CHAPTER XII

AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING FISHING

Since the strenuous life was found to be so strengthening to the princess, the Twins stayed in camp a week longer than had been in the beginning arranged. Thrown into such intimate relations with Miss Lambart, it was only natural that they should grow very friendly with her. It was therefore a bitter blow to Erebus to find that she was not only engaged to their Uncle Maurice but also about to be married to him in the course of the next few weeks. She grumbled about it to the Terror and did not hesitate to a.s.sert that his bad example in the matter of the princess had put the idea of love-making into these older heads. Then, in a heart to heart talk, she strove earnestly with Miss Lambart, making every effort to convince her that love and marriage were very silly things, quite unworthy of those who led the strenuous life. She failed. Then she tried to persuade Sir Maurice of that plain fact, and failed again. He declared that it was his first duty, as an uncle, to be married before his nephew, and that if he were not quick about it the Terror would certainly antic.i.p.ate him. Erebus carried his defense to the Terror with an air of bitter triumph; and there was a touch of disgusted misanthropy in her manner for several days. The princess on the other hand found the engagement the most natural and satisfactory thing in the world. Her only complaint was that she and the Terror were not old enough to be married on the same day as Miss Lambart.

Probably Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice enjoyed the life at the knoll even more than the children, for the felicity of lovers is the highest felicity, and the knoll is the ideal place for them. Sir Maurice arrived at it not so very much later, considering his urban habit, than sunrise; and he did not leave it till long after sunset. But the pleasantest days will come to an end; and the camp was broken up, since the archduke's tenancy of the Grange expired, and the princess must return to Germany. She was bitterly grieved at parting with the Terror, and a.s.sured him that she would certainly come to England the next summer, or even earlier, perhaps at Christmas, to see him again.

It seemed not unlikely that after her short but impressive a.s.sociation with the Twins she would have her way about it. Nevertheless, in spite of her exhaustive experience of the strenuous life, and of the firm ideals of those who led it, at their parting she cried in the most unaffected fashion.

Soon after her departure from the Grange the Twins learned that Sir James Morgan, its owner, had returned from Africa, where he had for years been hunting big game, and proposed to live at Muttle Deeping, at any rate for a while. It had always been their keen desire to fish the Grange water, for it had been carefully preserved and little fished all the years Sir James had been wandering about the world. But Mr.

Hilton, the steward of the Grange estate, had always refused their request. He believed that their presence would be good neither for the stream, the fish, nor the estate.

But now that they were no longer dealing with an underling whom they felt to be prejudiced, but with the owner himself, they thought that they might be able to compa.s.s their desire. Also they felt that the sooner they made the attempt to do so the better: Sir James might hear unfavorable accounts of them, if they gave him time to consort freely with his neighbors. Therefore, with the help of their literary mainstay, Wiggins, they composed a honeyed letter to him, asking leave to fish the Grange water. Sir James consulted Mr. Hilton about the letter, received an account of the Twins from him which made him loath indeed to give them leave; and since he had used a pen so little for so many years that it had become distasteful to him to use it at all, he left their honeyed missive unanswered.

The Twins waited patiently for an answer for several days. Then it was slowly borne in upon them that Sir James did not mean to answer their letter at all; and they grew very angry indeed. Their anger was in close proportion to the pains they had spent on the letter. The name of Sir James was added to the list of proscribed persons they carried in their retentive minds.

It did not seem likely that they would get any chance of punishing him for the affront he had put on them. Scorching, in his feverish, Central African way, along the road to Rowington in a very powerful motor-car, he looked well beyond their reach. But Fortune favors the industrious who watch their chances; and one evening Erebus came bicycling swiftly up to the cats' home, and cried:

"As I came over Long Ridge I saw Sir James Morgan poaching old Glazebrook's water!"

The Terror did not cease from carefully considering the kitten in his hands, for he was making a selection to send to Rowington market.

"Are you sure?" he said calmly. "It's a long way from the ridge to the stream."

"Not for my eyes!" said Erebus with some measure of impatience in her tone. "I'm quite sure that it was Sir James; and I'm quite sure that it was old Glazebrook's meadow. Lend me your handkerchief."

The handkerchief that the Terror lent her might have easily been of a less p.r.o.nounced gray; but Erebus mopped her beaded brow with it in a perfect content. She had ridden home as fast as she could ride with her interesting news.

"I wish I'd seen him too," said the Terror thoughtfully.

"It's quite enough for me to have seen him!" said Erebus with some heat.

"It would be better if we'd both seen him," said the Terror firmly.

"It's such beastly cheek his poaching himself after taking no notice of our letter!" said Erebus indignantly.

"Yes, it is," said the Terror.

