The Slowcoach Part 24

"I hate crusts," said Gregory.

"Surely crusts are better than dying of starvation," said Mary.

"No," said Gregory, who was prepared to be thoroughly unpleasant. "No, I'd much rather die. I think I shall go to bed."

"Yes," said Robert, "do. People who can't stand a little hunger are no good in caravans."

"Janet," said Gregory, "how can I go to bed with my boots on?"

"Then take them off," said Janet.

"There's a knot," said Gregory.

"Well, you must wait," said Janet. "I can't leave what I'm doing."

"I hate waiting," said Gregory.

Robert, however, became suddenly very stern. He advanced on Gregory with a knife in his hand, and, swooping on the boot, cut both laces.

"There," he said, "get into bed, and you must buy some more laces at Cheltenham."

"I hate Cheltenham," said Gregory. But he said no more; he saw that Robert was cross.

When, a little later, Janet took a plate of tongue over to his bunk, he was fast asleep. The others had a dismal, grumpy meal, and they were glad when the was.h.i.+ng-up was done and it was bedtime. But no one had a good night. The rain dropped from the trees on to the Slowcoach's roof with loud thuds, and at midnight the thunder and lightning began, and Janet got up and splashed out in the wet to the tent to ask Robert if they ought not to move from under the trees. Robert had been lying awake thinking the same thing, but Kink had gone off with Moses to the nearest farm, and the Slowcoach was far too heavy to move without the horse. Diogenes whimpered on his chain. If he could have spoken, he would have said, like Gregory, "I hate thunder."

"Perhaps it won't get very near us," said Robert. "We must chance it, anyway."

But neither he nor Janet had any sleep until it was nearly time to get up, when the sun began to s.h.i.+ne again, and the miseries of the evening and night before were forgotten.

Hester, however, had slept all through it, and had dreamed that ponies were running away with her towards a country entirely peopled by black spaniels and governed by a grey queen in top-boots.

As for Gregory, his dream was that he was Lord Bruce.

CHAPTER 17

THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST BABY

They entered Cheltenham at about half-past eleven, and were having lunch on the top of Leckhampton Hill, on the other side of it, by half-past one. Robert had not allowed any stop in Cheltenham except for shopping. "We don't want towns," he said, "except historic ones."

"But this is historic," said Jack; "Jessop was at school here."

The pull up Leckhampton Hill was very stiff, and they were all glad to take lunch easily, and since Robert had arranged a short day--only three or four miles more, to a very nice-looking spot on the other side of Birdlip--they rested with clear consciences; and, as it happened, rested again in the Birdlip Hotel, where they had tea in the garden overlooking the Severn Valley on the top of just such a precipice as Bredon.

It was half-past three before they started again on their next five miles, and they had done about three of them, and had just pa.s.sed Teddington, when Gregory, who was walking with Kink beside Moses, suddenly dashed ahead towards a bundle which was lying in the middle of the road.

He bent down over it, and then began to shriek for the others to come too.

"What is it?" cried Jack, as they raced up.

"It's a baby!" Gregory said, wild with excitement. "A real baby!"

Janet, who had been behind, sprang forward as she heard these remarkable words, and easily reached the bundle first.

"So it is," she exclaimed, picking it tenderly up and opening the wraps round its face.

It was a swarthy mite, very tightly bound into its clothes.

"What an extraordinary thing!" said Mary. "Fancy finding a baby on the road!"

"It has probably been abandoned," said Hester. "Very likely it is of n.o.ble birth, and was stolen by gipsies and stained brown, and now they are afraid of pursuit and have left it."

"How could it be of n.o.ble birth?" Gregory asked. "Look how hideous it is!"

"Looks have nothing to do with high lineage," said Hester. "There have been very ugly kings."

"It isn't hideous," said Janet. "It's a perfect darling. But what are we to do with it?"

"If it's a boy," said Gregory, "let's keep it and make it into a long-stop. We want one badly." (Gregory, as I have said, hated fielding.)

"Let's adopt it," said Hester. "Mother often says how she wishes we were still babies."

"Don't let's adopt it if it's a girl," said Gregory.

"It doesn't matter what a baby is," said Hester,--"whether it's a boy or a girl. The important thing is that it's a baby. When it gets too big, we can let it go."

"I'm dreadfully afraid," said Janet, "that we shall have to try to find out whose it is and give it back now."

"Well," said Mary, "we needn't try too hard, need we?"

"How are you going to try, anyway?" Jack asked, with some scorn. "You can't stop everyone you see and say, 'Have you lost a baby?' This old man just coming along, for instance."

"Wouldn't a good way," said Robert, "be to write a little placard:

FOUND, A BABY.

Inquire Within.

and stick it on the caravan?"

They liked that idea, but Janet suggested that it would be best to ask Kink first.

"There's only one thing to do," said Kink, "and that is to hand it over to the police at the next place we come to."

"Police again!" said Horace. "You're always talking of the police."

"Well," said Kink, "that's what they're for. And if you think a moment or two, you'll all see what a trouble a baby would be. We shall reach Oxenton in a little while, and we can leave the baby there."

But, as it happened, they had no need to, for there suddenly appeared before them a caravan covered with baskets which was being urged towards them by a young woman who tugged at the horse's head in a kind of frenzy. As she drew nearer they could hear that she was wailing.