

‘In a minute. I just wanted to sit here and think what a horrible shed this is,’ said Susie. ‘Pooh! It smells! Now, when I have my club, I shan’t meet in an onion shed, I shall meet in a ...’

‘Susie! Will you open the door?’ yelled Peter, banging on it furiously.

‘On one condition,’ said Susie. ‘And that is that you let me walk out without speaking to me or touching me. Otherwise I shall sit here all morning and hold a Secret Seven meeting by myself.’

Peter knew when he was beaten. ‘All right, you fathead. Come on out. We want to hold our meeting before the morning’s gone. But we’ll pay you out for this!’

The door opened and Susie sauntered out, grinning all over her cheeky face. Nobody said a word, though everyone longed to shout at her. She disappeared up the garden path, Scamper giving a few small, rather astonished barks.

‘Good riddance to bad rubbish!’ said Pam. ‘Come on—do let’s begin our meeting. My word—I’m glad Susie’s not in the Secret Seven. What a nuisance she’d be!’