She went on to set forth the enormity of the conduct of their neighbor at considerable length. The Terror said nothing; he did not look to be listening to her. In truth he was considering what advantage might be drawn from Sir James' transgression.

At last he said: "The first thing to do is for both of us to catch him poaching."

Erebus protested; but the Terror carried his point, with the result that two evenings later they were in the wood above the trout-stream, stretched at full length in the bracken, peering through the hedge of the wood at Sir James Morgan so patiently and vainly fishing the stream below.

"He'll soon be at the boundary fence," said the Terror in a hushed voice of quiet satisfaction.

"If only he goes on catching nothing on this side of it!" said Erebus who kept wriggling in a nervous impatience.

"It's on the other side of it they're rising," said the Terror in a calmly hopeful tone.

Sir James, unconscious of those eagerly gazing eyes, made vain cast after vain cast. He was a big game hunter; he had given but little time and pains to this milder sport; and he came to the fence at which his water ceased and that of Mr. Glazebrook began, with his basket still empty of trout. He looked longingly at his neighbor's water; as the Terror had said, the trout in it were rising freely. Then the watchers saw him shrug his shoulders and turn back.

"He's not going to poach, after all!" cried Erebus in a tone of acute disappointment.

"Look here: are you really quite sure you saw him poaching at all?

Long Ridge is a good way off," said the Terror looking across to it.

"I did. I tell you he was half-way down old Glazebrook's meadow," said Erebus firmly.

"It's very disappointing," said the Terror, frowning at the disobliging fisherman; then he added with philosophic calm: "Well, it can't be helped; we've got to go on watching him every evening till he does. If he's poached once, he'll poach again."

"Look!" said Erebus, gripping his arm.

Sir James had stopped fishing and was walking back to the boundary fence. He stood for a while beside the gap in it, hesitating, scanning the little valley down which the stream ran, with his keen hunter's eyes. It is to be feared that he had been too long used to the high-handed methods that prevail in the ends of the earth where big game dwell, to have a proper sense of the sanct.i.ty of his neighbor's fish. Moreover, Mr. Glazebrook was guilty of the practise of netting his water and sending the trout, alive in cans, to a London restaurant.

Sir James felt strongly that it was his duty as a sportsman to give them the chance of making a sportsmanlike end.

But Mr. Glazebrook was an uncommonly disagreeable man; and since Glazebrook farm marched with the western meadows of the Morgans, the Morgans and the Glazebrooks had been at loggerheads for at least fifty years. a.s.suredly the farmer would prosecute Sir James, if he caught him poaching.

Yet the valley and the meadows down the stream were empty of human beings; and as for the wood, there would be no one but his own keeper in the wood. Doubtless that keeper would, from the abstract point of view, regard poaching with abhorrence. But he would perceive that his master was doing a real kindness to the Glazebrook trout by giving them that chance of making a sportsman-like end. At any rate the keeper would hold his tongue.

Sir James climbed through the gap.

The Twins breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief; and Erebus said in a tone of triumph: "Well, he's gone and done it now."

"Yes, we've got him all right," said the Terror in a tone of calm thankfulness.

Fortune favored the unscrupulous; and in the next forty minutes Sir James caught three good fish.

He had just landed the third when the keen eyes of Erebus espied a figure coming up the bank of the stream two meadows away.

"Look! There's old Glazebrook! He'll catch him! Won't it be fun?"

she cried, wriggling in her joy.

The Terror gazed thoughtfully at the approaching figure; then he said: "Yes: it would be fun. There'd be no end of a row. But it wouldn't be any use to us. I'm going to warn him."

With that he sent a clear cry of "Cave!" ringing down the stream.

In ten seconds Sir James was back on his own land.

The Twins crawled through the bracken to a narrow path, went swiftly and noiselessly down it, and through a little gate on to the high road.

As he set foot on it the Terror said with cold vindictiveness: "We'll teach him not to answer our letters."

He climbed over a gate into a meadow on the other side of the road, took their bicycles one after the other from behind the hedge, and lifted them over the gate. They reached home in time for dinner.

During the meal Mrs. Dangerfield asked how they had been spending the time since tea; and the Terror said, quite truthfully, that they had been for a bicycle ride. She did not press him to be more particular in his account of their doings, though from Erebus' air of subdued excitement and expectancy she was aware that some important enterprise was in hand; she had no desire to put any strain on the Terror's uncommon power of polite evasion.

She was not at all surprised when, at nine o'clock, she went out into the garden and called to them that it was bedtime, to find that they were not within hearing. She told herself that she would be lucky if she got them to bed by ten. But she would have been surprised, indeed, had she seen them, half an hour earlier, slip out of the back door, in a condition of exemplary tidiness, dressed in their Sunday best.