Читать книгу Five Fall into Adventure - Enid blyton - Страница 4

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It really was very difficult to get Uncle Quentin off the next day. He was shut up in his study until the last possible moment, sorting out his precious notebooks. The taxi arrived and hooted outside the gate. Aunt Fanny, who had been ready for a long time, went and rapped at the study door.

‘Quentin! Unlock the door! You really must come. We shall lose the plane if we don’t go now.’

‘Just one minute!’ shouted back her husband. Aunt Fanny looked at the four children in despair.

‘That’s the fourth time he’s called out “Just one minute”,’ said George. The telephone shrilled out just then, and she picked up the receiver.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No, I’m afraid you can’t see him. He’s off to Spain, and nobody will know where he is for the next two weeks. What’s that? Wait a minute—I’ll ask my mother.’

‘Who is it?’ said her mother.

‘It’s the Daily Clarion,’ said George. ‘They want to send a reporter down to interview Daddy. I told them he was going to Spain—and they said could they publish that?’

‘Of course,’ said her mother, thankfully, ‘Once that’s in the papers nobody will ring up and worry you. Say, yes, George.’

George said yes, the taxi hooted more loudly than ever, and Timmy barked madly at the hooting. The study door was flung open and Uncle Quentin stood in the doorway, looking as black as thunder.

‘Why can’t I have a little peace and quiet when I’m doing important work?’ he began. But his wife made a dart at him and dragged him down the hall. She put his hat in one hand, and would have put his stick into the other if he hadn’t been carrying a heavy despatch case.

‘You’re not doing important work, you’re off on a holiday,’ she said. ‘Oh, Quentin, you’re worse than ever! What’s that case in your hand? Surely you are not taking work away with you?’

The taxi hooted again, and Timmy woofed just behind Uncle Quentin. He jumped violently, and the telephone rang loudly.

‘That’s another reporter coming down to see you, Father,’ said George. ‘Better go quickly!’

Whether that bit of news really did make Uncle Quentin decide at last to go, nobody knew—but in two seconds he was sitting in the taxi, still clutching his despatch case, telling the taxi-driver exactly what he thought of people who kept hooting their horns.

‘Good-bye, dears,’ called Aunt Fanny, thankfully. ‘Don’t get into mischief. We’re off at last.’

The taxi disappeared down the lane. ‘Poor Mother!’ said George. ‘It’s always like this when they go for a holiday. Well, there’s one thing certain—I shall NEVER marry a scientist.’

Everyone heaved a sigh of relief at the thought that Uncle Quentin was gone. When he was over-worked he really was impossible.

‘Still, you simply have to make excuses for anyone with a brain like his,’ said Julian. ‘Whenever our science master at school speaks of him, he almost holds his breath with awe. Worst of it is, he expects me to be brilliant because I’ve got a brilliant uncle.’

‘Yes. It’s difficult to live up to clever relations,’ said Dick. ‘Well—we’re on our own, except for Joan. Good old Joan! I bet she’ll give us some smashing meals.’

‘Let’s go and see if she’s got anything we can have now,’ said George. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘So am I,’ said Dick. They marched down the hall into the kitchen, calling for Joan.

‘Now, you don’t need to tell me what you’ve come for,’ said Joan, the smiling, good-tempered cook. ‘And I don’t need to tell you this—the larder’s locked.’

‘Oh Joan—what a mean thing to do!’ said Dick.

‘Mean or not, it’s the only thing to do when all four of you are around, to say nothing of that great hungry dog,’ said Joan, rolling out some pastry vigorously. ‘Why, last holidays I left a meat pie and half a tongue and a cherry tart and trifle sitting on the shelves for the next day’s meals—and when I came back from my half-day’s outing there wasn’t a thing to be seen.’

‘Well, we thought you’d left them there for our supper,’ said Julian, sounding quite hurt.

‘All right—but you won’t get the chance of thinking anything like that again,’ said Joan, firmly. ‘That larder door’s going to be kept locked. Maybe I’ll unlock it sometimes and hand you out a snack or two—but I’m the one that’s going to unlock it, not you.’

The four drifted out of the kitchen again, disappointed. Timmy followed at their heels. ‘Let’s go down and have a bathe,’ said Dick. ‘If I’m going to have six bathes a day, I’d better hurry up and have my first one.’

