Jane did try to "be a man"—and reduced her howls to sniffs.
There was a pause. Then Cyril said slowly, "Look here. We must risk that syphon. I'll button it up inside my jacket—perhaps no one will notice it. You others keep well in front of me. There are lights in the clergyman's house. They've not gone to bed yet. We must just yell as loud as ever we can. Now all scream when I say three. Robert, you do the yell like a railway engine, and I'll do the coo-ee like father's. The girls can do as they please. One, two, three!"
A four-fold yell rent the silent peace of the evening, and a maid at one of the Vicarage windows paused with her hand on the blind-cord.
"One, two, three!" Another yell, piercing and complex, startled the owls and starlings to a flutter of feathers in the belfry below. The maid flew from the Vicarage window and ran down the Vicarage stairs and into the Vicarage kitchen, and fainted as soon as she had explained to the man-servant and the cook and the cook's cousin that she had seen a ghost. It was quite untrue, of course, but I suppose the girl's nerves were a little upset by the yelling.
"One, two, three!" The Vicar was on his doorstep by this time, and there was no mistaking the yell that greeted him.
"Goodness me," he said to his wife, "my dear, someone's being murdered in the church! Give me my hat and a thick stick, and tell Andrew to come after me. I expect it's the lunatic who stole the tongue."
The children had seen the flash of light when the Vicar opened his front door. They had seen his dark form on his doorstep, and they had paused for breath, and also to see what he would do.
When he turned back for his hat, Cyril said hastily—
"He thinks he only fancied he heard something. You don't half yell! Now! One, two, three!"
It was certainly a whole yell this time, and the Vicar's wife flung her arms round her husband and screamed a feeble echo of it.