“Our baby?” laughed his mother. “Whose baby is he, I should like to know? The twins were in at lunch-time, and they seemed to think he was theirs. And your father calls him his. And you call him yours. And he’s his mother’s own baby all the time. Well, and how was it last night? Very cold? Very uncomfortable? You look all right….”
“It just couldn’t have been better,” said Tom. “It wasn’t cold a bit in that sleeping-bag. And it wasn’t uncomfortable really except for one bone.” He gave a bit of a rub to his right hip bone which still felt rather bruised. “Anyway,” he said, “nobody expects floor-boards to be like spring mattresses. And there was a snipe bleating long after dark. The awning works splendidly. Any chance of seeing Dad? I’d like to tell him how well it worked. That dodge he thought of for lacing it down was just what was wanted.”
“He’s awfully busy. Half a dozen still waiting.”
“I saw some of the victims hanging about as I came upstairs.”
“You really must stop calling them that,” said his mother. “And he may have to run into Norwich about some man with a stomach-ache who thinks appendicitis would sound better. Don’t you go and be a doctor when you grow up.”
“I’m going to be a bird watcher,” said Tom. “I say, Mother, our baby’s going to be a sailor. Look at him. He simply loves the smell of tar.”
“Don’t let him suck that dirty finger,” said his mother.
“It’s all right to let him smell it, isn’t it?” said Tom, who was holding his hand close to the baby’s face, while the baby, opening his mouth and laughing, was trying to put a tarry finger in.
“Don’t let him get it in his mouth. Go on. You haven’t told me anything yet. Where did you sleep?”
“In Wroxham Hall dyke.”
“And you went to Norwich this morning?”
TOM CAME SAILING HOME
“I got rope and paint and hinges and blocks, and there’s about half a crown left, and they gave me the screws for nothing.”
“River pretty crowded coming down? Hardly yet, I suppose, though the visitors do seem to begin coming earlier every year.”
“Not an awful lot,” said Tom. “There was one beast of a motor-cruiser made me slosh the bacon fat all over the place when I was cooking my dinner.”
“There was one yesterday,” said his mother, “going up late in the evening, upset half Miss Millett’s china in her little houseboat. She was talking of seeing the Bure Commissioners about it.”
“Probably the same beasts coming down again,” said Tom. “Most of them are pretty decent nowadays, but these beasts swooshed by with a stern wave as if they wanted to wash the banks down. I’ve got to get some hot water and clean those bottom-boards at once before the twins come.”
“Coot Club meeting?” asked his mother. “Like a jug of tea in the shed?”
“Very much,” said Tom. “That’ll save boiling two lots of water. It’ll take a good deal to get that grease off. Hullo! There they are! All in a bunch, too. There’s Flash.” He had caught a glimpse of the white sails of the racing boats coming up the river.
Tom’s mother held the new baby up at the nursery window to see the white sails go by. She and Tom stood listening at the window after the sails had disappeared. Higher up the river they heard two sharp reports, “Bang! Bang!” almost at the same moment.
“Pretty close finish, anyhow,” said Tom. “I’ll dash down now, if you don’t mind. They’ll be along in a minute or two, and there’s that water to boil, and I want to get the hinges on one of the locker doors just to show what they’ll be like.”
“Important meeting?” asked his mother.
“Very,” said Tom. “It’s to plan what we’re going to do with the last two weeks of the holidays.”
He took the first short flight of stairs at a jump, but remembering the victims in the doctor’s waiting-room, took the next more soberly, and then, after a word in the kitchen about that promised jug of tea, hurried round by the garden to make ready for the gathering of the Coots.
The twins had never yet seen the Titmouse with her awning up, for the awning had only yesterday been given its finishing touches by old Jonas the sailmaker, and Tom had sailed away above Wroxham Bridge for the night, partly because he had laughed so often at the struggles of visitors with the awnings of the hired yachts that he did not want even the twins to be present when he was experimenting for the first time with his own. Now, of course, he was bursting to show it them. He was sure that once they saw how well it worked they would manage something of the sort for their own rowing boat. Then anything would be possible, and they could spend the last weeks of the holidays in going for a real voyage. But it was no good having the awning up with the bottom-boards still so greasy that if the twins were to sit on them there would only be trouble with Mrs. McGinty later on. And if they were to see just how good those lockers were, he must manage to fix a door on at least one of them.
He began by unloading the Titmouse, bringing rope and blocks and paint and screws and hinges into the shed. Then he brought in the little oil-stove that he had got from a boy at school in exchange for a pair of rabbits that were really not well fitted for voyaging in a small boat. He filled a kettle at a tap in the back kitchen, brought it round to the shed and put it on the oil-stove to boil. Then he took one of the locker doors, lying unfinished on the bench, and set to work chiselling out beds for a pair of hinges and making the holes for the screws, listening as he worked for the voices of the twins coming down the river.
Presently he heard them. Well, he had known he could not get much done before they came. One door, and that not fixed.
“Now then. Hop out, you two, and give her a push off. I’ll put her to bed.” That was Uncle Frank (Mr. Farland), who must for a moment have brought the Flash alongside the foot of the doctor’s lawn.
“All right now?”
“All right.”
“Push her off then. And don’t be late for supper. Mrs. McGinty’ll be asking what I’ve done with you as it is.”
“Eh, mon, dinna tell me ye’ve droon’t the puir wee bairrns.” That was Port’s voice, talking Ginty language.
“Tell her we won’t be late. Macaroni cheese tonight. Specially for you, A.P.” That was Starboard talking to her Aged Parent.
“Tell her the bairrns’ll be hame in a bittock.” That was Port again.
“I’ll tell her to lock you both out,” laughed Mr. Farland.
Tom heard the running footsteps of the twins, and, in another moment the two of them were at the door of the shed.
“Hullo, Tom!”
“Hullo! Who won?”
“We were second,” said Starboard, “but it wasn’t Daddy’s fault. We had to go about and give them room just as we were getting level.”
“What about No. 7? Hatched yet?”
“Still sitting. At least I think so. She was when we went down. Coming up we were in the thick of things just there and we’d passed her before I could see.”
No. 7 was for two reasons the nest that mattered most of all those that the Coot Club had under its care. It belonged to a pair of coots, one of which was distinguished from all other coots by having a white feather on its wing in such a place that it could be seen from right across