The Picts & the Martyrs. Arthur Ransome

      She darted back into the hut and took the eggs out with a spoon. “I expect they’re ready now,” she said.

      The eggs when opened were as hard as bullets.

      “Perhaps even four minutes is too much,” said Dorothea.

      “They may have been in much more than that.”

      “They make an awful mess when they’re runny.”

      “These aren’t runny, anyway,” said Dick.

      “Hard-boiled,” said Dorothea.

      “Steel-boiled,” said Dick. “My fault, watching the woodpecker.”

      They washed the eggs and bread and butter down with the cocoa, but were glad to get to the last course (the Beckfoot apple pie. It had been baked in a deep oval dish, with an egg-cup upside down in the middle of it to keep the pastry from sagging down. Yesterday, in the Beckfoot dining-room, the Great Aunt had opened it carefully with a knife, and served small slices from it for Nancy, Peggy and herself. Dick and Dorothea, with the pie-dish between them, set to work at opposite sides of the neat three-cornered hole she had left. They could have finished it, but kept a little for dinner in the middle of the day.

      “It’s just the thing after eggs and cocoa,” said Dorothea. “Cool and wet and not sticky at all.”

      They washed up by the beck, with a kettleful of hot water that made things much easier. They rolled up their rugs, unslung the hammocks and hung them against the wall. They decided to put no more wood on the fire and to light it again in the evening. Every now and then they listened for footsteps coming up through the wood.

      “I wonder why they don’t come,” said Dick.

      “Perhaps they have breakfast later with the Great Aunt here.”

      “It’ll be too late to do anything about Timothy now.”

      Dick sawed and broke up a lot more of the firewood they had cleared out of the hut. Dorothea made a neat pile of them at the side of the fireplace. There was no sign of either of the martyrs from Beckfoot.

      “It’s a good thing we didn’t wait for the milk,” said Dick.

      “Let’s go down and wait for them at the bottom of the wood,” said Dorothea.

      They had left the coppice and were going cautiously down through the larches when they heard a rattle. A man got heavily off his bicycle by the gap into the road. He had come so suddenly that he was already looking up the path at them before they had time to dodge back out of sight. He swung a bag round from his shoulder, put his hand into it and brought out a letter.

      “It’s the postman,” said Dorothea. “If he’s been to Beckfoot with a letter for us we’re done.”

      “I’ve a letter for you,” said the postman. “Addressed to Beckfoot. Miss Turner at Beckfoot wouldn’t take it. She wrote on it too.” He gave Dorothea the letter, and on it, pencilled in a clear sloping hand were the words “Not known here.”

      “It’s from Mother,” said Dick.

      “You didn’t say you’d seen us yesterday?” asked Dorothea.

      “It was on the tip of my tongue,” said the postman. “But I saw Miss Nancy. She was there making faces at me, and I could see she meant me to say nowt. So I said nowt, and took the letter. Least said soonest mended I thought to myself. ‘Not known?’ All right. Take it back to the Post Office.”

      “But … ”

      “I’d nobbut got back to my bike when a stone come by my ear as near as nothing, and there was that young limb beckoning at me over the garden wall. She’s a terror, Miss Nancy. ‘About that letter,’ she says. ‘And whatever you do don’t bring any more letters for them to the front door.’ ‘But Miss Turner says they’re not here,’ says I. ‘They are here,’ she says, ‘but Aunt Maria mustn’t know. Mother knows they’re here. She invited them. But Aunt Maria doesn’t.’ And then she says where you was at, and she says I’d better bring you the letter to make sure. ‘What if Miss Turner asks me what I’ve done with it? There’ll likely be trouble for me,’ I says, ‘if I do as you say.’ ‘There’ll be much worse trouble for us if you don’t,’ says Miss Nancy. ‘And don’t you talk so loud. And there’ll be much worse trouble for Mother. That’s why they’ve gone. You ask Cook,’ she says. ‘Well, I’ve had trouble with Miss Turner myself,’ I says. ‘I’ll take them the letter. But you’ll have to clear me if there’s questions asked.’ ‘There won’t be,’ says she. Here’s your letter. But what am I to do if there are any more?”

      “You mustn’t take them to Beckfoot,” said Dorothea.

      “Couldn’t you put them in a hole in the wall?” said Dick. ‘“And we’ll come down and collect them.”

      “If they’re addressed to Beckfoot it’s to Beckfoot I should take them,” said the postman.

      “It’s just till Mrs. Blackett comes back,” said Dorothea.

      Dick had gone down to the wall. “There’s a good place for letters here,” he said.

      “It matters most awfully,” pleaded Dorothea.

      “So she says, that young limb,” said the postman. “Well I’ll do it, but it’ll go hard with me if it all comes out. Nobbut what the letter’s for you. Nowt wrong but the address.”

      “We can’t give another address,” said Dorothea. “It’s got to be secret till Mrs. Blackett comes back.”

      “I’ll do it,” said the postman. “But I don’t like it. And that’s what I says to Miss Nancy. ‘And lucky it was,’ I says, ‘you didn’t hit me with that stone.’ ‘It wasn’t lucky at all,’ says she. ‘I could hit you every time if I tried, but I didn’t.’ She’s a limb, is Miss Nancy, but if it’s to save trouble for Mrs. Blackett I’ll take the risk and say nowt about it.”

      “Thank you very much,” said Dorothea.

      “The hole between these two stones will be the letter-box,” said Dick. “And this smaller stone will do to shut it up with when there’s a letter inside.”

      The postman nodded, mounted his bicycle, and rode away.

      “That letter might have spoilt everything,” said Dick.

      “It’s not going to be half as easy as Nancy thought,” said Dorothea opening the letter. “We never thought of the postman.”

      “And now there’s Timothy,” said Dick. “He may be charging in any minute to take us up to the mine. And he’s sure to ask for me straight off because of the work we’ve got to do in Captain Flint’s study.”

      “One of them’ll be coming along soon,” said Dorothea.

      “If she was coming, why didn’t Nancy keep the letter?”

      “She had to let the postman see for himself that we were really here,” said Dorothea. “Let’s get a bit back from the road, so that we can dodge out of sight if there’s anyone else.”

      They sat down to wait under the larches close to the place where the path climbed into the coppice. Two steps up that path and no one would be able to see them from the road.

      Dorothea read her letter aloud, a pleasant cheerful letter from their mother, hoping that they would both have a happy time at Beckfoot, hoping that the new boat was ready, and that they would presently be teaching her and their father how to sail, urging them not to take risks at first, and saying that she was really rather glad that while that sensible Susan was not there to look after things they would be sleeping in a house and not miles from anywhere in tents on an island or up in the hills.

      “Well,