“If we could only turn it inside out,” she said. “But it’s like a glove with fingers at both ends.”
“Let’s have a look at the picture in your book,” said Dick.
“But that one’s already trussed,” said Dorothea.
“It hasn’t got any feet,” said Dick a moment later. “We’d better take them off first.”
Then came the idea of skinning the legs separately, and after they had got the skin off the hind legs, things began to look more hopeful. It became a sort of tug of war, Dorothea hanging on to the hind legs while Dick pulled at the skin.
“It’s coming. It’s coming,” said Dick. “Just like you said, now that we’ve got rid of one pair of fingers.” The skin was peeling off, inside out, like a football sweater. It stuck, as sweaters often stick, with the head still inside. Here, desperate work with a knife helped.
“We’ve done it,” said Dick. “Do you want to truss it like the one in the book?”
“No,” said Dorothea. “No need. But we’d better cut it up first. It won’t be exactly boiled rabbit and it won’t be exactly stew, but it ought to be all right. If you can get its legs off, I’ll be chopping up the onion. The book talks about peppercorns and onion sauce when you boil it and cloves and claret and bacon when you stew. But I don’t suppose Picts would bother about half those things.”
“Jacky wouldn’t,” said Dick. “He said his mother says an onion is the thing that matters.”
It was nine o’clock by the time they had the rabbit jointed and in the saucepan with water covering it, and the chopped onion, and some salt, and a little milk, and a couple of potatoes, and a tin of peas. Lack of this and lack of that made it impossible to follow exactly any single one of the recipes in the cookery book, so Dorothea took hints from all, put the lid on the saucepan and pushed it in at the side of the fire.
“Now,” she said, “‘45 to 60 minutes according to age and size.’ … That’s boiling. ‘About one and a half hours.’ … That’s stewing. … We’d better cook it till it feels all right when we prod it. … ‘Sufficient for three or four persons.’ I wish the others were here. Or Jacky.”
It had not been raining when Dick went out to fill the saucepan and the kettle at the beck, but black clouds with hard edges were moving from the south, and it felt as if thunder was about. As dark fell they heard once more the patter on the roof.
“If it only thunders and comes down properly,” said Dick, “it’ll clear up by morning. Do you think one of them will get out and come up before breakfast? Nancy said it was urgent.”
“It’s no good thinking about it,” said Dorothea. “They’ll come as soon as they can, but it’s no good thinking about it now. We’ve got to wait till tomorrow.”
They made up the hammocks with the warm, dry rugs, lit the hurricane lantern, fed the fire with sticks from the dwindling pile, and watched the simmering saucepan. Water bubbled over between the lid and the pan, and sizzled in the fire. Dorothea looked at the rabbit and prodded it with a fork, remembered that they ought both to be in bed, but decided that they must have supper first and that the rabbit was a good enough excuse for staying up. After all the trouble they had taken over it, it would be silly to spoil it for the sake of a few minutes.
It was half past ten when Dorothea after a last careful prod decided that the rabbit was ready and pulled the saucepan from the fire. Squelching footsteps sounded outside. The next moment there was someone in the doorway, wet and piebald, in bathing things that glistened in the flickering light of the lantern and the fire.
“Shiver my timbers,” said Nancy. “You’re warm in here. Gosh! What a lovely smell.”
CHAPTER XVIII
VISITING SEAL
“NOW, look here, Peggy. Don’t be a tame galoot. All you’ve got to do is to keep quiet.” In the darkness of their bedroom, Nancy spoke in a fierce whisper.
“But you can’t go out in bathing things.”
“I can’t go out in anything else and come back with a lot of sopping clothes to explain. It’s raining again like fun.”
“But what if she hears you get out?”
“She won’t. She’s asleep by now. And I’ve locked the door. All you’ve got to do is to be asleep. If you hear her moving, do a grunt and snore.”
“But …”
“I’ve got to see Dick. You know I have.”
