said the Terror quickly. "And they're the very thing for Mum. Bananas are all very well in their way; but they're not like real fruit."

"Of course; Mum _must_ have them," said Erebus with decision. "But how are we going to get into the peach-garden? The door in the wall only opens on the inside."

"We're not. I've worked it out. Now you just hurry up and get some big leaves to put the peaches in. Mum will like them ever so much better with the bloom on, though it doesn't really make any difference to the taste."

Erebus ran into the kitchen-garden and gathered big soft leaves of different kinds. When she came back she found the Terror tying the landing-net they had borrowed from the vicar for their trout-fishing, to the backbone of his bicycle. She put the leaves into her bicycle basket, and they rode briskly to Muttle Deeping.

The Twins knew all the approaches to Muttle Deeping Grange well since they had spent several days in careful scouting before they had made their raid earlier in the summer on its strawberry beds. A screen of trees runs down from the home wood along the walls of the gardens; and the Twins, after coming from the road in the shelter of the home wood, came down the wall behind that screen of trees.

About the middle of the peach-garden the Terror climbed on to a low bough, raised his head with slow caution above the wall, and surveyed the garden. It was empty and silent, save for a curious snoring sound that disquieted him little, since he ascribed it to some distant pig.

He stepped on to a higher branch, leaned over the wall, and surveyed the golden burden of the tree beneath him. The ready Erebus handed the landing-net up to him. He chose his peach, the ripest he could see; slipped the net under it, flicked it, lifted the peach in it over the wall, and lowered it down to Erebus, who made haste to roll it in a leaf and lay it gently in her bicycle basket. The Terror netted another and another and another.

The garden was not as empty as he believed. On a garden chair in the little lawn in the middle of it sat the Princess Elizabeth hidden from him by the thick wall of a pear tree, and in a chair beside her, sat, or rather sprawled, her guardian, the Baroness Frederica Von Aschersleben, who was following faithfully the doctor's instructions that her little charge should spend her time in the open air, but was doing her best to bring it about that the practise should do her as little good as possible by choosing the sultriest and most airless spot on the estate because it was so admirably adapted to her own comfortable sleeping.

The baroness added nothing to the old-world charm of the garden. Her eyes were shut, her mouth was open, her face was most painfully crimson, and from her short, but extremely tip-tilted nose, came the sound of snoring which the Terror had ascribed to some distant pig.

The princess was warmly--very warmly--dressed for the sweltering afternoon and sweltering spot; little beads of sweat stood on her brow; the story-book she had been trying to read lay face downward in her lap; and she was looking round the simmering garden with a look of intolerable discomfort and boredom on her pretty pale face.

Then a moving object came into the range of her vision, just beyond the end-of the wall of pear tree--a moving object against the garden wall.

She could not see clearly what it was; but it seemed to her that a peach rose and vanished over the top of the wall. She stared at the part of the wall whence it had risen; and in a few seconds another peach seemed to rise and disappear.

This curious behavior of English peaches so roused her curiosity that, in spite of the heat, she rose and walked quietly to the end of the wall of pear-tree. As she came beyond it, she saw, leaning over the wall, a fair-haired boy. Even as she saw him something rose and vanished over the wall far too swiftly for her to see that it was a landing-net.

Surprise did not rob the Terror of his politeness; he smiled amicably, raised his cap and said in his most agreeable tone: "How do you do?"

He did not know how much the princess had seen, and he was not going to make admission of guilt by a hasty and perhaps needless flight, provoke pursuit and risk his peaches.

"How do you do?" said the princess a little haughtily, hesitating.

"What are you doing up there?"

"I'm looking at the garden," said the Terror truthfully, but not quite accurately; for he was looking much more at the princess.

She gazed at him; her brow knitted in a little perplexed frown. She thought that he had been taking the peaches; but she was not sure; and his serene guileless face and limpid blue eyes gave the suspicion the lie. She thought that he looked a nice boy.

