The man looked up. ‘Hallo, ducks!’ he said. ‘When we’ve finished they’ll join so neat as you won’t know where one begins and the other ends! Makes you think, don’t it?’
John agreed that it did.
‘If you ask me, the cats have moved in already,’ the man went on. ‘I’ve never seen so many. All over the place, they are!’
Even as he spoke, a great black animal with white paws padded silently across the half-built wall, gave them a searching look and disappeared the way it had come.
The man frowned. ‘And it’s a funny thing,’ he went on, ‘but there’s a rubbish dump here already, even before anyone’s moved in. Beats me where it comes from. There’s even an old rocking chair.’ He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder.
‘Hey, Charlie!’ shouted a voice.
‘Okay, I’m coming,’ replied the man. ‘So long!’ he said. He winked cheerfully at Rosemary and went off whistling.
John and Rosemary turned and wandered off in the direction he had pointed out to them with his thumb. In a field, beyond a cement mixer, was a pile of old tins and some worn-out shoes, and beside it stood a rocking chair.
‘I wonder who put it there?’ said Rosemary. ‘It doesn’t look broken to me.’
‘Oh, never mind,’ said John impatiently. ‘We haven’t come all this way to examine old rubbish heaps! I’m hungry. I vote we go on down the lane and have our tea as soon as we find a good place. We can go on to Turley’s afterwards and get some milk.’
So they turned down the lane leading to Figg’s Bottom, but as it happened they never reached Turley’s Farm. They walked on in a leisurely way. With nothing but the winding road ahead and fields on either side, it was easy to forget the building behind them. They stopped to listen to two sparrows gossiping on the hedge. A snail was making rude remarks to a blackbird from the safety of an overhanging stone. Once a rabbit popped its head through the bars of a stile.
‘Humans!’ it said in disgust, and popped back again. John stood on the stile to call to it, but said instead, ‘I’m sure I can hear a stream. Let’s go and find it.’ So they crossed the stile and followed a path through the meadow on the other side.
They found the stream without much difficulty. Its clear, cider-coloured water rippled gently over a pebbly bed. They took off their shoes and splashed about happily. Rosemary picked a bunch of water forget-me-nots and wild peppermint. They tried to dam a tiny tributary, and let the piled-up water join the main stream again with a whoosh!
It was not till some time later, with toes and fingers very pink and crinkly, that they sat down in the middle of a little plank bridge. With their legs dangling, they ate tomato sandwiches and homemade rock cakes. They were facing upstream, and when they had nearly finished, John said suddenly, ‘Someone must be sailing toy boats higher up! Look, there’s a big one just coming around the corner.’
There certainly was a black thing, which looked like a toy boat, drifting toward them.
‘Let’s catch it when it gets to the bridge!’ said Rosemary.
They lowered themselves down into the stream in readiness. But it was not a boat. It was a shoe, a very large one with a brass buckle that needed sewing on again. They caught it as it drifted under the bridge.
‘Let’s wade upstream and see if we can find the owner. Whoever owns it must have enormous feet!’ said John.
They lifted the dripping shoe out of the water and started to wade upstream.
8
The Rocking Chair
They splashed their way along very pleasantly for some distance, until, coming out of a green tunnel made by the overhanging branches of willow and hazel, they were startled to find themselves in the sunshine again, and almost on top of the owner of the shoe.
‘Mrs Cantrip!’ said John and Rosemary together. For that is who it was. She was sitting on a rock with the remaining shoe beside her and with her large feet dangling in the water. Beside her, a little higher up the bank, was a small, neat, plump person. She had round cheeks, she wore a round felt hat and a neat tweed suit, and she sat very upright, with a bunch of what looked like green leaves in her lap.
‘It’s you, is it?’ said Mrs Cantrip sourly.
‘We rescued your shoe for you,’ said John politely, holding it out to her. ‘It was floating downstream.’
‘Interfering again!’ said the old woman. ‘It was floating lovely!’
‘But we thought whoever it belonged to would want it,’ said John in surprise.
‘And we didn’t even know it was yours,’ added Rosemary. ‘You couldn’t get home without it.’
‘That’s all you know. There’s more ways of getting about than walking,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘Besides, I know where there’s another lovely pair of shoes for the taking, and no questions asked.’
The little person leaned forward and said eagerly, ‘If you mean the ones on the rubbish heap where we left the –’ She broke off suddenly and clapped her hand over her mouth.
At the same time, Mrs Cantrip deliberately threw her other shoe into the stream with a loud splash. ‘You can fish that out, as you’re so fond of finding things,’ she said rudely.
Red with annoyance, John splashed over and pulled out the second shoe.
‘I think you are very ungrateful!’ said Rosemary hotly.
‘It was entirely my fault, dears!’ said the round-about person. ‘I’m sure Katie is very grateful, really. Such a character! She was trying to stop me saying something when she threw her shoe into the stream. My foolish tongue, you know.’ Then, turning to Mrs Cantrip, ‘Such nicely spoken children. Do introduce me, please, Katie dear!’
Mrs Cantrip sniffed.
‘Boy nuisance!’ she said, nodding toward John. ‘And girl nuisance!’
Rosemary turned her back on Mrs Cantrip and said, ‘I’m Rosemary, this is my friend John, and we aren’t a nuisance, at least not on purpose.’
‘And my name is Dibdin,’ said the little person, ‘Miss Dorothy Dibdin.’
‘You aren’t Mrs Cantrip’s new lodger, are you?’ asked Rosemary suddenly.
‘Why, how clever of you!’ said Miss Dibdin warily. ‘Just for the summer holidays, you know. Between you and me, it’s not very comfortable, but it has its advantages. It was such a stroke of luck finding it. I always like to have a hobby during the summer – I am a schoolteacher, you know – and Mrs Cantrip is teaching me to –’
She broke off again as Mrs Cantrip burst into a very loud, artificial cough. ‘There I go again,’ she continued. ‘But no harm done. Such a lovely day! We came here to enjoy the country, to meet some friends and pick a bunch of flowers. You promised to show me where I could find that particularly damaging dodder, dear,’ she said to Mrs Cantrip, and at the same time she rose to her feet and dusted her skirt.
Mrs Cantrip grunted, but she heaved herself up, pushed her bare feet into her wet shoes with complete unconcern, and muttering something about ‘Bogshott Wood’, started to climb the bank, with her shoes squelching at every step.
‘Good afternoon, children,’ said Miss Dibdin briskly, and followed her up the bank.
‘Exactly as though we were six-year-olds,’ said John, as they watched the two cross the field, the one so tall and untidy and the other so short and trim.
‘Whatever can Mrs Cantrip be teaching her?’ said Rosemary.
‘Search me,’ said John. ‘But you can bet she’s up to no good. Well, it’s nothing to do with us. Come on. We’ve left our picnic things and shoes by the bridge.’
Since they had reached the bridge earlier in the afternoon, all the little animal voices had been hidden by the chuckling of the stream. Standing on the top of the bank, they became aware of a bird sitting on a swaying twig and calling, ‘No good! No good!’
‘Do you mean Mrs Cantrip?’ asked Rosemary.