Nancy finished making ready. She pulled a bathing cap over her hair. She put on her sandshoes. Her pyjamas were in her bed. Her clothes were neatly piled on a chair, ready for any inspection. She slipped across to the window and looked out. It was dark, but not black dark. She could hear the rain dripping from the gutter. That rain had cost them a whole day. Timothy’s message had been at Beckfoot for twenty-four hours and more, and she had never had a chance of seeing the Picts. It had been a very narrow squeak getting to their letter-box and back, when the doctor had been blind to her signals so that she had not been able to ask him to carry a despatch. She put Timothy’s message between her lips so as to have both hands free. She sat on the window-sill and felt the rain with an outstretched foot.
“Go back to bed, Peggy,” she hissed. “Jibbooms and bobstays, it’s me to shiver, not you. Go back to bed.”
She twisted round on the window-sill, felt for the rose trellis, and found it. There was a creak or two, but nothing to matter. Two minutes later she was slipping on tiptoe round the corner of the silent house.
Once in the road, she ran. It was too dark in the wood to do anything but stick to the path, so she went straight up, stepping now on a stone and now ankle deep in a pool where the overflow from the beck was pouring down. She was as wet as if she had been in the river. That did not matter in bathing clothes. And as for waking up Dick and Dot, that did not matter either in such a case as this. She came squelching out from under the trees into the clearing, saw the red glow of the fire through the window and the open door and knew that she would not have to wake them.
*
“I’ve never had one single chance of getting up here all day. I say, what is that smell?”
“Supper,” said Dorothea. “It’s Jacky’s rabbit. You’re just in time.”
“Has Timothy sent to say he’s ready?” asked Dick.
“Is Peggy coming too?” asked Dorothea.
“Yes he has and no she isn’t,” said Nancy, holding out a wet arm and watching the water drip from her fingers. “Somebody had to stay in case of accidents, and there’s always more danger of things going wrong with two.”
“A door banging so that the gaolers know there’s an escape,” said Dorothea.
“Door!” said Nancy scornfully. “I got out through our window. The only safe way. Just think if she’d happened to come out of her bedroom and spotted me in bathing things going downstairs. I always knew that trellis would come in useful when I saw them putting it up. But look here. Don’t waste time. It isn’t my getting out that matters. It’s your getting in.”
“But we don’t have to,” said Dorothea. “I thought last night perhaps it would be the only thing to do, but Dick’s managed to stop the leaks in the roof and even when it did drip it dripped in the right place, not on our hammocks. And I’ve had a fire going all day, and everything’s dry.”
“You don’t know what’s happened,” said Nancy. “We couldn’t let you know. It’s been an awful day. First we went and were late for breakfast and then, because of the rain pouring down, the G.A. was at her very worst. One thing after another all morning. The doctor came and I tried to catch his eye to get him to go and tell you but he was a pig and wouldn’t see. We didn’t really mind, because we thought we’d escape in the afternoon, and I dodged out to leave a despatch so that there wouldn’t be any danger of us missing you. And then in the afternoon the G.A. was enjoying herself too much to go to bed. It was still pouring, and she kept us reading that beastly book. … It’s not a bad book but any book is awful when you have to read it aloud and someone keeps butting in to say you’re pronouncing a word wrong
or putting emphasis in the wrong place and you have to go over the same sentence half a dozen times. And then came tea and after that we had a dose of Chaminade … just as bad as reading … you know … getting the time wrong. … ‘Please Ruth, those two bars again.’ … ‘Ruth, you must try to remember the difference between a minim and a semi-breve.’ … ‘Ruth! Andante does not mean Staccato any more than Piano means Fortissimo.’ … ‘Ruth!’ Ugh! … After supper, knitting. … And there we were, boiling to come and tell you what we’ve got to do. Well, it was bed-time at last, and I gave her half an hour to get to sleep, and here it is. …”
She opened her left hand and showed a tiny screw of paper.
“It’s sodden wet in spite of my keeping it in my fist. It’ll fall to pieces if we don’t get it dry before touching it.” She crouched before the fire, and held the screw of paper in the warmth.
“Pigeon post,” she said. “It came last night.”
