said Starboard.
“I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” said Tom. “And the worst of it is they saw me. One chap had field-glasses. And then although I went down river, they thought I was one of the Death and Glories. So I’ve got the whole Coot Club in a mess.”
“The Death and Glories’ll be all right,” said Starboard.
“Anyway, it isn’t your fault,” said Port. “One of us would have had to do it.”
“But how did you get away?” said Starboard.
“I got mixed up with another lot,” said Tom. “I forgot to tell you about a couple of kids I met in the train. Well, they’re in the Teasel, you know, where that pug’s usually hanging about, and there’s an old lady in the Teasel with them….” And then he told of how he had boarded the Teasel and used her mudweight, and sunk the Dreadnought, and hid in the rushes, and how, somehow, after the Hullabaloos had been sent off down the river, he had gone back aboard the Teasel by invitation, and had forgotten about these people being foreigners too, and had even told them all about No. 7, and let out something about the Coot Club itself. “You know, she really had been most awfully sporting,” said Tom, trying to explain as much to himself as to the twins how it was that he had come to forget the first duty of a Norfolk Coot. “Her brother was a victim,” he added, “but I didn’t know that until afterwards….”
And at that moment he gave a sudden start and listened. There was the sharp, impatient bark of a small dog, close behind the house. It sounded almost as if it came from the river. Tom had too lately lain in the reeds face to face with William not to know that voice again.
Without another word he crept round the side of the house and peered out through the willows. The others followed him on tiptoe. Yes. Tied to one of the small white mooring posts at the edge of the lawn was a dinghy, and in it, alone, a pug.
“She must be here,” whispered Tom, and they slipped quietly back to the shed.
“Come to complain?” said Starboard.
“She was awfully decent yesterday,” said Tom.
And then there was a noise of feet on the gravel walk at the river side of the house, and voices talking, and again an impatient bark.
“No, William! You stay where you are. It would make all the difference to those two …”
“I don’t see why they shouldn’t. Tom would love to, and I do believe all three of them are as good in a boat as anybody on the river.”
And then Mrs. Barrable and Mrs. Dudgeon came round the corner of the house together.
“Well, Tom,” said his mother, “you seem to have made some friends last night as well as some enemies. Mrs. Barrable has a plan to suggest.”
“How do you do?” said Tom, dusting the sawdust off before shaking hands.
“And these,” said Mrs. Dudgeon, “are Nell and Bess.”
“Port and Starboard,” said Mrs. Barrable. “We saw you racing yesterday and we all hoped you would win.”
“It wasn’t daddy’s fault we didn’t,” said Starboard. “If the river’d been a wee bit wider nothing could have saved them.”
At that moment there was a determined and rather indignant yelp from “our baby” somewhere upstairs in the house.
“Is he all right?” said Tom.
“Perhaps you’d like to talk it over with them,” said Mrs. Dudgeon.
“You run away, my dear,” said Mrs. Barrable, just as if Mrs. Dudgeon was herself only a little girl.
Tom’s mother laughed. She did not seem to mind. She shook hands with Mrs. Barrable and was gone.
“And is that the Titmouse?” asked Mrs. Barrable, looking along the dyke. “You do keep her smart.”
“She wants another coat of paint, really,” said Tom. “I’ve got the paint, but I don’t want to put it on till the end of the hols. You see it won’t matter her being wet when I have to go to school.”
“Does she sleep two?”
“There’s room for two,” said Tom. “One each side of the centre-board. But I’ve only had her fitted for sleeping these last two nights. She isn’t really finished yet.” He turned back the awning to let Mrs. Barrable see inside. “Those lockers are all going to have doors.”
And then suddenly Mrs. Barrable turned to the business that had brought her to the doctor’s house. She told them how her brother had been coming to the Broads for some years and how this year he had chartered the Teasel, meaning to take his sister for a cruise right through Yarmouth and up to Beccles, where they had been children together, and round to Oulton and up the Norwich river.* She told them how, after a week on the Bure and at Hickling, he had suddenly had to go off, and how she had invited Dick and Dorothea to come and keep her company in the Teasel. “But what I didn’t know,” she said, “was that the two of them had set their hearts on learning to sail ever since they made friends with some nautical children in the winter holidays. And, of course, they’re dreadfully disappointed…. No, no. They don’t say so. If they did I shouldn’t feel so bad about it. I’m rather disappointed, too. I’d been looking forward to seeing Breydon again, and sailing in to Waveney and the Yare…. Now, how would the three of you care to come and sail the Teasel for us? I know Tom knows how to sink a boat.”
“Sail her?” said Tom.
“Take her down to the southern rivers and back,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Just to let those two children feel they’d seen something of the Broads. And you’d have to teach them a little first, so that they wouldn’t feel they were only passengers.”
Tom looked down at the Titmouse, at the new awning, and the lockers. Black treachery it would be, to leave her for the Teasel.
“I’ve thought it all out,” said Mrs. Barrable. “You’d have to bring the Titmouse or we shouldn’t have enough sleeping room at night. If you could do with Dick in the Titmouse, we four will have the Teasel to ourselves … two cabins, one for the twins, and Dorothea will share the other with me. Two or three days’ practice first in the easy waters up here, I thought, and then away for a cruise so as to be back in time to send them home before the end of the holidays.”
“The Teasel’s a splendid boat,” said Tom.
For one moment the twins’ eyes lit like his at the thought of such a voyage in charge, in actual command, of such a vessel. Then they remembered.
“We’d simply love to,” said Starboard, “but we can’t … really can’t. You see there’s a race tomorrow, and then another one, and father’s entered Flash
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