The Happy Adventurers | Page 8

looked very snug, with the carpet, whose shabbiness was not noticeable in the dim light, and the gaily striped curtains, which had been tacked up and fastened back from the windows. They had added a set of shelves made out of a box covered with American leather and brass-headed nails. A few books lay upon one shelf, and on another stood a collection of cups, saucers, and plates, cracked, perhaps, and not all matching, but suggestive of convivial parties and good cheer. In one corner lay a cushion embroidered in woolwork with magenta roses, pea-green leaves, and orange-coloured daisies, all upon a background of ultramarine blue. Mollie thought it gave an effective touch to the somewhat scanty furnishing--in fact, it was the only furniture there was, except the shelves.
"How perfectly _ripping_!" Mollie exclaimed enthusiastically. "If I had this house I would live in it all the time. It is much nicer than a common house in a road. I do think Hugh is the cleverest boy I ever met."
"This is nothing much," Hugh said modestly, "you should see my raft--that is worth seeing. I have invented a way of arranging corks so that it will float in the severest storm. It could not sink if it tried, unless, of course, it became waterlogged. But I can only work at that when we are down at Brighton."
"I wish my brother Dick could be a Time-traveller and come here," sighed Mollie. "He would adore this tree, and the raft too."
"How old is Dick?" Hugh asked with interest.
"He is my twin; we are thirteen and a half," answered Mollie, quite forgetting that in the year 1878 Dick was still minus twenty-nine. "We do everything together in the holidays except football, and just now there isn't any football, so Dick is rather bored at school. In term-time we hardly see each other at all, we are both so horribly busy. How do you find time to do all these things?"
"I don't find it, I steal it," Hugh answered. "If I waited to find time I should never have enough to be useful. To-day is a half- holiday, and I am supposed to be learning Roman history and writing out five hundred lines. But I'm not," he added unnecessarily.
"Building is much more important than Roman history," said Mollie decidedly, "and lines are absolutely rotten. I wonder why--"
"Hullo!" came a voice from below. "It's me. I have finished my chain at last, and now I want to come up. Please come and hold the ladder, Prue."
Prudence crept out, tripped lightly down the ladder, and stood beside her sister.
"Hold tight, Grizzel, and do remember to push and not pull; if you pull I can't hold the ladder up."
"I wish Hugh would cut steps in the tree-trunk like the blacks," Grizzel complained, as she proceeded rather nervously to climb the ladder. "I do hate this old tobbely old green old thing."
"I am going to make a rope-ladder and pull it up after me," Hugh said, watching her from the door of his castle in the air. "I don't want steps that everybody could climb. Look out, Griz, you are pulling--" he stretched out a hand as he spoke, and held the top of the ladder, while Prudence steadied it at the bottom, until Grizzel had safely negotiated "the green passage", as Hugh called it, and crawled in at his little front door.
"It is very, very, very, very nice," she said approvingly, "and it will make a lovely place to come and hate in when everybody is horrid. You can draw the curtains and shut the door, and light your lantern and sit here hating as long as you like, for no one can get up when you have your rope-ladder."
"It would be rather stuffy," Mollie said, looking at the thick blanket curtains. "If he went on hating very long he would be suffocated. I'd sooner have a tea-party myself, and pull all the tea up in baskets. The water would be the hard part."
"The water is in that canvas bag," Hugh pointed out; "Papa gave it to me; it's the boiling that bothers me, because I don't much like using a spirit-lamp in here."
"Get an old biscuit-tin and fasten it up in the tree and put your spirit-lamp in that," suggested Mollie the Guide. "Cut out the front; then you will have a nice little cave all safe and sheltered."
"That's a jolly good idea," said Hugh; "I'll do it to-morrow and we'll have a party."
A bell in the distance warned the children that it was time to go in and tidy up for tea. Grizzel, however, was far too much enthralled by the little house to want to come down so soon. "I don't want any bread-and-butter tea," she announced; "bring me three oranges and eleven biscuits, and