"The ship is all right," he said slowly, "and so is the whip. At least it's not quite so big as the one I got last time, and it cost a penny more, but still it will do. Only--"

"Well, what's the matter?" interrupted Madge. "What have you got to grumble at now, I should like to know?"

She spoke sharply, for, with all her kindness, she could not bear to have the younger ones finding fault with anything she did. So long as they were duly grateful she would work hard to amuse them; but the moment they began to criticise her conduct in any way there was trouble.

"Do you think you could have chosen anything better yourself?" she said scornfully. "You had better try next time if you think it's so easy!"

"I didn't say the things were not nice things," observed John in his quiet obstinate way. "I never meant that. Only I can't understand how you spent our money. That's all."

"Why it's as simple as A B C!" broke out Madge. "Just listen, you little silly, and I'll tell you. I took five shillings and sevenpence, didn't I?"

"Of course you did! In the brown bag," answered Betty, although n.o.body had spoken to her.

John merely nodded his head to show that he was following the argument up to this point.

"And as the money belonged to us all we were all to share alike,"

proceeded Madge rapidly. "So I got a ship and a doll and a knife, each costing a shilling. And we had one apiece. That's three shillings.

Then the whip and the trumpet and the tea-pot cost sixpence each. That comes to four shillings and sixpence. And the packets of sugar-plums, and pipes for blowing soap-bubbles, come to tenpence. That makes five shillings and four-pence. And--and--"

"And that's all!" interrupted John. "But you took five shillings and sevenpence in the brown bag, you know. I remember counting it; didn't we, Betty?"

"Oh, I'm well aware of that!" cried Madge impatiently. "If you will only just keep quiet I can make it right in a moment. I must have added up wrongly while you were chattering." And spreading all the purchases out on the table she tried to count them more carefully over again, repeating their prices as she did so. But it was no use. Try as she might her accounts would not come perfectly right. There was threepence missing, and Madge could not account for it at all.

"It must have slipped out of the bag and be lying in a corner of that cellar," said Betty with considerable reason. "Threepence is such a very tiny bit of money you would never see it in the dark, or even by the light of one candle."

"Perhaps not. I suppose that is what has happened," admitted poor Madge. She was ready to cry with mortification at having had the worst of the argument with John, in spite of his being two years younger than herself and very much her inferior in arithmetic. Besides, she knew that if she had, as seemed most probable, left a threepenny piece on the cellar floor, it was all owing to that annoying fit of nervousness that had suddenly come over her in the dark. At the time that she picked up the money she was still suffering from the fright caused by the sudden appearance of the kitten, and no doubt had been too much upset to notice very carefully what she was doing. But she did not like to explain all this to the twins, who were in the habit of looking upon her as the living embodiment of courage. So she merely laid the blame on the dim light of the cellar.

The consequence of this was, that when John next found himself alone with Betty he began to grumble.

"It's all very well for Madge to say she didn't see the threepenny bit," he said, "but I think she ought to have stayed there looking until she did see it. She can see things very well when she tries. I don't believe she took any trouble about it, because it belonged to us."

"But part of it belonged to her," objected Betty.

"Only one part," said John persistently, "and two parts belonged to us.

So of course it was more ours than hers, and that's why she didn't trouble to look for it."

"Do you think so really?" said Betty in an irresolute tone. She had great faith in Madge always acting for the best, but these new arguments were rather disturbing.

"I'll tell you what it is," continued John. "Madge thinks herself a much grander person than we are, because she is a little older. And it isn't fair. Lewis said he wouldn't be ordered about by her if he were in my place, and I won't either. After all, she is only a girl!"

After this remark the conversation became rather quarrelsome. Betty objected to the expression, "only a girl", and retorted by some very rude remarks about boys in general and her brother in particular. She reminded him with unpleasant emphasis of how slow he was at climbing trees compared with Madge, and she dwelt with more truth than politeness on the fact that he had once grown giddy on the roof of the cow-house, and had to be ignominiously helped down by his sisters. But in the long run John's solid persistency got the best of it, and in spite of Betty's wish to believe that Madge always acted for the best, she was gradually talked over into thinking that there was some real grievance in her elder sister always taking the lead.

Whenever Lewis Brand had an opportunity of talking to the twins by themselves he mischievously encouraged this idea, so that disagreements among the children became a matter of everyday occurrence.

CHAPTER XIX.

AN INTERESTING DITCH.

If a stranger had happened to meet Madge, Betty, and John one fine Sat.u.r.day afternoon a few weeks later in the summer, he would probably have imagined that they were hurrying to the sea-side. It was certainly an odd way to get there, across the fields and through a grove of beech-trees; but where else could they be going, each carrying a boat?

They pa.s.sed by the Eagle's Nest for once without even glancing up at it, and walking a little farther along the field stopped by a deep ditch. Now, even during the hottest summer weather this delightful ditch seldom became completely dry. A tiny stream generally contrived to trickle along the bottom, pushing its way in and out among the dead leaves and sticks that the wind blew into its course. During the winter months the ditch sometimes got blocked with this sort of rubbish, and then the water being kept back very rapidly rose and flooded over the field. However, old Barton was always on the look-out for accidents, and on extra wet days generally marched out with a sack over his shoulders to keep them comparatively dry, and cleared away the drifts of dead leaves with his spade so that the stream should flow freely. Of course, the children would have loved to accompany him on these expeditions, but they always took place on such wet days that the thing was not to be thought of seriously.

