The Picts & the Martyrs. Arthur Ransome

wear best frocks and be seen and not heard and all that sort of rot. Ask Cook. She knows her, too. She fairly danced when she went away. Yes, you did.”

      “I wasn’t sorry to see the back of her,” said Cook. “Sitting down to meals before I had ’em ready. Looking at her tumbler and wiping it with her napkin. She’s one of them that can’t keep their eyes off the clock when other folk are a bit behind. If she hadn’t gone when she did she’d have had your mother in bed with all her worrying.”

      “Last time she was here,” said Nancy, “Uncle Jim told Mother she must never have the G.A. here again except in term time. And Mother said she never would.”

      “Let’s take to the hills,” said Peggy. “Let’s clear out to the island. Cook can come, too. We’ll leave the key for the G.A., and she can stew in Beckfoot all by herself.”

      Dorothea looked at Nancy. This was the sort of plan that Nancy herself might have made in ordinary times. But Nancy, in charge of Beckfoot, was a different Nancy.

      “We can’t,” she said. “No camping till Mother comes back. “

      “She’ll ruin everything,” said Peggy.

      “I know,” said Nancy. “But it’s not that that matters. Can’t you see? It’s Mother she’s hitting at, not us. She means to make Mother wish she’d never gone away. She means to make her wish she’d never been born.”

      “Well, I wish she hadn’t.”

      “Don’t be a butter-brained galoot,” said Nancy. “Mother, not the G.A. She’s going to make Mother wish she herself had never been born. We’ve got to stick it. So has Cook. We’ve got to soothe the savage beast. We’ve got to be so jolly good that she simply can’t not realize that it was all right for Mother to go away.”

      “I’d like to ramscramble the one that put it into her head to come,” said Cook. “Where are we going to put her, I’d like to know. Air the spare-room bed for her! I’ll have to put her in your mother’s room.”

      “Oh, look here, we can’t do that. She jolly well shan’t sleep in Mother’s bed.”

      “Where else?” said Cook. “She don’t know you’ve got visitors … ”

      “She’ll be more furious than ever when she finds out.”

      “She will that ….” And then, Dorothea saw that Cook had something to say that she did not want those visitors to hear. Cook was going back into her kitchen, and Dorothea saw her give Nancy a beckoning nod.

      “It’s all right, Cookie,” said Nancy. “Spit it out. We’ve got no secrets from them.”

      “You come in here for a minute,” said Cook.

      “Go on,” said Dorothea. “Dick and I don’t mind. We’ll be in the garden … Come on, Dick.”

      Dick followed Dorothea out through the hall door at once, but even so they could not help getting a hint of what was in Cook’s mind. “Visitors while she’s away … ,” Cook was saying. “Your poor mother’ll never hear the last of it.”

      “We may have to clear out,” said Dorothea. “Did you hear what Cook said?”

      “Go home?” said Dick. ‘“But we can’t. There’s Scarab nearly ready. And I’ve got to do those assays with Timothy. And we’ve only just got here.”

      “It can’t be helped,” said Dorothea. “I’m in the spare room and the Aunt wants to sleep in it.”

      “They’ll fix up a bed for you somewhere else.”

      “That isn’t all,” said Dorothea. “You heard that letter. She thinks Mrs. Blackett oughtn’t to have left Nancy and Peggy. And Cook says it’ll be worse when she finds they’ve got visitors.”

      “But Mrs. Blackett asked us.”

      “That’s just it,” said Dorothea. “Look here. I’ve got to tell Nancy we’ll go. I’d better tell her at once … ” She went back into the hall. A tremendous argument seemed to be going on in the kitchen. She heard Cook, Peggy and Nancy all talking at once. “Hi! Nancy!” she called. The talking stopped suddenly.

      “Come on in,” called Nancy. “Cook says … ”

      “Don’t you think we’d better go home?” said Dorothea. “We could come back after she’s gone.”

      “What about Dixon’s farm?” said Nancy, and Dorothea knew that her instinct had been right.

      “I thought of that,” said she. “And Holly Howe. But they’re both full up. That’s why Mother wrote to Mrs. Blackett. We’d better go home. We can come back after she’s gone.”

      “We don’t want you to go,” said Nancy. “And Mother wouldn’t want you to go. She’d be as sick as anything. It’s only that the G.A.’s going to undo all the good of Mother’s holiday. Cook’s right about that. She’ll go for Mother for having you here at all … But why should you go? Why shouldn’t Mother ask you here if she wants to? Why should the G.A. be allowed to barge in and spoil everything? Hullo, Dick’s got something to say.”

      Dick had come in, and was standing in the doorway, wiping his spectacles with his handkerchief. Nancy, like Dorothea, knew the signs.

      “Spit it out, Professor,” she said.

      “Couldn’t we be badgers?” he said.

      “What?”

      “Couldn’t we go on being here and never let her see us? Like badgers. In lots of places people think they’re extinct. But they aren’t. Only they never let themselves be seen.”

      “She’d hear you moving in the house,” said Nancy. “And it wouldn’t be any good talking about ghosts to the Great Aunt. She’d go on the prowl till she found you.”

      “Things’d be a sight worse then,” said Cook.

      “Need we be in the house?” said Dorothea. “Our tents are here from last year.”

      “No camping,” said Nancy. “We promised that.”

      “If only the igloo wasn’t on the other side of the lake,” said Dick.

      “We could have lived in that all right,” said Dorothea. “We’d be Picts.”

      “Picts?” said Nancy.

      “Ancient Britons,” said Dorothea. “Prehistorics. Original inhabitants. They had to hide from the invaders and went on living secretly in caves and in the end people thought they were fairies and used to leave milk outside the door for them. Something like that. I heard Father talking about it ….”

      “What about the Dogs’ Home?” said Peggy.

      Nancy jumped off the ground with both feet at once. “Well done, Peggy,” she cried. “Well done, Dick! I was a galoot never to have thought of it. They could be Picts there for a hundred years and all the Great Aunts in the world would never know. Come on. Let’s go and have a look at it at once.”

      “That old place,” said Cook. “There’s no glass in the window and the roof ’s likely enough down by now.”

      “Bet it isn’t,” said Nancy. “Glass doesn’t matter. Fresh air’s all right. And there’s a grand fireplace. And plenty of wood everywhere. Look here, Cooky, they could live in the Dogs’ Home as comfortably as anything till Mother and Uncle Jim come back.”

      “What about their meals?” said Cook.

      “Easy. Dorothea’s a splendid cook.”

      “I never have cooked,” said Dorothea. “But I’ve often watched