The Slowcoach Part 9

Jack and Horace were probably a little over excited, for they were very restless; and to be restless on the hard ground--with no springs, as in our beds at home--is to get sore and wakeful; while Robert was intently conscious of every sound and if you sleep in a field you hear thousands of them--all the rustlings of the little shy nocturnal animals, tiny squeakings and shrillings in the gra.s.s, as well as the cries of the birds of prey. Now and then, too, a spider ran over his face and made him jump, and very early the strong light poured into the mouth of the tent and made it seem absurd to be in bed any longer.

The result was, that it was not till the morning that they began to sleep properly at all, and that made them much less ready to get up than they had expected to be.

CHAPTER 10

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND CARAVAN

The arrival of Kink at half-past six was a great relief. Robert hailed him, and Kink said it was a beautiful morning.

"Don't you get up yet," he said, after Robert and Janet had both told him of the night. "I'll make the fire and boil the kettle, and fetch water, and so on, and you get up when I tell you. Otherwise, you'll all be too tired and get ill."

And so they had the blessed experience of lying still and drowsy, and hearing Kink move about for their comfort.

The boys were up first, and made extremely noisy toilets in the was.h.i.+ng-up basin, and then Jack and Gregory went off to the farm for milk and b.u.t.ter and eggs, and Mrs. Gosden, who seemed, early as it was, to be in the very middle of a day's work, and who refused to believe that the boys were not deceiving her when they denied having sore throats, gave them leave to gather strawberries, so that their return to the Slowcoach was a new triumph.

Their breakfast was chiefly scrambled eggs, ham, and strawberries, and by ten o'clock, true to their bargain, they were out of the field and on the highroad, and no sign of their camp remained, save a black circle caused by the fire and a slight crus.h.i.+ng of the gra.s.s all round it.

They had gone a very little way before Robert, who had already been to Woodstock with the morning telegram, began to realize that he was in for a blister on his left heel, and, on asking the others, he found that they were not too comfortable either.

"This means," he told Mary, speaking to her in her official capacity of Regulator of Rests, "that we shall have to ride a good deal, because we simply must go twelve miles today, or we shan't be at Stratford in time for mother tomorrow afternoon."

Mary therefore ordered them in and out of the Slowcoach with great frequency, but it was not a great deal of use, for they hobbled more and more.

At Enstone they stopped for lunch, which consisted of a tongue and bananas and ginger beer; and here they met a friendly tinker, drinking his ale outside the inn, who, noticing their lameness, gave them some good advice. "If you can't stop and rest," he said, "you should soap your stockings, and it's a good thing now and then to change the stockings from left to right." They found that the soap was really useful, and got on much better, and a little later they were overtaken by two young men on a walking tour, who slowed down to fall into step for a while with Robert and Jack. One gave them some hints. "When you are very tired," he said, "it helps to hold something in front of you at full length--even a walking stick will do, or a coat rolled up. It pulls you along. You look like an idiot, of course, but that doesn't matter. No one who minds looking foolish will ever have a really good time. It is a good thing to prevent a st.i.tch in your side to carry a little pebble in your mouth. Squeezing a cork in each hand helps."

"Another way to make walking easier," said the other young man, "is to sing as you go. All sing together--marching songs, if you know any, such as 'Tramp, boys, tramp.' That's what soldiers do on long marches, and it makes all the difference."

They didn't take the road to Chipping Norton, but stopped at the town, while Kink, who had no blisters, went into the town to get the evening's dinner; and meanwhile Janet persuaded the Beatrice stove to give them tea. It was while here that they had their first experience of Diogenes as a guardian, for he frightened away two tramps who seemed likely to be troublesome.

On Kink's return, Robert urged them on, for he had marked down on his map a spot called the Hollow, about five miles farther on, near Long Compton, which sounded exceedingly attractive as a campingground, especially to one who had read "Lavengro" and remembered the Dingle there, near Long Melton; and hither, very footsore, but still brave and happy, they came about half-past four, and made a very snug camp in it without asking anyone's leave.

It was not time for supper, and they were very glad to lie about and be lazy while the stew was slowly cooking. Robert and Janet and Mary consulted very deeply about the morrow, and at last decided that it would be best to remain there all the day and get their blisters cured with Mr. Lenox's ointment, and therefore a telegram would have to go to Mrs. Avory at once, telling her not to go to Stratford till Sat.u.r.day, "and also," Robert added, "to bring my bicycle. We can easily fasten it on the roof, and it's going to be frightfully necessary often and often. This evening, for instance. Here we are, goodness knows how far from a telegraph-office, and everyone lame except Kinky, who'll have to go."