“I ought to have reminded you to cut out the bell,” said Dick. “It was bound to make an awful noise.”
“How do you know?” said Nancy sharply.
“We heard it,” said Dick. “We were just coming up the river.”
“But it was after supper.”
“We were pretty late,” said Dorothea. “We’d been to the head of the lake beyond the North Pole.”
“Jolly good first voyage,” said Nancy, dropping the screw of paper from one hand into the other. “Well, if you heard it on the river, you can guess what it was like in the house. It nearly sent the G.A. through the ceiling. I bolted like a flash and there was old Cooky gasping for breath. She knew what it was all right because of last year. Well, I tore the wire off the battery and bolted back. The G.A. was telling Peggy about an electric bell in her house at Harrogate that went wrong and couldn’t be stopped. ‘We’ll have to have a man to see to it,’ she said. ‘Did you stop it?’ Well, of course, I had. She said that probably all the other bells had gone wrong too, so she rang the one in the drawing-room and when old Cooky came bustling in she told her she didn’t want anything … she was only making sure the bell was working. And Cooky looked at me and Peggy and I glared at Cooky, and she nobly went off without giving us away. I didn’t risk going out to the pigeons after that, but I nipped out before breakfast. They’d both come back. Timothy’d put the same message on each of them. … Shows how important it is. He’d put them on jolly badly.”
WET AND PIEBALD IN THE DOORWAY
“But what is the message?” asked Dick.
“Pretty dry now, but take care,” said Nancy. “Giminy, I’m being cooked in my own steam.”
Dick took the scrap of paper and flattened it with trembling fingers. Steam clouded his spectacles. He dabbed at them without taking them off, and began to read.
“Read it aloud,” said Dorothea.
He read:
“Ready for Dick any time he can come. But I can’t get on without some things from Jim’s study. Acids: hydrochloric, nitric and sulphuric. Tincture of ammonia. Test-tubes. Two small crucibles. Pipette (two if he’s got them). Spirit lamp. Couldn’t get one in the village, but if Jim hasn’t got one I think I can manage with the Primus. Filter. Filter papers. Litmus. Chemical scales. Volume II of Duncan’s Quantitative Analysis. Dick’ll know where they are. Sorry to bother you, but I promised Jim I’d have the assays done before he comes back. I’m sending both pigeons in case the message drops off one of them. T.S.”
“Good,” said Dick. “We’ll take them to him first thing tomorrow morning. Will you be able to get them to Scarab? She’s in the harbour and baled out. … But, of course, there’ll be more water in her by now.” He read through the list again. “There isn’t really an awful lot. Only you’ll have to be careful about keeping the acid bottles the right way up.”
Nancy took the paper again. “What’s a pipette?” she said. “We don’t know. And litmus? And chemical scales? And filter papers? We don’t know what’s in the study or what isn’t. We’ll never find the things. We won’t know them even if we see them. And it’s no good telling him to come and get them himself, after she’s seen him skulking off the road when we met. It would mean explanations, and once explanations get started you can’t stop them. It would mean the bust up of everything.”
“The acid bottles are on the top shelf in the cupboard with a glass door. They are all labelled,” said Dick. “The chemical scales must be somewhere about. I haven’t seen them, but they’re sure to be there. The litmus paper’s probably in a little book. That’s how they usually sell it, and you tear out a leaf when you want it. The pipettes …”
“It’s no good telling me,” said Nancy. “We’ll never find them without you. You’ll have to come in and get them for him.”
“But that’ll mean explanations, too,” said Dorothea. “You’ll have to say who Dick is.”
“Jibbooms and bobstays,” exclaimed Nancy. “There mustn’t be any explanations. They always go wrong. The G.A. mustn’t know anything about it. We won’t even try to take the things until she’s in bed and asleep. That’s what I meant when I said the difficulty was going to be getting you in. But we’ve thought it all out. Burglary’s the only safe way.”
“Burglary.” Dorothea stared.
Dick took off his spectacles and blinked, short-sighted, at the fire. “He’s got to have those things,” he said.
