The Happy Adventurers by Lydia Miller Middleton (best thriller novels of all time TXT) 📖

Mollie agreed warmly, “but it does require the right kind of skirt, Grannie. Did anyone ever topple over at the critical moment?”

“Not that I can remember,” Mrs. Pell answered; “but, of course, it required a great deal of practice, and we did many exercises before we got the length of our court curtsy. Do you remember Ellen Bathurst, Daisy?” (How funny it sounded to hear Grannie called Daisy.) “And the time all the brandy-balls fell out of her pocket? How angry Madame was!”

Of course Mollie had to hear about the adventure of the brandy-balls, and from that the talk drifted to memories of old friends long since dead and gone, whose names Mollie had never heard. It was a little depressing, and her thoughts wandered away to the Campbells. She wondered where she would find herself that afternoon, and then remembered with dismay that Aunt Mary was away and there would be no tunes.

But after lunch Grannie insisted upon the sofa as usual. “You shall have your lullaby,” she said. “Mrs. Pell and I are going to play duets. We used to play a great deal together when we were young, and no doubt our music is just the thing for sending you to sleep; it has a base and a treble and some perfectly distinct tunes.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Grannie,” Mollie laughed, as Grannie bent to kiss her. “I am sure it is beautiful music, and I like tunes myself. Jean is the musical one of our family. She jiggles up and down the piano in no particular key and calls it ‘The Scent of Lilac on a June Day’.”

“Well, well,” said Grannie. “Times change. We are going to play selections from Faust, with variations. Sleep quietly till tea-time, my dear.”

Mollie smiled as she listened to the selections. “—two-three, one-two-three, one—” she could hear the treble counting. “I like it,” she murmured to herself rather sleepily—the morning’s conversation had not been exciting on her side. “I am glad I am not James, for this is an awfully comfortable sofa—hullo, Prue! You are in a hurry to-day! I was just thinking of a nap—”

Prudence did not answer; she was listening to the piano.

“Mamma sings that,” she said. “It’s Faust. I adore Faust. Don’t you? The waltz simply makes my feet go wild.”

“I don’t know it,” Mollie confessed. “There are so many things I don’t know. Hurry up, Prue. I have had such an aged morning; now I want a young afternoon.”

“—two-three, one-two-three, one—” said Prue, taking Mollie’s hand in her own.

 

*

 

It was very hot. So hot that Mollie could not be bothered to move. She was half-sitting, half-lying on a bed of bracken, and around her she could see the supine forms of four other children—Prudence and Grizzel, Dick and Jerry—all lying in various attitudes of exhaustion and apparently all asleep. Mollie was too lazy to turn her head, but she could see that they were in a wood. The trees were the eternal gum trees, with their monotonous grey trunks and perpetual blue-green foliage. They were not growing in the neighbourly manner of trees in an English wood, nor did they throw the cool green shade of elms and beeches, but still in their own way they formed a wood. Mollie lay with her back propped up against one of the grey trunks, her arms behind her head, and her eyes blinking sleepily. She wondered where Hugh was.

“You are a lazy lot,” said a voice behind her. “I have been helping in the vineyards all morning, and I’ve discovered a new kind of grape. Mr. von Greusen thinks it might turn out to be a good champagne grape. The carts are coming down; don’t you want to see them?”

As he spoke Hugh came round and stood at Mollie’s side. He wore a coat of tussore silk, and his shirt was open at the neck; a wide pith helmet was on his head, draped with a striped pugaree with broad ends hanging down his back, and further decorated with vine leaves, which looked rather droopy in the heat. He held out a hand to Mollie and pulled her up, looking scornfully at the recumbent figures of Jerry and Dick.

“What a way to spend the time!” he exclaimed. “Their eyes tight shut and their legs spread out like dried fruit. They’ll never discover a new grape and have the most famous champagne in the world called after them. Come on!”

Mollie had been listening for a little while to a distant rumble. It now resolved itself into the uneven racketty grind of heavy cart-wheels on a rough track. She went forward with Hugh, and, shading her eyes from the glare of the sun, looked up the road which wound between the trees of the wood they were in. As she watched, the carts came into view round a bend of the track, and soon they were passing before her. A team of six oxen drew each heavy load—such a load as Mollie had never seen in her life. Grapes! Grapes piled up like turnips! They had been thrown in by careless hands accustomed to working with rich harvests, and here and there they hung over the sides, or dropped to the ground, to be trodden under foot by indifferent beasts and weary men.

The noise of trampling feet and creaking wheels disturbed the sleepers, who, one by one, got up and came beside Mollie and Hugh. There was a smell of hot grapes in the air, mingled with the smell of sweating oxen, dry grass, and pungent eucalyptus, and the spilled juice of grapes mixing with the hot dust of the track added a peculiar aroma of its own to the general nosegay, as Dick described it. Mollie thought that she could never remember smelling anything so thirst-inducing in all her days. When the last cart had disappeared down the winding road, and the noisy rattle had died away to a distant rumble again, Hugh sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree and stretched his arms.

