"Haven't you done enough?" whispered Cathy. "It seems rather too bad, and the poor old man is getting so cross!"
"Oh, do stop, George!" I implored. "I know you'll be caught!"
"We're not half quits yet," returned George grimly. "You girls always want to spoil things by hanging back. I wish we had left you at home with Edward. Keep quiet now you're here, at any rate."
He had a coil of rope with him, and, moving with extreme caution, he fastened one end of it to the captain's door-handle, and the other end to the door-handle of the next house, which was only a few feet lower down the street. Then, seizing the knockers, he beat a terrific tattoo on both doors and fled. He had hardly gained our sheltering trees before the captain appeared on the threshold, uttering some very uncomplimentary remarks, varied by perfect explosions of coughing. As the rope had been allowed to hang rather loosely, he was just able to open his door, but at that identical instant his neighbour also desired to investigate matters, with the effect that no sooner did he open his door, than it drew the rope so tightly that the captain's door was banged to with great violence. In a fury of rage he pulled it open again, which had the result of shutting his neighbour's, and for a few moments the two doors opened and closed as if they were worked by a wire. It really looked very funny, and in spite of our guilty consciences we nearly choked ourselves with trying to laugh noiselessly. I think a faint giggle must have escaped us, or perhaps the victims of our practical joke suspected that somebody was trying to play a trick upon them, at any rate both doors were hastily slammed hard, and all was silence.
"Good old Babe!" whispered Dick, when he had recovered his breath. "Your dodge went even better than mine! But I say, we can't leave our apparatus over there! We must manage to fetch it somehow!"
They slipped across the road again, Dick to remove his lump of bees'-wax and the button, and George to untie the rope; but they had counted without their host. The captain had evidently scented the plot, and was waiting for them, for from the bedroom casement above descended a perfect deluge of water, as though the whole contents of a bath had been suddenly emptied on to the pavement below. Almost blinded for the moment, and drenched to the skin, the boys beat a gasping retreat, while such extraordinary sounds of mixed chuckling and coughing proceeded from the open window, as to lead us to suppose that the old man was exulting in his triumph.
We kept this adventure a dead secret. Cathy and I felt rather ashamed of ourselves, and, as Edward had hinted, we knew Mrs. Winstanley would have been greatly annoyed if she had discovered that we had made use of her absence to play such very questionable pranks, especially in the village, where we might so easily have been seen and recognized. Whether the captain suspected us, we could not tell; if he did, he said nothing to the squire, probably thinking that on the whole he had had the best of it, and that as he could not prove us to be the culprits, it was wiser not to push his advantage too far.
The next event in the feud was really a very innocent one on our part. Even the boys on this occasion were quite guiltless of any evil intent, and I think the fault lay with the old captain's hot temper. It was a most lovely September afternoon, and we decided that nothing would be nicer than to take our kettle and tea-things, and after a ramble round in search of blackberries, to picnic in any suitable spot where we might happen to find ourselves when the pangs of hunger assailed us.
"Always allowing that George doesn't insist upon getting hungry before four o'clock!" said Cathy. "He'll have to wait if he does. And don't let him carry that basket, or you'll find the cake half gone! You take it, Philippa dear, and give him the kettle instead."
"Fibs!" said George. "I wouldn't touch the tuck. I'll carry them both if you like, and Cathy's satchel as well. Here, sling it over my back! Now I call this returning good for evil, Madame Catherine, when you've just been slanging me so hard!"