“Oooh!” said the three children, feeling rather frightened. “Do you suppose they’ll come here?”
“Well, they may,” said Jack. “You never know. I’ve always been a bit afraid that the smoke from our fire will give the game away to someone. But don’t let’s worry about that till it happens.”
“Are the police looking for us, too?" asked Peggy.
“Oh yes,” said Jack. “Everyone is, as far as I can make out. I heard Grandad tell how they’ve searched barns and stacks and ditches, and gone to every town for twenty miles round, thinking we might have run away on a lorry. They don’t guess how near we are!”
“Is Aunt Harriet very upset?” asked Peggy.
“Very!” grinned Jack. “She’s got no one to wash and scrub and cook for her now! But that’s all she cares, I expect! Well, it’s good news about my Granddad going to live with my aunt. I can slip to and fro and not be seen by him now. My word, I wished Mike was with me when I got these hens. They did peck and scratch and flap about. I was afraid someone would hear them.”
“Where shall we put them?” said Mike, helping Jack to carry them up the beach.
“I vote we put them into Willow House till the morning,” said Jack. “We can stop up the doorway with something.”
So they bundled the squawking hens into Willow House, and stopped up the doorway with sticks and bracken. The hens fled to a corner and squatted there, terrified. They made no more noise.
“I’m jolly tired,” said Jack. “Let’s have a few cherries and go to bed.”
They munched the ripe cherries, and then went to their green bedroom. The bracken which they had picked and put on the hillside to dry had been quite brown and withered by that afternoon, so the girls had added it to their bed and the boys’, and to-night their beds seemed even softer and sweeter-smelling than usual. They were all tired. Mike and Jack talked for a little while, but the girls went to sleep quickly.
They slept late the next morning. Peggy woke first, and sat up, wondering what the unusual noise was that she heard. It was a loud cackling.
“Of course! The hens!” she thought. She slipped off her bracken-and-heather bed, jumped lightly over the two sleeping boys and ran to Willow House. She pulled aside the doorway and squeezed inside. The hens fled to a corner when they saw her, but Peggy saw a welcome sight!
Four of the hens had laid eggs! Goody! Now they could have a fine breakfast! The little girl gathered them up quickly, then, stopping up the doorway again, she ran out. She soon had a fire going, and, when the others sat up, rubbing their eyes, Peggy called them.
“Come on! Breakfast! The hens have laid us an egg each!”
They ran to breakfast. “We’ll have a dip afterwards,” said Mike. “I feel so hungry.”
“We must finish Willow House properly to-day,” said Jack. “And we must decide what to do with the hens, too. They can’t run loose till they know us and their new home. We must put up some sort of enclosure for them.”
After breakfast the four of them set to work to make a tiny yard for the hens. They used willow stakes again and quickly built a fine little fence, too high for the hens to jump over. Jack made them nesting-places of bracken, and hoped they would lay their eggs there. He scattered some seed for them, and they pecked at it eagerly. Peggy gave them a dish of water.
“They will soon know this is their home and lay their eggs here,” said Jack. "Now, come on, let’s get on with Willow House! You two girls stuff up the cracks with heather and bracken, and Mike and I will make the door."
Everyone worked hard. The girls found it rather a nice job to stuff the soft heather and bracken into the cracks and make the house rain- and wind-proof. They were so happy in their job that they did not notice what a fine door Jack and Mike had made of woven willow twigs. The boys called the girls, and proudly showed them what they had done.
The door had even been fixed on some sort of a hinge, so that it swung open and shut! It looked fine! It did not quite fit at the top, but nobody minded that. It was a door - and could be shut or opened, just as they pleased. Willow House was very dark inside when the door was shut - but that made it all the more exciting!
“I’m so hungry and thirsty now that I believe I could eat all the food we’ve got!” said Mike at last.
“Yes, we really must have something to eat,” said Jack. “We’ve got plenty of bread and potatoes and vegetables. Let’s cook some broad beans. They are jolly good. Go and look at my fishing-line, Mike, and see if there are any fish on it."
There was a fine trout, and Mike brought it back to cook. Soon the smell of frying rose on the air, and the children sniffed hungrily. Fish, potatoes, bread, beans, cherries, and cocoa with milk from one of Jack’s tins. What a meal!
“I’ll think about getting Daisy the cow across next,” said Jack, drinking his cocoa. “We simply must have milk.”
“And, Jack, we could store some of our things in Willow House now, couldn’t we?” said Peggy. “The ants get into some of the things in the cave-larder. It’s a good place for things like hammers and nails, but it would be better to keep our food in Willow House. Are we going to live in Willow House, Jack?”
“Well, we’ll live in the open air mostly, I expect,” said Jack, “but it will be a good place to sleep in when the nights are cold and rainy, and a fine shelter on bad days. It’s our sort of home.”
“It’s a lovely home,” said Nora; “the nicest there ever was! What fun it is to live like this!”
The Cow Comes to the Island
A day or two went by. The children were busy, for there seemed lots of things to do. The door of Willow House came off and had to be put on again more carefully. One of the hens escaped, and the four children spent nearly the whole morning looking for it. Jack found it at last under a gorse bush, where it had laid a big brown egg.
They made the fence of the hen-yard a bit higher, thinking that the hen had been able to jump over. But Mike found a hole in the fence through which he was sure the hen had squeezed, and very soon it was blocked up with fronds of bracken. The hens squawked and clucked, but they seemed to be settling down, and always ran eagerly to Nora when she fed them twice a day.
Mike thought it would be a good idea to make two rooms inside Willow House, instead of one big room. The front part could be a sort of living-room, with the larder in a corner, and the back part could be a bedroom, piled with heather and bracken to make soft lying. So they worked at a partition made of willow, and put it up to make two rooms. They left a doorway between, but did not make a door. It was nice to have a two-roomed house!
One evening Jack brought something unusual to the camp-fire on the little beach. Mike stared at what he was carrying.
“You’ve caught some rabbits!” he said, “and you’ve skinned them, too, and got them ready for cooking!”
“Oh, Jack!” said Nora. “Must you catch those dear little rabbits? I do love them so much, and it is such fun to watch them playing about round us in the evenings.”
“I know,” said Jack, “but we must have meat to eat sometimes, Now, don’t worry, Nora - they did not suffer any pain and you know you have often eaten rabbit-pie at home.”
All the same, none of the children enjoyed cooking the rabbits, though they couldn’t help being glad of a change of food. They were getting a little tired of fish. Nora said she felt as if she couldn’t look a rabbit in the face that evening!
“In Australia, rabbits are as much of a pest as rats are here,” said Jack, who seemed to know all sorts of things. “If we were in Australia we would think we had done a good deed to get rid of a few pests.”