“Where are they going?” asked Dick, now wideawake and curious. “What happens next?”

“They’re going to Mr. von Greusen’s place to be made into wine,” Hugh answered, “and it’s a funny thing that however nice grapes are raw they are all equally nasty when turned into wine. Some go sour and black and you call it claret, and some go sharp and yellow and you call it Frontignac or any other silly yellow name. What I should like to invent would be a kind of drink that tasted of grapes, fresh sweet grapes. I’d add a dash of peach, and a slice or two of melon, and a bottle of soda-water. And just enough powdered sugar. And ice.”

“Let’s go and get the things now and make it this very minute,” said Grizzel, tying on her sunbonnet and making ready to start. “I’m so thirsty.”

“It’s too late to-day, and besides I’m tired. There was a man up there who wanted to know all sorts of things about the vineyards. Mr. von Greusen was too busy to go round with him, so he sent me. He was pleased with me for discovering that grape. The man’s name is John Smith. I think he is French.”

Mollie laughed.

“What are you laughing at?” asked Hugh, looking all ready to be offended.

“Oh—nothing—I’m not laughing,” Mollie declared; “it’s only a sort of tickle; I get it sometimes.”

“John Smith isn’t exactly a French name,” said Jerry. “Why do you think he is French?”

“Because he called Mr. von Greusen a ‘vigneron’ and talked about ‘hectares’ instead of acres, and ‘hectolitres’ instead of gallons, and he told me how vines were trained in Champagne and Burgundy and Languedoc—all very Frenchy. Mr. von Greusen never talks like that. He was interested in my new grape, but he’s afraid it won’t go on being like it is now. He says it has about one chance in a hundred. I don’t mind betting you sixpence it will be a champagne grape.”

“I don’t mind betting you sixpence he isn’t French if his name is John Smith,” said Jerry. “You might as well call yourself a Scotsman named Chung Li Chang.”

“Oh—names! Names are nothing out here,” Hugh said loftily. “We can call ourselves what we please. This is the Land of Liberty. Besides, Papa knows a Scotsman called Devereux, so there you are.”

“Faugh!” said Jerry scornfully. “That’s nothing! Everyone knows that Scotland is full of French names.”

“I suppose you are trying to say ‘sfaw’,” said Hugh coldly. “There is nothing to sfaw about. Lots of Chinese people come to Australia and call themselves John Smith if they choose.”

“Faugh!” Jerry repeated.

“Sfaw!” said Hugh.

“Faugh—” Jerry began, but Dick interrupted.

“If you two asses are trying to say pshaw you are both wrong. I happened to see it in the dictionary a few days ago and it is pronounced shaw; it’s a silly sort of word anyhow. No one uses it in real life. Shut your jaws and stop your shaws and let’s go and get a drink.”

“You can go,” said Hugh, whose feelings were injured by the lack of interest in his new grape. “I’m going to stay here for the present.”

“Leave him alone and he’ll come home and bring his grape behind him,” sang Grizzel, as they set off down the hill. Hugh pretended not to hear.

“I wish I was a Red Indian,” he muttered to himself, as he watched the little party straggling down the road. “I’d invent some first-rate tortures for Grizzel.”

The children trudged along the track between the trees. The air was full of dust stirred up by the carts, the sun seemed to grow hotter and hotter every moment, “putting on a sprint before the finish”, Dick groaned, and the children grew thirstier and thirstier, till Mollie felt she could hardly bear it for one minute more. Her lips and tongue were dry and parched, and, although she kept her mouth shut, the dust blew up her nose and down her dry throat. She felt as if the sun were hitting her on the back between her shoulders, and her feet kept stumbling over the deep ruts in the road. “A Guide’s motto is never say die till you are dead,” she thought to herself. “There are times when I wish I were not a Guide, and this is one of them. ‘Be Loyal.’ Oh—bother Baden-Powell!” She held up three fingers to remind herself of the Guide Law, and tried her best to smile. “How do the others get on without it?” she wondered, watching Prue and Grizzel as they loitered along just before her, Grizzel dragging weary little feet in the dust. “I suppose they are used to it. Life in Australia isn’t all beer and skittles. I wonder what skittles are? If they are something nice to drink I wish we had some here. Even beer would be better than nothing. I am a beautiful Patrol Leader! Walking behind and grousing for all I am worth.” She hurried her steps a little and made up to the boys.

“Let’s make a queen’s chair and carry Grizzel,” she suggested. “She looks about done. We can do it in turns, Dick and me, then Prue and Jerry.”

“Righto!” said both boys at once.

“But you girls needn’t do it,” Dick added. “Jerry and I have carried heavier loads than that, haven’t we, old son-of-a-gun?”

“Faugh!” said Jerry, with a wink.

Fortunately for the boys, and for Mollie, whose pride as a Patrol Leader was now up in arms, and perhaps most fortunately for Grizzel, whose weight was by no means fairy-like, they were overtaken at that moment