There was a belt of tall pines and larches along the side of the road. A path from the gap in the wall led suddenly from sunshine into shadow. For twenty yards or so there was a clear track covered with brown needles. But beyond the pines and firs was coppice, oaks and hazels and silver birches, and the Picts could seldom see more than a yard or two ahead. For a little way the path was good enough under foot, and then, suddenly, it turned into something like the bed of a dried-up mountain stream, sharp-edged stones and rocks with here and there a tiny pool. Dick and Dorothea found it pretty hard going, stepping from one stone to another, and at the same time fending off the hazel branches.
“A bit of a beck crosses it higher up,” said Peggy, waiting for them. “That’s why it’s like this. When there’s a lot of rain the beck overflows and comes sluicing down here, and you have to wriggle up through the trees instead.”
“It’s all right,” said Dorothea. “Only it takes time. How much further?”
“Nearly there.”
“Where does the beck go?” asked Dick, remembering that he had seen no bridge.
“It’s only a little one,” said Peggy. “It goes through a pipe under the road and then through our coppice to the river.”
They climbed on. Nancy, charging up the rough path with her arms before her face because of the branches, was already out of sight.
Suddenly they heard a joyful shout above them in the wood. “It hasn’t tumbled down yet.”
They came to the place where the beck crossed the path.
“Hullo,” said Peggy. “Somebody’s put down stepping stones. There never used to be any.”
On the other side of the beck some of the trees had been cleared long ago and in the open space was an ancient old hut, built of rough stones. A window gaped empty. The roof was covered with huge slates, green with moss. Here and there grass was growing on it, and there were ferns sprouting from between the stones of the chimney. Somebody, once upon a time, had painted the words “THE DOGS’ HOME” in big clumsy letters on the door. The paint had faded, but the words could still be read.
“IT HASN’T TUMBLED DOWN YET”
“It’s come down a bit on this side,” said Nancy, from behind the hut.
They went round and found her looking at a heap of stones that had fallen from the wall at the back.
“Lucky they built the walls so thick,” she said. “There’s plenty of it left. It’ll last another week anyway. And jolly lucky it isn’t the wall with the fireplace. If the inside’s all right it’ll do. Let’s see what it’s like.”
“Hullo,” said Peggy at the door. “Somebody’s been using it for something. The door’s tied up.”
“Rot,” said Nancy. “There’s nobody to use it.”
“Come and look,” said Peggy.
“It’s been tied up a long time,” said Dick. “You can see by the string.”
Once upon a time there had been a chain and perhaps a padlock to fasten the door from the outside. Nothing of that was left but a staple in the door and another in the doorpost. A bit of string had been put through the two staples and tied.
Nancy looked at it. “Tied in a bow,” she said. “No sailor anyhow. Nobody we know would tie the thing like that. But you’re quite right. Somebody has been using it. Look at those hinges. Oiled. They used to be a mass of rust.”
“There’s a lot of stuff inside,” said Dorothea, who had been trying to look into the gloom through the glassless window. “Why is it called ‘The Dogs’ Home’?”
“Joke, I expect,” said Nancy, plucking at the string. “Uncle Jim says the woodcutters used it long before we were born. And he used it when he was a little boy. Rotten luck for us if anybody’s using it now.” She opened the door.
No one can see much when they look through a small window into a dark room, and what little Dorothea had been able to make out in the gloom had not been cheering. When the door was opened and the light poured in, the hut at first looked even less like a place in which it was possible that anybody, unless perhaps real Picts, savages or badgers, could settle down to live. It was like peering into a wood pile. A huge mass of firewood seemed to fill the hut. Dead branches of trees had been hauled into the hut and thrown one above another on the earthen floor.
“If somebody’s using it, we’re done,” said Peggy.
But Nancy was forcing her way in between wall and firewood. Dorothea and Peggy followed her. Dick, after one glance, went back and came in through the window instead.
And suddenly the thought of living in the hut began to seem more hopeful. Once past that great barricade of tree branches there was room for them to move about, and they could see that whatever the hut lacked it had something that in houses matters more than anything else.
