The Picts & the Martyrs. Arthur Ransome

stood breathless on the floor beside her.

      “Kettle’s boiling,” said Dorothea.

      They were a long time over that first meal in their own house. Somehow, though there was no cooking to be done, the different courses fell apart. In that big fireplace wood burned very fast, and by the time they had eaten their slices of beef roll, they had to bring in more of the logs Dick had sawn, and once they had begun doing that, they went on till they had a good pile waiting ready in a corner of the hut. Then they ate their cake. After that they still felt hungry, wondered what supper had been like at Beckfoot, and went on to eat bread and marmalade. By the time they took their dirty plates, mugs, spoons and the one sticky knife that had been used for everything, and went out to the washing basin in the beck, the sun had gone far round and the clearing in the wood was in shadow.

      Washing up was not a success.

      “It’s doing it with cold water,” said Dorothea. “I ought to have remembered that Susan always uses hot.”

      “Leave everything under the waterfall,” said Dick, “and it’ll be clean by morning.”

      “We’ll have hot water another time,” said Dorothea.

      It was growing dusk when they heard steps coming up the path from the road.

      “It’s that Pict,” said Dorothea. “What are we going to do if we have to clear out now?”

      “It’s somebody pretty large,” said Dick.

      “She’s found out already,” whispered Dorothea. “It’s the Great Aunt herself coming up to bring us back.”

      “Mercy me, it’s a pull up that brow,” panted old Cook as she came up out of the trees into the clearing. “And the path grown over with trees and underfoot them stones enough to break your legs. There’s one thing. We shan’t have Miss Turner walking up here. I thought I’d drop that dish a dozen times. Eh me, I hope we’re doing right.”

      “Come in and look at our house,” said Dorothea, able to breathe once more.

      “I’ve brought you the apple pie they had to their suppers. They didn’t eat much. Happen it’ll put you on a bit … ”

      “Thank you very much. Has she really come? We thought we heard the motor car but we couldn’t be sure.”

      “Aye, she’s come,” said Cook grimly. “She’s come, and trouble with her. Girt auld hen ’at wants to be cock o’ t’ midden. She’s begun by clearing Miss Nancy off from the head of the table and taking the mistress’s place herself. And I’d put Miss Nancy’s napkin ring there, so there could be no mistake. And it isn’t as if Miss Nancy’s the little lass she was.”

      “What did she say?” asked Dorothea.

      “Miss Nancy? I couldn’t have believed it. ‘Cook,’ she says, ‘Aunt Maria likes that end of the table better. And she’s the visitor so she must choose. Peggy and I’ll sit one each side of her.’ Miss Turner looked at her a bit flummoxed, but she didn’t oppen her gob … I mean, she didn’t say nowt about it, and after that Miss Nancy was saying how she hoped the weather would keep fine for her visit, and Miss Peggy chipped in asking if she liked sitting facing the engine in the train or the other way and did she have a corner seat?”

      Cook was looking this way and that round the inside of the hut. “Not but what it’s better’n I thought,” she said. “But there’s Mrs. Blackett trusted me to look after you, and here’s two of you gone already. Miss Nancy does fair rush a body off their feet. Not but what Miss Turner wouldn’t be letting her tongue off if she knew you were staying at Beckfoot with the mistress away. But it’ll be worse if she finds out now, and how we’ll keep it from her, I don’t know. There’s one thing. You’ve a roof over your heads … not but what it could do with patching … ”

      “Will you have a cup of tea?” said Dorothea. “I can make one in a minute.”

      “Not I,” said Cook hurriedly. “Thank you kindly, but I must away down. I had to run up to see where Miss Nancy’d put you before I could be easy in my mind. Not that I’m that easy now. But it’s better’n I thought. Nay, nay, I mustn’t stop. Miss Turner’ll be ringing that bell, and no one to answer it … Not but what no one can say I haven’t as much right as other folk to put my nose out of doors.”

      “What are they doing now?” asked Dorothea.

      “When I slipped out they were sitting in the drawing-room,” said Cook. “Good thing I dusted that piano. Miss Turner run her finger over it first thing.”

      They went down with her as far as the road. Somehow, old Cook, stumbling down that rocky path and grumbling at the branches that met across it, made Dorothea feel that they were not yet altogether out of touch with Beckfoot.

      By the gap into the road they stopped, and waited there while Cook hurried away in the dusk.

      “Listen,” said Dick suddenly.

      In the quiet evening they could hear the faint tinkling of the Beckfoot piano.

      “Let’s go a bit nearer,” said Dorothea. “If they’re all in there it’s quite safe.”

      They tiptoed along the road and waited opposite the house. The noise of the piano came clearly through the trees.

      “That’s the third time she’s got stuck,” whispered Dorothea. “It must be awful for the one who isn’t playing, just sitting there and watching the Great Aunt’s face.”

      “There she goes again,” said Dick.

      “It isn’t Nancy’s sort of tune,” said Dorothea. “She’s quite all right with one finger doing that pirate song of Captain Flint’s.”

      “Let’s go home,” said Dick suddenly. “I want to have another go at the sailing book. Scarab’s going to be ready the day after to-morrow.”

      They tiptoed away round the bend in the road and began to climb once more up into the wood. Dorothea felt suddenly very much alone. Dick was there, of course, but, with his mind on the new boat, or on birds, or on cutting up wood in a scientific way, he did not seem to realize that they were going to sleep in a hut in the wood with nobody in it but themselves, a hut with holes in its roof and no glass in its window. Dorothea did not know which was worse, to think of it as a hut in which for perhaps twenty years no one had lived, or to think of it as a house from which in the middle of the night they might be turned out by the rightful owner coming home. It was not at all like sleeping in a tent in camp with other friendly tents close by.

      The first call of an owl sounded in the valley.

      “There’s that tawny owl again,” said Dick. “I heard him last night, but I’m not putting him down on my list till I’ve seen him.”

      Of course it was all right, thought Dorothea. The ghostly wood all round them was only full of natural history. And Dick knew all about that. All the same … “Alone in the Forest” by Dorothea Callum. She started violently as a couple of woodpigeons clattered out of the branches of a tree close to the path.

      “Roosting already,” said Dick.

      Back in the hut, Dick lit the hurricane lantern and took his sailing book from the shelf over the fireplace. Dorothea divided the rugs and laid them in the hammocks. There were three for each of them.

      “There aren’t any pillows,” she said.

      “Knapsacks,” said Dick. “With clothes in them.”

      Dorothea shut the door and put more wood on the fire. “We’d better be too hot than too cold the first night. And with no glass the window’s open anyway.” The sticks flamed up and shadows flickered over the walls except for the square gap where there should have been glass. Through it she could see the dim shapes of trees and a patch of sky on which were the first stars. Dick was already sitting on the three-legged stool, reading as much by firelight as by the