There was a rustling from the corner of the garden behind the summer house. A rustling which was shortly followed by a grunting and a loud clatter as someone climbed over the wall and dropped to the ground inside the garden. Mary and Colin froze. It was late afternoon, an hour before dusk, and they were sitting contentedly beside the fire in the summer house after a morning of snowballing and then sliding in the snow.
‘Sssh!’ Colin whispered, ‘It’s Crichton and Prosser. They’re looking for us! If we keep very still and quiet perhaps they won’t find us.’ Then his tone suddenly changed. ‘Oh, but wait a minute, all our footprints in the snow. They’ll give us away any moment.’ He looked to his cousin. ‘What shall we do, Mary?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not them, I know it’s not. They wouldn’t climb over the wall, they’d just get someone to break through the door. It might be someone looking for us but I don’t think they’re from the house. I think it might be –’ but even before she was able to finish her sentence with the word Dickon, the door of the summer house creaked open, and Dickon’s rosy-cheeked face looked around it.
‘I knew it!’ he said with a grin. ‘I knew you’d be here. You’ve made this place good and snug.’ He looked round the little summer house approvingly. ‘I smelled the smoke from yon fire, that’s how I knew where to find you. And when I saw your footprints … looks like there’s been a herd of wild animals rampaging round the garden!’
‘Sit down, Dickon,’ said Mary, acting the part of a hostess, feeling every inch the grown-up young lady inviting visitors into her drawing room. ‘Can I offer you a cup of hot water to warm yourself?’
‘You can do better than that. I brought provisions. I went up to the Manor to enquire after you and I saw Cook. She said she didn’t think you’d gone to London after all, judging by the noises she’d heard from the garden when she opened the kitchen door this morning!’
Mary’s face fell. They had been having so much fun throwing snowballs, she hadn’t thought to be quiet.
‘She’ll not say anything. All the staff are just waiting for the master to come home. She said that if I found you, I was to give you this.’ He opened the grey, canvas bag that he carried, and out came supplies. A meat pie, still warm from the oven, some bread and slices of ham, a bottle of milk, some of cook’s famous shortbread biscuits and a small packet of tea. Enough to keep them going for several days.
‘Thank you, Dickon!’ Colin’s eyes were huge at the sight of all the food. Back at home he would have turned up his nose at such plain cooking, but outside in the snow, suddenly meat pie and fresh bread seemed like manna from Heaven.
‘Do you know what’s happening? Are they looking for us?’ Mary asked, putting the kettle on the fire.
‘Eh, there’s been a right kerfuffle up at the Manor!’ Dickon sat on one of the benches. ‘That governess woman and her friend came to our place this morning asking after you. They seemed to think you’d run off to London to find your uncle.’
‘It worked!’ Mary said to Colin. Steam was coming out of the spout of the kettle.
‘She wanted to know if we’d helped you,’ Dickon said.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Mary said, hoping that Mrs. Sowerby hadn’t been too distressed by her unexpected visitors. She picked up the kettle and, in the absence of a tea pot, put the tea into the kettle itself.
‘Oh, don’t you worry. We didn’t give nothing away. They mainly spoke to Mother and she didn’t know owt. I knew you’d not gone to London or why would you have given me that letter to post?’
‘You did post it, didn’t you?’ She filled the one mug with tea, added some milk, and held it out to Dickon.
‘I didn’t,’ he said, taking the cup of tea. ‘But Bob Strong did. He’s sweet on our Martha, if you ask me, he’d do owt she wanted, and she wanted him to post that letter and he did it straight away yesterday afternoon. So, when your governess is asking about had we posted any letters for you it was easier to say no. We hadn’t, but Bob had!’ He took a drink of tea. ‘Eh, that warms you through, doesn’t it!’ he said.
‘In a day or two the letter will reach my uncle and he’ll know we need his help,’ said Mary, her eyes lighting up. ‘And in another day or two he’ll come back. That’s four days at the most.’
‘Sounds about right,’ Dickon agreed with her as he took another deep gulp of the hot tea.
‘All we have to do is stay hidden here until he returns,’ Mary said to Colin.
‘So Father will be home for Christmas after all!’ he replied.
Liz Taylorson 