“What a gorgeous fireplace,” said Dorothea.
“I told you it was a good one,” said Nancy.
It was an enormous fireplace, taking up nearly half of one wall, a huge cavern of a fireplace, of the old kind, built for burning wood, with no grate, but an iron bar, very rusty, stretching from one side to the other with a great hook hanging on it.
“That’s for a kettle,” said Peggy.
“Yes,” said Dorothea.
“This is something new,” said Nancy, looking at a wooden chair that had lost its back. “There wasn’t any furniture when we were here.”
“What are those pegs for?” asked Dick.
He was looking up at two great beams, black with age and smoke, that stretched from one side of the hut to the other under the ridge of the roof. Huge wooden pegs, a yard or so apart, stuck out of the beams.
“Hanging things on,” said Peggy. “Guns, perhaps. Uncle Jim says a gamekeeper lived here before the woodcutters.”
“Jolly useful,” said Dick. “And that shelf over the fireplace is just the thing for keeping books on, and my microscope …”
Dorothea looked at him. Well, if Dick thought it was all right. …
“Nobody’s using it,” said Nancy suddenly. “If anybody was there’d be some bedding about, and there isn’t. Let’s make a fire and see what it’s really like.”
“It doesn’t smell really damp,” said Peggy.
“All hands to breaking up wood,” said Nancy. “Whoever was here has left a good lot of logs as well as that small stuff. But we want sticks to get it started. Small twigs first. Who’s got any matches?”
“I have,” said Dick, who had put a box in his pocket before leaving school to be ready for such moments as this.
“Good,” said Nancy. “Look here. The twigs aren’t too dry. Handful of dry leaves … We’ll get a fire started and then we’ll clear all these sticks out and have room to turn round …”
Dick, climbing out through the window, was back in a moment with some dry leaves. Nancy made a little heap of them in the old fireplace on the soft grey ash of old fires. She put a match to them and as they flared up built them in with twigs. The twigs caught fire, little jets of flame spouting from their ends. She built the twigs in with sticks, and as these too crackled and flamed, she added bigger sticks and small logs that someone had left piled neatly in a corner. The fire roared cheerfully up the chimney.
“It must have taken somebody an age to collect all these sticks,” said Dorothea.
“It won’t take ten minutes to get them out,” said Peggy, and, with all four of them working as hard as they could, the pile of dead branches that had half filled the hut soon began to grow smaller.
“Make a proper wood pile outside,” said Nancy. “It’ll all come in handy. They’ll want a saw to cut it up.”
“There’s a saw here,” said Dick. As the pile of branches grew lower in the hut he had seen something hanging on the wall behind it. He had worked his way in between the wood and the wall till he could reach it, and was looking at it now, feeling its blade with a finger. He brought it out into the sunlight. “Jolly well hidden,” he said. “And properly looked after. Whoever it belongs to put grease on it to stop it rusting. Fingerprints on i
t,” he added. “A bit smaller than mine …”
“Won’t do it any harm to use it,” said Nancy.
“But perhaps there’s a sort of Pict living here already,” said Dorothea.
“Couldn’t be,” said Nancy. “Where could he sleep with the whole place bung full of sticks like it was?”
“Just somebody collecting wood and leaving a saw behind,” said Dick. “Jolly useful for us.”
Even when all the branches were cleared out, the floor was left covered with broken twigs, but, somehow, the hut, that had seemed very small at first, had seemed to be growing as branch after branch was lugged out into the open. Now, with nothing but small stuff left on the floor, it seemed quite roomy. It was unfurnished, except for the chair that had lost its back, and the shelf that ran along the wall above the fireplace, but Dick and Dorothea, picking up broken sticks and throwing them on the fire, were already beginning to think of it as a home.
“Where will we have the hammocks?” said Dorothea.
“We could hang them under the two big beams,” said Dick.
Nancy and Peggy were watching them hopefully.
“Will it do?” said Nancy at last. “Do you think you could manage?”
“There’s a three-legged stool in our bedroom,” said Peggy. “You could have that.”