He gazed at her with growing interest and approval--as much approval as one could give to a girl. The Princess Elizabeth had beautiful gray eyes; and though her pale cheeks were a little hollow, and the line from the cheek-bone to the corner of the chin was so straight that it made her face almost triangular, it was a pretty face. She looked fragile; and he felt sorry for her.

"This garden's very hot," he said. "It's like holding one's face over an oven."

"Oh, it is," said the princess, with impatient weariness.

"Yet there's quite a decent little breeze blowing over the top of the walls," said the Terror.

The princess sighed, and they gazed at each other with curious examining eyes. Certainly he looked a nice boy.

"I tell you what: come out into the wood. I know an awfully cool place. You'd find it very refreshing," said the Terror in the tone of one who has of a sudden been happily inspired.

The princess looked back along the wall of pear tree irresolutely at the sleeping baroness. The sight of that richly crimson face made the garden feel hotter than ever.

"Do come. My sister's here, and it will be very jolly in the wood--the three of us," said the Terror in his most persuasive tone.

The princess hesitated, and again she looked back at the sleeping but unbeautiful baroness; then she said with a truly German frankness:

"Are you well-born?"

The Terror smiled a little haughtily in his turn and said slowly: "Well, from what Mrs. Blenkinsop said, the Dangerfields were barons in the Weald before they were any Hohenzollerns. And they did very well at Crecy and Agincourt, too," he added pensively.

The princess seemed rea.s.sured; but she still hesitated.

"Suppose the baroness were to wake?" she said.

A light of understanding brightened the Terror's face: "Oh, is that the baroness snoring? I thought it was a pig," he said frankly. "She won't wake for another hour. n.o.body snoring like that could."

The a.s.surance seemed to disperse the last doubts of the princess. She cast one more look back at her crimson Argus, and said: "Very goot; I will coom."

She walked to the door lower down the garden wall. When she came through it, she found the Twins wheeling their bicycles toward it. The Terror, in a very dignified fashion, introduced Erebus to her as Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, and himself as Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield. He gave their full and so little-used names because he felt that, in the case of a princess, etiquette demanded it. Then they moved along the screen of trees, up the side of the garden wall toward the wood.

The Twins shortened their strides to suit the pace of the princess, which was uncommonly slow. She kept looking from one to the other with curious, rather timid, pleased eyes. She saw the landing-net that Erebus had fastened to the backbone of the Terror's bicycle; but she saw no connection between it and the vanishing peaches.

They pa.s.sed straight from the screen of trees through a gap into the home wood, a gap of a size to let them carry their bicycles through without difficulty, took a narrow, little used path into the depths of the wood, and moved down it in single file.

"I expect you never found this path," said the Terror to the princess who was following closely on the back wheel of his bicycle.

"No, I haf not found it. I haf never been in this wood till now," said the princess.

"You haven't been in this wood! But it's the home wood--the jolliest part of the estate," cried the Terror in the liveliest surprise. "And there are two paths straight into it from the gardens."

"But I stay always in the gardens," said the princess sedately. "The Baroness Von Aschersleben does not walk mooch; and she will not that I go out of sight of her."

"But you must get awfully slack, sticking in the gardens all the time,"

said Erebus.

"Slack? What is slack?" said the princess.

"She means feeble," said the Terror. "But all the same those gardens are big enough; there's plenty of room to run about in them."

"But I do not run. It is not dignified. The Baroness Von Aschersleben would be shocked," said the princess with a somewhat prim air.

"No wonder you're delicate," said Erebus, politely trying to keep a touch of contempt out of her tone, and failing.

"One can not help being delicate," said the princess.

"I don't know," said the Terror doubtfully. "If you're in the open air a lot and do run about, you don't _keep_ delicate. Wiggins used to be delicate, but he isn't now."

"Who is Wiggins?" said the princess.

"He's a friend of ours--not so old as we are--quite a little boy," said Erebus in a patronizing tone which Wiggins, had he been present, would have resented with extreme bitterness. "Besides, Doctor Arbuthnot told Mrs. Blenkinsop that if you were always in the open air, playing with children of your own age, you'd soon get strong."

"That's what I've come to England for," said the princess.