‘I’ll get some ripe plums,’ said Anne. ‘We can take those down with us. And I expect the ice-cream man will come along to the beach too. We shan’t starve! And we’d better wear our shirts and shorts over our bathing costumes, so we don’t catch too much sun.’

Soon they were all down on the sand. They found a good place and scraped out comfortable holes to sit in. Timmy scraped his own.

‘I can’t imagine why Timmy bothers to scrape one,’ said George. ‘Because he always squeezes into mine sooner or later. Don’t you, Timmy?’

Timmy wagged his tail, and scraped so violently that they were all covered with sand. ‘Pooh!’ said Anne, spitting sand out of her mouth. ‘Stop it, Timmy. As fast as I scrape my hole, you fill it up!’

Timmy paused to give her a lick, and then scraped again, making a very deep hole indeed. He lay down in it, panting, his mouth looking as if he were smiling.

‘He’s smiling again,’ said Anne. ‘I never knew a dog that smiled like Timmy. Timmy, it’s nice to have you again.’

‘Woof,’ said Timmy, politely, meaning that it was nice to have Anne and the others back again, too. He wagged his tail and sent a shower of sand over Dick.

They all wriggled down comfortably into their soft warm holes. ‘We’ll eat the plums first and then we’ll have a bathe,’ said Dick. ‘Chuck me one, Anne.’

Two people came slowly along the beach. Dick looked at them out of half-closed eyes. A boy and a man—and what a ragamuffin the boy looked! He wore torn dirty shorts and a filthy jersey. No shoes at all.

The man looked even worse. He slouched as he came, and dragged one foot. He had a straggly moustache and mean, clever little eyes that raked the beach up and down. The two were walking at high-water mark and were obviously looking for anything that might have been cast up by the tide. The boy already had an old box, one wet shoe and some wood under his arm.

‘What a pair!’ said Dick to Julian. ‘I hope they don’t come near us. I feel as if I can smell them from here.’

The two walked along the beach and then back. Then, to the children’s horror, they made a bee-line for where they were lying in their sandy holes, and sat down close beside them. Timmy growled.

An unpleasant, unwashed kind of smell at once came to the children’s noses. Pooh! Timmy growled again. The boy took no notice of Timmy’s growling. But the man looked uneasy.

‘Come on—let’s have a bathe,’ said Julian, annoyed at the way the two had sat down so close to them. After all, there was practically the whole of the beach to choose from—why come and sit almost on top of somebody else?

When they came back from their bathe the man had gone, but the boy was still there—and he had actually sat himself down in George’s hole.

‘Get out,’ said George, shortly, her temper rising at once. ‘That’s my hole, and you jolly well know it.’

‘Findings keepings,’ said the boy, in a curious sing-song voice. ‘It’s my hole now.’

George bent down and pulled the boy roughly out of the hole. He was up in a trice, his fists clenched. George clenched hers, too.

Dick came up at a run. ‘Now, George—if there’s any fighting to be done, I’ll do it,’ he said. He turned to the scowling boy. ‘Clear off! We don’t want you here!’

The boy hit out with his right fist and caught Dick unexpectedly on the jawbone. Dick looked astounded. He hit out, too, and sent the tousle-headed boy flying.

‘Yah, coward!’ said the boy, holding his chin tenderly. ‘Hitting someone smaller than yourself! I’ll fight that first boy, but I won’t fight you.’

‘You can’t fight him,’ said Dick, ‘He’s a girl. You can’t fight girls—and girls oughtn’t to fight, anyway.’

‘Ses you!’ said the dirty little ragamuffin, standing up and doubling his fists again. ‘Well, you look here—I’m a girl, too—so I can fight her all right, can’t I?’

George and the ragamuffin stood scowling at one another, each with fists clenched. They looked so astonishingly alike, with their short, curly hair, brown freckled faces and fierce expressions that Julian suddenly roared with laughter. He pushed them firmly apart.

‘Fighting forbidden!’ he said. He turned to the ragamuffin. ‘Clear off!’ he ordered. ‘Do you hear me? Go on—off with you!’

The gipsy-like girl stared at him. Then she suddenly burst into tears and ran off howling.

‘She’s a girl all right,’ said Dick, grinning at the howls. ‘She’s got some spunk though, facing up to me like that. Well, that’s the last we’ll see of her!’

But he was wrong. It wasn’t!