“We’ll have to do something about a table for you,” said Nancy.
“Picts never had tables,” said Dorothea.
“We’ll fix up something,” said Nancy. “If you’re writing a story you’ll want one. But the point is, will it do?”
“It’s going to be splendid,” said Dorothea. “It’s a perfect place to write in.”
“Jolly good for watching birds,” said Dick. “Butterflies, too. I saw a red admiral and two fritillaries just outside. And I’m pretty sure I heard a woodpecker.”
“The main thing is it’s so near the house,” said Nancy. “And utterly out of sight. Once we’ve nipped out without being spotted we can be up here in two shakes. Ten times better than if you had to clear out altogether or be on the other side of the lake. And you can go past Beckfoot and out on the promontory …”
“To get Scarab out of the boathouse?” said Dick.
“Giminy,” said Nancy. “I forgot that. We’ll have to make a harbour for your boat somewhere up the river. It wouldn’t do for the Great Aunt to find her in our boathouse. What’s the time?”
“Half-past twelve,” said Dick. “Twenty-seven and a half minutes to one.”
“Less than six hours and shell be here,” said Nancy. “Come on. We’ve got to fix up your hammocks. We’ve got to bring bedding. You’ll want stores and cooking things. We’ve got to turn Dorothea’s lair back into a beastly spare room. And then we’ve got to be all proper in party dresses ready to soothe the savage breast when the Great Aunt comes gorgoning in. We’ll manage her all right so long as we can keep your secret. What her codfish eyes don’t see her conger heart can’t grieve over. I think it’s splendid of you and Dick.”
“We’ll have to pack our things,” said Dorothea.
“We’d better hurry up,” said Peggy. “Cook’ll have grub ready soon, and you’d better tuck in while you can if you haven’t done much cooking.”
“I can manage eggs anyhow,” said Dorothea. “And I’ll soon learn.”
“Of course they’ll manage,” said Nancy. “And old Cook’ll smuggle things out to them. It isn’t as if they were going to be a hundred miles away. Come on. No, don’t put any more on the fire. We can light it again if we want to. And look out for broken ankles hurtling down the path.”
CHAPTER V
TRANSFORMATION SCENES
“I’VE the sheets off,” said Cook. “But I won’t make the bed till you shift them death heads. And I’m thinking if Miss Turner’s to be in the spare room, I’d best make up your mother’s bed for …”
“Dorothea won’t want it,” said Nancy. “The Dogs’ Home is just right. We’re taking hammocks for them. And you’ll give them the camping kettle and our big saucepan and a couple of mugs, and stores. … All right. All right. We’ll clear the spare room in two jumps of a weasel. Give us time to pack …”
Cook looked at Dorothea.
“We’re going to be very comfortable,” said Dorothea.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Cook. “There’s this room a nightmare, and I must run a duster over the drawing-room. A body could write their name in the dust on the piano.”
“Piano,” exclaimed Nancy. “Jibbooms and bobstays! She’ll be making us play the beastly thing. Come on, Peggy. You go and get the drawing pins out on the other side … carefully, or we’ll tear it. We’ll want a Jolly Roger or two to cheer up the Picts’ Home.”
“You be getting them things down,” said Cook, “and I’ll have your dinner on the table. Days like this a body wants two pairs of legs and a dozen arms …”
“It isn’t really that you want,” said Nancy, pulling out drawing pins from the skull and crossbones over the head of the bed in which the Great Aunt was to sleep. “It’s time. It always goes too fast or too slow. Here’s the G.A. coming and minutes fly like seconds and yet when we’re at school waiting for the end of term the days drag out like years. Look out, Peggy. Hold your side up till I get out this last pin …”
Dick had gone off to his room that was really Captain Flint’s, and was collecting everything that was his and putting it on the bed. Dorothea was putting back into her suitcase the things she had taken out the night before.
“We won’t lug the suitcases up the wood,” said Nancy. “Take just the things you can’t do without. We can stow the suitcases here.”
“The suitcases’ll be pretty useful,” said Dorothea. “Like a chest of drawers.”
