the way,” said the boy, “you didn’t see two girls in this train—twins? No? They were in Norwich this morning, but I expect they drove back with their father. Otherwise they’d have come this way. We always do. Going by bus, you don’t see anything of the river worth counting.”
“There’s a hawk,” said Dick.
“Kestrel,” said the boy, looking at the bird hovering above a little wood. “Hullo! We’ll be there in a minute.”
The train was slowing up. It crossed another river, and for a moment they caught a glimpse of moored houseboats with smoke from their chimneys where people were cooking midday meals, an old mill, and a bridge, and a lot of masts beyond it. And then the train had come to a stop at Wroxham station.
The strange boy was looking warily out of the window.
On the platform he saw an old lady looking up at the carriage windows. He also saw the station-master. He chose his moment and, slipping down from the carriage with his paint-can and coil of rope, was hurrying off to give up his ticket to the collector at the gate. But the station-master was too quick for him.
“Hum,” he said, “I might have guessed it was you, when they rang me up from Norwich about a boy with a ticket for Wroxham jumping on the train after it had fairly got going. Told me to give you a good talking to. Well, don’t you do it again. Not broken any bones this time, I suppose?”
The boy grinned. He and the station-master were very good friends, and he knew that the railway officials in Norwich had not meant him to get off so easily.
“I was on the platform in time,” he said. “Only I was looking for Port and Starboard, and then I slipped, and the train started, and I simply had to catch that train.”
“Port and Starboard?” said the station-master. “I saw them go over the road-bridge with Mr. Farland more than an hour ago. They’ll have had their dinners and be on the river by now…. Yes, Madam. Let me give you a hand.” He was talking now to Mrs. Barrable, the old lady, who had just found Dick and Dorothea. The station-master reached up to help Dorothea down with her suit-case.
“Well, and here you are,” said Mrs. Barrable, kissing Dorothea and shaking hands with Dick.
“And who was that other boy?” she asked.
“We made friends with him in the train,” said Dorothea. “He knows a lot about boats.”
“And birds,” said Dick.
Mrs. Barrable watched him as he hurried through the gate and down the path to the road. “Haven’t I seen him before?” she said. “And who are the Port and Starboard he was asking about?”
“That’s Tom Dudgeon, the doctor’s son from Horning,” said the station-master. “You’ll maybe have seen him on the river in his little boat. He’s not often away from the water in the holidays. And Port and Starboard, queer names for a couple of girls….” But there was the guard, just waiting to start the train, and the station-master never finished his sentence.
“Busy man,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Come along, Dick. Written any more books, Dot? You really have done well in keeping your luggage down. We’ll easily find room for these. I’ve got a boy with a hand-cart to take your things to the river. We’re going down by water. Longer but more fun. There’s a motor-launch going down to Horning, and the young man says he’ll put us aboard. The Teasel’s lying a good long way below the village. But we must have something to eat first, and I must get you some boots like those that boy was wearing. You’ll want them every time you step ashore.”
CHAPTER II
DISAPPOINTMENT
NEVER IN ALL THEIR lives had Dick and Dorothea seen so many boats. Mrs. Barrable had taken them shopping at a store that seemed to sell every possible thing for the insides and outsides of sailors. She had taken them to lunch at an inn where everybody was talking about boats at the top of his voice. And now they had gone down to the river to look for the Horning boatman with his motor-launch. The huge flags of the boat-letters were flying from their tall flag-staffs. Little flags, copies of the big ones, were fluttering at the mastheads of the hired yachts. There were boats everywhere, and boats of all kinds, from the big black wherry with her gaily painted mast, loading at the old granary by Wroxham bridge, and meant for nothing but hard work, to the punts of the boatmen going to and fro, and the motor-cruisers filling up with petrol, and the hundreds of big and little sailing yachts tied to the quays, or moored in rows, two and three deep, in the dykes and artificial harbours beside the main river.
“Why are such a lot of the boats wearing dust-covers?” asked Dorothea.
“Rain-coats, really,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Those are awnings. Everybody rigs them at night to make an extra room by giving a roof to the steering well. And, of course, when the boats are not in use the awnings keep them dry. Lots of the boats are not let yet. Luckily for us it’s early in the season. Later on people come here from all over England, and in the summer Wroxham must be like a fairground.”
“It’s rather like one now,” said Dorothea, listening to the gramophones and the hammering in the boat-sheds. “Oh, look. There’s someone just starting. Do all the big boats have little ones like chickens hanging on behind?”
“Dinghies,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Suppose you’re in a yacht and want to fetch the milk or post your letters, you just jump into your dinghy and use your oars.”
“We have rowed once,” said Dick, “but only for a few minutes.”
And then Mrs. Barrable saw the boatman waving to them. A minute or two later they were off themselves, in a little motor-launch, purring down Wroxham Reach. In the bows of the launch were the two small suit-cases, and the parcels that had been sent down to the river by the people at the village store. Dorothea looked happily at one large, awkward, bulging parcel. Mrs. Barrable had bought them cheap oilskins and sou’westers as well as sea-boots. There was no excuse for wearing such things on a fine spring day, with bright sunshine pouring down, but just to look at that bulging parcel made Dorothea feel she was something of a sailor already.
Once round the bend at the low end of the reach, they had left all the noise and bustle of Wroxham behind them. Tall trees were growing on either side of the river. There were quiet little houses among the trees, and green lawns at the water’s edge, with water-hens strutting about on the grass as if they were pigeons or peacocks. A man with long thigh boots and a yachting cap was busy with a lawn-mower.
“Look,” said Dorothea. “There’s a sailor mowing the grass.”
“Most people here have got at least one foot in the water,” said Mrs. Barrable, “and they do say a lot of the babies are born web-footed, like ducks.”
“Not really?” said Dick.
“I’m not so sure,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Every infant in this place seems able to sail a boat as soon as it can walk.”
“Were you born here?” asked Dorothea, glancing, in spite of herself, at Mrs. Barrable’s neat, rubber-soled shoes.
“At Beccles,” said Mrs. Barrable. “On another river. Not very far away.”
Not everybody,
