The Eagle's Nest

by S. E. Cartwright

CHAPTER XIX.

AN INTERESTING DITCH.

If a stranger had happened to meet Madge, Betty, and John one fine Saturday afternoon a few weeks later in the summer, he would probably have imagined that they were hurrying to the sea-side. It was certainly an odd way to get there, across the fields and through a grove of beech-trees; but where else could they be going, each carrying a boat?

They passed by the Eagle's Nest for once without even glancing up at it, and walking a little farther along the field stopped by a deep ditch. Now, even during the hottest summer weather this delightful ditch seldom became completely dry. A tiny stream generally contrived to trickle along the bottom, pushing its way in and out among the dead leaves and sticks that the wind blew into its course. During the winter months the ditch sometimes got blocked with this sort of rubbish, and then the water being kept back very rapidly rose and flooded over the field. However, old Barton was always on the look-out for accidents, and on extra wet days generally marched out with a sack over his shoulders to keep them comparatively dry, and cleared away the drifts of dead leaves with his spade so that the stream should flow freely. Of course, the children would have loved to accompany him on these expeditions, but they always took place on such wet days that the thing was not to be thought of seriously.

But though the children were never allowed to help in moderating a regular winter flood, they valued the ditch highly as a place where they could always collect enough water to sail their boats in a thoroughly satisfactory manner. They had done it so often that they did not take very long time in setting to work. Betty and John going down on their knees began to build the mud and dead leaves at the bottom of the ditch into a great barrier across the narrowest part, while Madge with a stick cleared the course of the stream from all obstructions above. It was the way in which they made tiny ponds in the cracks of the big stones under the laburnum-tree, only of course this was hundreds of times larger.

The water soon began to rise. It is most surprising what a lot of water even a tiny stream contains if one can once prevent it from all running away! When the ditch was about half-full, the children launched their boats and made them go imaginary voyages from port to port, carrying merchandise.

"I will be London," said Madge, "and Betty can be Cardiff, and—"

"I can choose for myself without your help!" interrupted John peevishly. "I'll be Birmingham."

"Oh, you choose very cleverly for yourself!" jeered Madge. "I wonder how you can think of such difficult places!"

"You think nobody can be clever except yourself, but you are finely mistaken," rejoined John seriously; and he could not imagine why both his sisters burst out laughing. "There isn't much joke that I can see in that," he said.

"The joke is about Birmingham, you know," explained Betty. "It isn't a port."

"Then it ought to be," said John decidedly.

"Perhaps you had better write to the Queen and suggest that it should be made into one," remarked Madge. But then, seeing that her brother looked vexed at his mistake, she continued cheerfully: "I have thought of a new and much better plan. We will not have real towns, but we will call them after our own names—Madgebury, Bettybury, and Johnbury!"

This idea gave very general satisfaction, and the game proceeded most peacefully for some time. A vessel laden with acorns started from Madgebury and went to Johnbury, crossing on the way another ship full of horse-chestnuts. From Bettybury a small wooden doll set out on a voyage of discovery into unknown regions, the owners carefully superintending the course of their vessels and guiding them by long strings. Once the strings got entangled and there was a terrific shipwreck in Johnbury harbour, most of the cargo, consisting of marbles, being lost in the mud at the bottom. After this collision it was discovered that the sails of two of the vessels were injured, so the ship-owners decided to retire for a short time to Eagle's Nest and work at some necessary repairs.

It was a warm afternoon, and the shade of the great spreading beech-tree was particularly pleasant after an hour spent in the glaring sun by the ditch. The children sat about in idle lounging attitudes, mending their boats and talking in a leisurely fashion.

"I wish I hadn't lost all those marbles," remarked John mournfully. "I only found four, and I believe there were quite eight in the ship, only the mud was so soft they sank out of sight at once. I squeezed it all over with my hands to try and find them, but I couldn't."

"I should think you will lose those four as well, if you try and carry them in your pocket," said Madge. "Don't you remember what a big hole you have in it, and how your knife dropped on the schoolroom floor this morning when you were saying your lessons?"

"But I must put them somewhere," answered John peevishly. "I can't leave them behind, and I can't carry them in my hand when I am mending my ship."

"I've got a capital idea!" broke in Betty. "We will have a treasure-house in the Eagle's Nest, and we can safely hide away the things we don't want there. And I see just the place that will do!" With an excited cry she scrambled up to a hole in the tree a few feet above the platform of sticks on which they sat. "Isn't this the very place?" she shouted.

