cabin. They lingered, watching. The light went out.
“I say,” said Roger. “Do you think he had time to undress?”
CHAPTER III
“WE’VE ALL PROMISED”
“WHERE’S Mother?”
Mother’s bedroom door was open, but there was no one inside. John banged on the door of the room in which Susan, Titty and Bridget were finishing their dressing.
“We’re just coming down,” shouted Bridget. “Susan’s nearly done my last plait.”
“Mother’s gone out,” cried Roger, as John came down into the little parlour. “And her toast’s getting cold.”
They went to the door that opened into the garden and saw Mother coming across from the boatsheds. They ran down the steps to meet her.
“Hullo!” she said, and then, as she saw them look out beyond the hard to make sure that the Goblin was still lying there moored among the other yachts in the morning sunshine, she told them something that filled their hearts with hope. “I’ve been collecting testimonials for that young man.”
“Good ones?” asked Roger.
“Everybody here seems to think a lot of him. Miss Powell says he’s the best-heartedest young man she ever knew. Frank, the boatman, says, ‘What he don’t know about handling that boat of his won’t help anyone.’ The boatbuilder says he’d trust him anywhere, and that old man scraping spars says, ‘They don’t fare to come to no harm along of Jim Brading.’”
“You’re going to let us go,” said John.
“He may have thought better of it,” said Mother.
“But if he still wants us. . . ”
“It almost looks as if I shall have to,” said Mother. “But I wish I could ask Daddy. . . ”
“Daddy’d say, ‘Go. . . ’”
“I believe he would,” said Mother.
“Mother’s going to let us go,” shouted Roger as they met the others at the door.
“Wait till he asks you,” said Mother.
They looked far away at the trim white Goblin lying to her mooring with the little black Imp lying astern of her. Yes, Jim Brading was aboard, or the dinghy wouldn’t be there. But there was no sign of anybody stirring.
“He’s still asleep,” said Mother. “Let’s go in and have our breakfast.”
They were eating bread and marmalade when something large darkened the window and they saw Jim Brading looking in.
Bridget was off her chair first and ran to the door. “Come in, please,” she said.
“Did you have a good sleep?” asked Roger as seriously as he knew how.
“Splendid, thank you, and a good swim round the ship this morning. I’m all right now. Mrs Walker, I am most awfully sorry about the way I went to sleep on the table last night.”
“Rubbish,” said Mother. “It was a charming sight and we all enjoyed it. Come in and sit down. Roger, get another cup out of the cupboard. There’s plenty of coffee in the pot. Well, now you’ve seen these animals in the morning light, you won’t want four of them in your little ship. I’ve told them you won’t, so you needn’t be afraid they’ll be disappointed.”
Roger was on the point of protesting, but did not. He waited, cup in hand.
“How soon can they come aboard?” said Jim.
Five hours later John, Susan and Jim Brading were resting in the cockpit of the Goblin after a hard morning’s work and a luncheon of bread and cheese and ginger beer. “No good starting with a fresh lot of things to wash up,” Jim had said, “just when you’ve scoured the sink and got everything spick and span.” So they had flung their crumbs to the gulls, washed their plates and swilled out their mugs over the side, wiped them and put the plates in the cupboard where they belonged and hung the mugs once more on the hooks over the sink. Mrs Walker and the others had gone to Ipswich to get stores. . . “The fo’c’sle feeds itself, of course,” Mrs Walker had said. . . and Jim, Susan and John were sitting in the cockpit and keeping an eye on the shore where the tide, as it was not long after high water, was lapping against the walls of the Butt and Oyster.
Jim was smoking a pipe with a good deal of care, not letting go of it with his fingers for more than a minute at a time. The others were watching him with respect.
“I only began it these holidays,” Jim confessed. “My uncle made me promise not to till after I left school.”
“Do you like it?” asked Susan.
“It’s very nice after work,” said Jim.
“It must use an awful lot of matches,” said Susan, as yet another was thrown overboard to join the long trail of dead matches that was floating with the tide.
“Tobacco’s a bit damp,” said Jim. “Bother it. It’s gone out again.”
“I found a tin of brass polish when I was tidying the place where the lamps are,” said Susan. “Do you think it would be all right if I had a go at that porthole.” She was looking at the porthole through which the steersman could see the compass, which was hung inside the cabin, over the sink.
Jim puffed out some smoke and looked at the porthole as if he was seeing it for the first time.
“It has gone a bit green,” he said. “You simply can’t keep them bright. I don’t think I’ve touched it this year. But, you know, Uncle Bob and I will never be able to live up to all this tidiness after you’ve gone.”
John said nothing. He knew Susan. They had had a busy morning, ferrying all the blankets and pillows lent by Miss Powell, and four small knapsacks, each with night things and a bathing suit and a change of clothes. When all this had been dumped down the companion-way into the cabin, it had looked as if there would never be room to turn round. But they had given Susan a free hand down there, while they rowed ashore twice more to fill the water-carrier at the tap in the boat-builder’s yard, and, when they had emptied the second lot of water into the tank under the cockpit floor, they had looked down into the cabin and found it strangely empty. All the blankets had been rolled up into neat bundles. There was one at the head of each bunk. And Susan was on her knees with a bucket and a swab, cleaning the cabin floor, and looking very much as if she did not want to be interrupted. So they had left her to it and gone to work on deck. “Better learn the ropes,” Jim had said. Three times they had hoisted the mainsail and lowered it again, and the last time John had been allowed to do it by himself, Jim watching and saying nothing, except right at the end, when he reminded John to slacken away the topping lift so that the sail should take the weight of the boom. Then Jim had explained the reefing gear, and taken a little brass crank from a locker in the cockpit, and brought it forward and fitted it in its place, and shown