But though the children were never allowed to help in moderating a regular winter flood, they valued the ditch highly as a place where they could always collect enough water to sail their boats in a thoroughly satisfactory manner. They had done it so often that they did not take very long time in setting to work. Betty and John going down on their knees began to build the mud and dead leaves at the bottom of the ditch into a great barrier across the narrowest part, while Madge with a stick cleared the course of the stream from all obstructions above. It was the way in which they made tiny ponds in the cracks of the big stones under the laburnum-tree, only of course this was hundreds of times larger.

The water soon began to rise. It is most surprising what a lot of water even a tiny stream contains if one can once prevent it from all running away! When the ditch was about half-full, the children launched their boats and made them go imaginary voyages from port to port, carrying merchandise.

"I will be London," said Madge, "and Betty can be Cardiff, and--"

"I can choose for myself without your help!" interrupted John peevishly. "I'll be Birmingham."

"Oh, you choose very cleverly for yourself!" jeered Madge. "I wonder how you can think of such difficult places!"

"You think n.o.body can be clever except yourself, but you are finely mistaken," rejoined John seriously; and he could not imagine why both his sisters burst out laughing. "There isn't much joke that I can see in that," he said.

"The joke is about Birmingham, you know," explained Betty. "It isn't a port."

"Then it ought to be," said John decidedly.

"Perhaps you had better write to the Queen and suggest that it should be made into one," remarked Madge. But then, seeing that her brother looked vexed at his mistake, she continued cheerfully: "I have thought of a new and much better plan. We will not have real towns, but we will call them after our own names--Madgebury, Bettybury, and Johnbury!"

This idea gave very general satisfaction, and the game proceeded most peacefully for some time. A vessel laden with acorns started from Madgebury and went to Johnbury, crossing on the way another ship full of horse-chestnuts. From Bettybury a small wooden doll set out on a voyage of discovery into unknown regions, the owners carefully superintending the course of their vessels and guiding them by long strings. Once the strings got entangled and there was a terrific shipwreck in Johnbury harbour, most of the cargo, consisting of marbles, being lost in the mud at the bottom. After this collision it was discovered that the sails of two of the vessels were injured, so the ship-owners decided to retire for a short time to Eagle's Nest and work at some necessary repairs.

It was a warm afternoon, and the shade of the great spreading beech-tree was particularly pleasant after an hour spent in the glaring sun by the ditch. The children sat about in idle lounging att.i.tudes, mending their boats and talking in a leisurely fashion.

"I wish I hadn't lost all those marbles," remarked John mournfully. "I only found four, and I believe there were quite eight in the ship, only the mud was so soft they sank out of sight at once. I squeezed it all over with my hands to try and find them, but I couldn't."

"I should think you will lose those four as well, if you try and carry them in your pocket," said Madge. "Don't you remember what a big hole you have in it, and how your knife dropped on the schoolroom floor this morning when you were saying your lessons?"

"But I must put them somewhere," answered John peevishly. "I can't leave them behind, and I can't carry them in my hand when I am mending my ship."

"I've got a capital idea!" broke in Betty. "We will have a treasure-house in the Eagle's Nest, and we can safely hide away the things we don't want there. And I see just the place that will do!"

With an excited cry she scrambled up to a hole in the tree a few feet above the platform of sticks on which they sat. "Isn't this the very place?" she shouted.

"The very place! The very place!" echoed John; and immediately the three children began to empty out their pockets and decide what they would leave in the Eagle's Nest storehouse. John's marbles and various small articles belonging to the girls, such as pencils, both slate and lead, a broken knife, and a doll's boot, were carefully stored away packed in dock leaves.

"We can leave them there all right," said Madge. "Even if it rains they can't get wet in this beautiful hole. It's a regular out-of-door cupboard, and I shall keep lots of my things here now that we have found it."

This plan was so incomparably more interesting than putting one's possessions back tamely in the schoolroom or nursery, that the hole was soon filled with oddly-shaped parcels tied up in leaves and twists of gra.s.s.

"That's done!" exclaimed Madge at last with a sigh of satisfaction, as she covered the opening to the hole with an enormous bunch of elder flowers, which she fondly hoped looked so natural that no pa.s.sing enemy would suspect they concealed a treasure-house. "Now shall we go back and sail our boats or--Oh, look!" her voice rose to a shriek. And well it might.

Quite taken up with their present occupation, the children had entirely forgotten the fact that they had left the ditch blocked, so that the stream could not flow away as usual. The water had been rising for the last hour or more, and all one end of the field was rapidly turning into a swamp. Rivulets of water were finding their way in and out among the rank tufts of long gra.s.s, and at this rate Eagle's Nest itself would be surrounded by the evening.

It was a moment of most intense excitement. There were hurried consultations among the children, and even a daring suggestion that the flood should be allowed to rise until they were left upon an impregnable island. But a certain longing for tea, combined with a wholesome dread of Barton, prevented this alarmingly bold scheme from being carried out.

"If we had only known what was going to happen and brought provisions with us, what fun it would have been to stay here all night!" cried Madge, who dearly loved an adventure. "I think if I had brought the piece of bread that they put by the side of my plate at dinner, and that I never eat, it would have been enough to keep me alive all night."