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

in the puzzle to notice the rather peculiar expression on Mollie’s face, and soon she too became absorbed in the puzzle under her eyes, and forgot for the moment the stranger puzzle in her mind.

When Mollie’s breakfast-tray came up next morning, the first thing she saw on it was a letter from Dick. She seized it and tore it open.

 

“DEAR MOLL,

“I’ve had the rummest experience you ever. Young Outram says it was -pyh- -psy- -pysh–ghosts, you know. He says I must tell you exactly what happened and not leave out anything, because quite small things might turn out to be most important. Young Outram is great on ghosts and Spirits, he says it is because he was born in the East. It happened like this. Y.O. and me were sitting together at our desk, which is at the back beside the window. It is a very good desk. Old Nosey was talking about Macbeth—or perhaps it was Paradise Lost, I am not sure of this point, because sometimes he does one and sometimes the other, according to the mood he is in. But it was one of them. Y.O. and I were making a list of Probable Players in next term’s 1st XV, and we both said ‘Jenkyns will have left’, at the same time, so we hooked little fingers and said Kipling, and were wishing a wish when all of a sudden, without the slightest warning there appeared, sitting on our desk, the most absolutely top-hole parrot I ever saw in my life. We sat staring, because, you see, we never saw the beast fly in, and if it flew through the window we must have seen it, because of my arm being on the window-sill. While we were still staring I distinctly heard your voice say, ‘Do come here, Dick.’ Just those words and then no more. Then the parrot vanished absolutely, tail and everything, though it was the finest parrot’s tail I ever saw in my life. I can tell you, Moll, it made me sit up hearing you like that. Y.O. said my freckles came out like a rash because I got almost pale under them. I wish I’d seen myself. Then we made the astonishing discovery that none of the other chaps had seen the parrot, in fact they say it is a cock-and-bull story, but we are sitting tight because of the phyc-thingummy. Young O. says that whatever it is he has to be in it too, because most probably it was owing to his peculiar Indian ghostiness that we saw it at all. I don’t quite agree, but anyhow that’s what he says, and he’d better be in. Please write by return of post if you can explain this phenomenon. We hope you aren’t dead.

“Yours affec.,

“DICK.”

 

Mollie read this letter through twice, then laid it down and ate her egg and toast without thinking much of what she was doing. She felt rather startled again; things were certainly queerish. Either her vivid dream had penetrated to Dick’s brain—and such experiences were not altogether unknown between the twins—or else—or else Prudence really had come yesterday, and there was something in that story of the Time-travellers. So the experiment had worked too. She remembered the brilliant parrot.

She could not make up her mind how much of her story she might tell to Dick. Her vow had only applied to grown-ups, and since the Campbells had helped her to wish Dick over, presumably they would allow her to take him into her confidence. But would he believe such an unlikely story—and what about Young Outram? They had not bargained for two boys. She decided to wait and see if Prudence came again, and, in the meantime, to write and tell Dick that she was alive and well, and that some explanation of his most extraordinary vision would certainly be forthcoming sooner or later.

The morning passed much more quickly than the previous morning had done. Mollie and Grannie worked hard at the jig-saw puzzle, and, without breaking her word by the smallest fraction, Mollie contrived to get a considerable amount of information about Australia from Grannie. Not, of course, that she was totally ignorant on the subject of our Australian colonies, but her knowledge was vague, and her interest before this time had been so faint that it was hardly worth mentioning. Grannie, on the other hand, had had a brother and many friends in Australia, and had, at one time or another, corresponded with a number of people there. She was able to tell Mollie several thrilling tales of bush fires, of the gold-fields, and of Ned Kelly, the great bushranger. But in none of her stories did the name of the Campbells appear.

After lunch Mollie was again tucked up on her sofa and told to take a little nap. Grannie was somewhat amused to be asked for the photograph-album again. “Bairns have queer fancies,” she thought to herself, as she laid it on Mollie’s lap. “Don’t look too long, my lamb,” she said aloud. “Try and go to sleep. You were all the better yesterday. There is Aunt Mary playing the piano—dear me, it is long since I heard that tune!”

When Mollie was left alone she opened the album, lay back on her cushions, and stared hard at the picture of prim little Prudence.

“Now we shall see! Was it a dream, or will she come again? That is the question.”

But nothing happened. Prudence stared solemnly and stolidly back, looking almost too good for human nature’s daily food.

“But she wasn’t, I feel sure she wasn’t, even if it was all a dream. Oh—how disappointing! I did hope that parrot of Dick’s meant something, and I do so want to see those children again and know what happened next. Besides, it would be thrilling to be a Time-traveller—one could see all sorts of things.”