"The very place! The very place!" echoed John; and immediately the three children began to empty out their pockets and decide what they would leave in the Eagle's Nest storehouse. John's marbles and various small articles belonging to the girls, such as pencils, both slate and lead, a broken knife, and a doll's boot, were carefully stored away packed in dock leaves.

"We can leave them there all right," said Madge. "Even if it rains they can't get wet in this beautiful hole. It's a regular out-of-door cupboard, and I shall keep lots of my things here now that we have found it."

This plan was so incomparably more interesting than putting one's possessions back tamely in the schoolroom or nursery, that the hole was soon filled with oddly-shaped parcels tied up in leaves and twists of grass.

"That's done!" exclaimed Madge at last with a sigh of satisfaction, as she covered the opening to the hole with an enormous bunch of elder flowers, which she fondly hoped looked so natural that no passing enemy would suspect they concealed a treasure-house. "Now shall we go back and sail our boats or—Oh, look!" her voice rose to a shriek. And well it might.

Quite taken up with their present occupation, the children had entirely forgotten the fact that they had left the ditch blocked, so that the stream could not flow away as usual. The water had been rising for the last hour or more, and all one end of the field was rapidly turning into a swamp. Rivulets of water were finding their way in and out among the rank tufts of long grass, and at this rate Eagle's Nest itself would be surrounded by the evening.

It was a moment of most intense excitement. There were hurried consultations among the children, and even a daring suggestion that the flood should be allowed to rise until they were left upon an impregnable island. But a certain longing for tea, combined with a wholesome dread of Barton, prevented this alarmingly bold scheme from being carried out.

"If we had only known what was going to happen and brought provisions with us, what fun it would have been to stay here all night!" cried Madge, who dearly loved an adventure. "I think if I had brought the piece of bread that they put by the side of my plate at dinner, and that I never eat, it would have been enough to keep me alive all night."

"I should like sandwiches better," observed John.

"Very likely!" rejoined Madge impatiently. "Honey and cream are very nice too, and just what people always carry with them when they are out all night in a forest!"

"They would be very good, but much stickier than sandwiches," began John, then stopped as both his sisters burst out laughing. "I don't see anything funny," he said sulkily. "They are very sticky, you know they are!"

"We were laughing at your idea of having all sorts of nice things to eat when you were escaping from the enemy," explained Betty. "It's a time for hardships—"

"I don't care to live on hardships," interrupted John.

"Well, it doesn't matter, because I think we had better go home to tea after all," observed Madge. "I don't really mind Barton complaining about us much; and it would have been frightful fun to sit in the Eagle's Nest and see everybody on the other side of the water scolding and threatening us without being able to get at us. But I dare say Mama would have been rather anxious about our staying out all night in the damp."

Though troublesome and thoughtless the children were really affectionate, and this consideration weighed with them. They gave up all idea of allowing the advancing torrent to cut them off from any communication with the world. (When we talk of the torrent, it must be understood that it might not have appeared quite worthy of the name to grown-up people; but that is how the children managed to see it.)

Having decided to resist the temptation of camping-out for a night, the next question was how to avoid getting into serious trouble with Barton, who would be dreadfully cross if he came in the morning and found the field turned into a swamp. It was all very well for Madge to talk defiantly about not minding if Barton scolded or not; but the fact was that everybody, even Captain West, stood in respectful awe of the old man's stern disapproval.

"I do wish you children would not be so disobedient to me before Barton. I can see he thinks you are spoilt, and it makes me feel so dreadfully ashamed of myself!" Captain West would laughingly say; and though, of course, this was only a joke, there can be little doubt that Barton would have brought up a family very strictly if it had been left to him.

"We can't go home and leave it like this," said Madge, looking round despairingly on the ever-widening circle of glistening wet that was spreading through the grass.

"If we took away the mud that we put across the ditch, would not the stream run down the ditch again as usual?" suggested John.

"Of course, we all know that! But who can get through the water to clear it out?" cried Betty.

There was an anxious pause. Then suddenly in a tone of solemn resolution Madge announced that she was once more ready to take the post of danger.

"You will get your boots wet through, and catch cold," said Betty nervously.

Without replying to this remonstrance Madge climbed down from the Eagle's Nest. It was the work of a moment to remove not only her boots but also her stockings. Then she plunged into the soaking grass, the water splashing up round her bare feet at every step. It was a wet job, and a dirty one, but Madge accomplished it safely, and Barton never guessed next day how near he had been to finding the meadow flooded.