Kink, however, had luck, for he met a baker's cart on its way to Chipping Norton, and the man not only said he would take the telegram and the letter, but he agreed to bring out a number of things to eat the next day.

Feeling rested and well fed, they therefore went to bed that Thursday night much more likely to sleep than on the night before.

And, indeed, everyone did sleep well, except, once again, Robert.

Whatever the reason, he was very wide awake; and at some hour in the middle of the night he crept out of his sack and walked into the open, away from the trees, intent upon comparing the magnetic north--which his compa.s.s gave him--with the true north, which anyone can find by looking at the Great Bear sprawling across the skies and getting the Pole Star from its pointers.

Having marked the difference on the gla.s.s of his compa.s.s with a spot of ink from his fountain-pen, Robert returned to the Hollow; but to his astonishment and alarm, on reaching the caravan he could not find the tent. There was the Slowcoach right enough, with its white blinds glimmering, and he could hear Moses munching close by; but there was no tent, and apparently no Diogenes.

Robert was not a timid boy, but the lateness of the hour and the loneliness of the place and this extraordinary occurrence affected his nerves, so that he suddenly had a panic, and, running up the steps, he beat on the caravan-door as if wolves were after him.

"Hullo! hullo!" cried a gruff voice that certainly did not belong to any of the girls. "What the d.i.c.kens do you want?"

Robert nearly fell off the steps in his surprise. "Please," he said, "I want the Slowcoach."

For answer the door opened, and a big head and beard and a pyjama arm were pushed out.

"Slowcoach?" the head said. "What Slowcoach? There's no Slowcoach here."

"The Slowcoach is the name of our caravan," said Robert.

"Oh, it is?" said the head. "Then it's over there. I saw it as I came in. This is the Snail."

"Thank you very much," said Robert, who had quite recovered his composure. "How late are you going to stay here in the morning?"

"I don't know," said the head, yawning vastly. "It depends on the country. I shan't go till after breakfast, anyhow. But I'm much too tired to talk now. Goodnight, Slowcoach."

"Good night, Snail," said Robert.

And that is how the Avories came to know the great Hamish MacAngus; for when Robert led them round to visit him the next morning ("And it is right for us to call first," said Janet, "since we have lived here longer"), they found that the owner of the Snail was nothing less than the famous--But I must tell you in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 11

THE WAYSIDE FRIEND

Mr. MacAngus had just finished his ham and eggs, and was lighting his pipe.

"Good morning, Slowcoaches," he said. "I'm very pleased to see you. Sit down wherever you like. Furniture by Dame Nature; everything as nice as Mother makes it. This is a friendly, reasonable hour to meet. That young brother of yours--I suppose he is your brother"--pointing to Robert--"pays calls in the middle of the night. He seems to think every caravan in the world belongs to him. How a man who lives in a London terrace knows his house I never could understand, but to recognize one's own caravan ought to be quite easy."

Mr MacAngus, you must understand, did not say all this in one breath, for he was a slow man. But it reads as if he did, because none of the others uttered a word. It was all too bewildering and also too amusing.

He was so big and so strange, and he had such a twinkle in his eye, that they preferred to let him go on, knowing that whatever he said would be entertaining.

"Well," he said at last, "now we must stop talking nonsense and introduce ourselves. But first I should like you all to guess who I am and what I do for a living. You first," he said, pointing to Janet.

"I think you are a kind of hermit," she said at last.

"Right," he said. "But that's not enough. What do I do? You," he added, pointing to Mary, "what do you think I do?"

"Perhaps you lecture," said Mary, "or preach. No, I don't think you preach. I think very likely you speak to villagers about politics--tariff reform and things like that."

The big man laughed. "Very well," he said. "Now you," to Robert.

"I think you're a gentleman gipsy," said Robert. "Like Lavengro. Are you?"

"In a way," said the stranger, "but I shan't tell you till you've all guessed."

Jack Rotheram then guessed that he was a spy, and this amused him immensely.

"In a kind of way I am that too," he answered. "At any rate, I am always looking out for the fatness of the land."

Hester guessed he had a broken heart because of a disappointment in love, and was living all alone because he hated the world, like Lord Byron.