As she meditated over her disappointment Mollie turned the pages of the album, looking rather listlessly at the other children, and deciding that none was so attractive as Prudence, till she came to a group of three girls and a boy. She looked closer, then stretched out her hand for the reading-glass and looked again: “I do believe it is—yes, it is—Hugh and Prudence and Grizzel and Baby! How I wish they would come alive!”

Even as she said the last word she saw a smile dawn upon Prue’s face. She did not drop the album this time but held tightly on to it, closed her eyes, and counted twenty. When she opened them there stood Prue, looking as good and sweet as ever.

“Oh, I am glad to see you!” Mollie exclaimed, sitting up and holding out her hands. “I thought it was all a dream, and that you were not coming. You will take me with you again, won’t you? I did love yesterday.”

Prudence smiled and took Mollie’s hands in her own. “We need not waste time talking to-day,” she said. “Listen to the music.”

Mollie shut her eyes and listened to Aunt Mary, who just then began to sing—Mollie could hear the words quite plainly:

“Oft in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain hath bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me.”

They were standing on a rough deeply rutted cart-track high up on a hill-side. Behind them the hill rose steeply, so thickly wooded that Mollie could not see plainly to the top. Before her it fell in a gentle slope to a narrow valley, through which ran a shallow creek with green banks on either side. Straight before her, halfway up the opposite hill, she saw a white cottage covered with a scarlet flowering creeper. It had casement windows all wide open, and a trellised porch. The garden of the cottage reached to the foot of the hill, and for three-quarters of its length was filled with rows of vines, looking like green lines ruled on a brown slate.

On one side of the little vineyard Mollie could see a path winding up the hill, twisting in and out between vines and overhanging trees till it lost itself in a flower-garden, which made such a splash of rosy pink and flaming scarlet that Mollie thought it might have been spilt out of a sunset.

By the roadside at her feet sat Grizzel, red curls still bobbing round her head, and apparently the very same blue overall still clothing her slim little body. She was moulding a lump of wet clay, shaping it into a bowl, pinching here, smoothing there, patting and pressing with both little grubby hands. On a strip of grass before her stood a long row of golden balls, glittering in the sunshine as if they had newly left a jeweller’s shop.

Prudence stood beside Mollie, rolling a clay ball round and round in her hands; and Mollie discovered presently that she herself was also rolling a lump of sticky stiff mud into some sort of shape, she was not sure what, but it seemed very important that it should be exactly right.

As she watched the other two children, she saw Grizzel rise to her feet and run a few steps along the road to where, on the upper slope, a wedge had been sliced out of the hill, leaving a three-cornered open space which glittered curiously. This apparently was where the golden balls came from, for Grizzel stooped down, and lifting a handful of shining sand let it filter evenly through her fingers over her bowl. She then set the bowl on the ground, and lightly rubbed the gold sand into its surface. She repeated this process three times, then straightened herself, rubbed her gritty hands on her overall, shook the curls out of her eyes, and said:

“It’s quite a nice bowl. If only we could make them hold water, Prue, it would do beautifully for Mamma’s Russian violets.”

As Grizzel spoke Mollie suddenly realized that she knew where she was. They were in “the hills”, across the way was their summer cottage, and those blue-green trees were gum trees. She remembered the long road she had seen from the Look-out, and how she had longed to follow it and see what lay behind those hills.

She carried her ball along to the wedge in the hill-side and rolled it in the golden sand, rubbing it and sprinkling it as she had seen Grizzel do, and soon it took on a splendid yellow shine.

“It looks very nice, Mollie,” said Grizzel. “I like the way you’ve shaped it like an orange. I wonder if I could make a bunch of cherries—I think I will try tomorrow. Put it here beside mine; it is the hottest place.”

Mollie stopped and put her ball—which she now saw she had shaped like an orange—beside Grizzel’s on the sunny patch of grass. Then she stood up and looked round her again.

“Where is Hugh?” she asked, “and Baby, and your father and mother?”

“I think that is Hugh prowling among the roses over the way,” Prudence answered, shading her eyes with one hand, and looking across the valley at the garden. “What is he doing, I wonder—he seems to have lost something! Baby is with Bridget. Papa and Mamma haven’t come up yet. Miss Hilton is supposed to be taking care of us, but she is rather a goose.”

“All the better for us,” said Grizzel. “If she were strict and fussy we wouldn’t have nearly such a nice time as we do. You have only to say snake to Miss Hilton and she is ready to faint; it is useful sometimes.”

“Why should you say snake?” asked Mollie, feeling rather relieved to hear that the elders of the family were away.

“Because there are snakes about, and she is terrified of