“All right,” said Nancy. “Of course it would be pretty awful if she started prowling round the box-room and found them here. We’ll get them up somehow.”
“Torn,” said Peggy. “Can’t be helped. Anyway the big one’s all right.” She folded the remains of the Jolly Roger that had been on the foot of the bed. “What about the flags?”
“They’ll want the scarab flag for their boat. They won’t want the other.”
“Come and eat your dinner,” called Cook from downstairs and at the same time banged loudly on the dinner gong.
*
Lunch in the Beckfoot dining-room was like the last meal in a house before people are moving to a new one. The dining-room looked the same as usual, but it was as if the carpets were up, and the furniture half packed, and a van waiting outside for the rest of it. They could hear Cook pushing the spare-room bed about (at least that was what it sounded like) while she was hurriedly making it up anew for the unwelcome visitor. Nancy and Peggy were snapping out single words, “Hammocks” … “Hammer” … “Nails” … “Bedding” … “Grog” … “Pemmican” … “Tin opener” … their minds darting this way and that through the memories of camping expeditions, trying to be sure that nothing should be forgotten that the Picts would need. Dorothea was looking ahead into the housekeeping that she would be doing for the first time. Dick was thinking of the hut as a forest base for a naturalist. He was almost sure that was a woodpecker he had heard … But neither Dick nor Dorothea got very far with their thoughts. Those single, practical words, snapped out by the experienced Amazons, kept breaking in with new ideas. Five minutes after they had finished not one of them could have said off hand what they had eaten or whether they had eaten anything.
*
“We’ve got to get Cook working on their stores,” said Nancy. “She must have done that room by now.” For a few minutes the noises from upstairs, of brushes banging against walls and catching against chairs and bed-legs, had come to an end. Suddenly there was a new noise of drawers being pulled open and banged shut.
“She’s done,” said Peggy. “She’s just looking in the chest of drawers to see there’s nothing of Dot’s left behind.”
They went up and found Dorothea’s suitcase on the land
ing outside the spare-room door. Cook was looking anxiously round.
“If there’s owt amiss, Miss Turner’s the one to see it,” she said.
“There’s nothing amiss,” said Nancy. “It’s the same dull room it always was. And after all the work we put into it, cheering it up for Dot.”
“She likes a box of biscuits by her bed. And a glass and a jug of water,” said Peggy.
“Flowers,” said Nancy. “We’ll do that. At least … You go and pick some flowers for her, Dot; Peggy and I have got to raid the kitchen …”
“That you haven’t,” said Cook. “I’ll get that kettle for them in a minute. Happen it will be better if they’re out of sight.”
“We’ll come with you,” said Nancy. “They’ll want all our camping things. Give them just what you give us when we camp on Wild Cat Island. Fill up the puncheon for them. Lucky you made a lot of lemonade before they came …”
“What flowers shall I pick?” said Dorothea.
“Deadly nightshade would be best,” said Nancy. “Only there isn’t any. Or garlic … that’s got a lively smell. No. The whole thing is to keep her happy. Better give the beast roses.”
Dorothea came back with the roses and met Nancy staggering across the hall with a bundle of brown netting.
“Hammocks!” said Nancy, and dumped them on the floor. “I’ll get you some vases. Hi! Peggy! Take down the Jolly Rogers from Dick’s bed. She’s bound to poke her nose in and want to know what Uncle Jim was doing with them. I say, Dot, when you’ve plunked the roses in her room … Some on the dressing-table … Some on the mantelpiece and some with the biscuit tin by her bed … just make sure Dick’s got all his things … Coming … COMING! Jibbooms and bobstays! We’ve only got four hours left …” She was gone and back again in a moment with three glass vases for the flowers. “Water in the bathroom,” she said. “I’ve got to keep an eye on Cook and the stores.”
Ten minutes later not a trace of Dick and Dorothea was left in the rooms that had been theirs. The spare room, gay with roses, was ready for a guest of a very different kind. Even the two suitcases were down in the hall, with the hammocks, kettle, hammer, a tin of nails and a huge pile of rugs.