“Of course he has,” said Nancy. “I knew you’d see it. Everything else is going splendidly. She’s never guessed about you, and you’ve got Scarab all right, and we’ve saved Timothy, and she’s been having a perfect orgy of bossiness, enjoying herself like fun, and we’ve been angels all the time, and she’s going to end up by being pleased with Mother instead of jolly sick. The only thing that would make it a failure would be for Uncle Jim to come back and find that you and Timothy haven’t done those messes for him.”
Dick reached for his waterproof. “I’m ready now,” he said.
“I’m coming too,” said Dorothea.
“No,” said Nancy. “You can’t do a burglary while it’s raining and leave lakes all over the floor to show where you’ve been. One day more won’t matter. This rain won’t go on for ever. It’ll be fine tomorrow. And there’ll be a moon, not like tonight. You won’t have to prowl round in the dark. I’ll leave the study window open. Thick curtains inside. Once you’re in with the curtains closed you can use a torch. You’ll just collect the things and bring them up here, and sail down to the houseboat with them next morning. Oh yes. And ask Timothy if we can all come the day before she goes. I think we’ve a chance of getting a day off. That’ll give you two whole days for stinks. Don’t try to shut the window after you. It makes an awful noise. That’s why I’ve got to leave it open for you. I’ll nip down early and get it closed before she comes down to breakfast. Nobody’ll ever know you’ve been anywhere near the house.”
“It’s an awful risk,” said Dorothea.
“It can’t be helped,” said Dick.
“How high is the window from the ground?” asked Dorothea, whose mind’s eye already saw the burglar climbing in.
“You can get your knee on the window-sill from the path outside. … Easy as anything. … Good. … Settled. … I knew we could count on you. … I say, that rabbit does smell good.”
“It’s ready,” said Dorothea. “We’re just going to have our supper. There were some things in the cookery book I couldn’t put in because we hadn’t got them, but they’re not the sort of things that really matter. Look here, I’ll eat mine with a spoon and then you can use my fork.”
“Fingers are good enough for me,” said Nancy.
“For us too,” said Dorothea.
In the red glow of the firelight, the Picts and the Visiting Seal ate Jacky’s rabbit and were sure no rabbit cooked in a kitchen had ever tasted better. Dick, who had been waiting a long time for his supper, was very hungry. Dorothea felt about the eating of the first rabbit she had ever cooked much as if she were reading the proofs of her first book. Nancy enjoy
ed it for its own sake and still more because the Picts were doing the real thing and she was as pleased as if she had been doing it herself.
“I don’t believe even Susan’s ever cooked a rabbit,” she said. “I know we haven’t. When the Swallows come and we all go exploring or something, we’ll catch rabbits and cook them. It’s ten times better than just digging things out of a tin.”
“The cooking’s easy,” said Dorothea. “It’s the getting it ready for cooking that’s rather awful.”
“We hadn’t found the scientific way,” Dick explained.
“Do tell us what it’s like at Beckfoot,” said Dorothea. “Are you sure she doesn’t suspect?”
“I thought yesterday she did,” said Nancy. “But it’s all right. She was on a completely wrong tack. She’d somehow got it into her head that the Swallows were about and that we were meeting them.”
The pattering of the rain had stopped for a few minutes. Suddenly they were startled by the crash and roll of thunder. Nancy jumped to her feet.
“Thunder,” she said.
“I thought it would have come sooner,” said Dick.
There was another distant rumble, and heavy raindrops beat on the roof.
“I’ve got to bolt,” said Nancy. “Peggy’ll be in an awful stew. It’s the only thing she’s frightened of. That and the G.A., of course. And she can’t stand being alone when there’s thunder about. I’ve got to bolt or there’ll be trouble. Coming down a wallop too. That means it won’t last long. Fine tomorrow. Gosh, I’m cooked all over. Now for another bath. If she lies down tomorrow afternoon, we’ll meet you at Picthaven. If we don’t get there, you know what to do. Wait till everybody’s gone to bed. You’ll find the study window open. Don’t make a noise and everything’ll be all right.”