‘King Charles is gracefully pleased to like it,’ said Charles. ‘Boadicea had better pour out the Rhine wine, for it’s a thirsty day.’
‘Oh,’ said Boadicea in stricken tones, ‘there isn’t any!’
And there wasn’t. Not a drop of milk or water or ginger-beer or anything drinkable. No nephew or niece of Aunt Emmeline’s was likely to do anything so rash as drinking water from a strange river to which it had not been properly introduced, so there was nothing to be done but to eat the raspberries and pretend that raspberries quenched thirst, which, as you probably know only too well, they don’t.
This was why, when they had eaten everything there was to eat, and buried the bits of paper deeply in a hollow tree, so as not to spoil the pretty picture of green willows and blue-green water and grass-green grass, they set out to find a cottage where ginger-beer was sold. There was such a cottage, and they had passed it on the way. It had a neat gay little garden and a yellow rose clambering over its porch, and on one of its red brick sides was a pear-tree that went up the wall with level branches like a double ladder, and on the other a deep-blue iron plate which said in plain white words ‘Bateyes Minerals.’ A stranger from Queen Victoria’s early days might have supposed this to mean that the cottage had a small museum of geological specimens such as you find now and then in Derbyshire; but Rupert and the three C.’s knew that ‘Minerals’ was just short for ginger-beer and other things that fizz.
So, after making sure that they had not lost their two shillings and their sixpence, they unlatched the white gate and went in.
The front door, which was green and had no knocker, was open, and one could see straight into the cottage’s front parlour. It was very neat and oil-clothy, with sea-shells on pink wool mats, and curly glass vases, and a loud green-faced clock on the mantelpiece. There was a horse-hair sofa and more white crochet antimacassars than you would have thought possible even in the most respectable sea-side lodgings. A black and white cat was asleep in the sun, edged in among the pots of geraniums that filled the window. In fact, it was a very clean example of the cottage homes of England, how beautiful they stand!
The thirsty children waited politely as long as they could bear to wait, and then Caroline tip-toed across the speckless brown-and-blue linoleum and tapped at the inner door. Nothing happened. So she pushed the door, which was ajar, a little more open and looked through it. Then she turned, shook her head, made a baffling sign to the others to stay where they were, and went through the door and shut it after her.
The others waited; the sign Caroline had made was a secret one only used in really serious emergencies.
‘I expect there’s a bird in there and she wants to catch it,’ said Charles; but the others could not believe this, and they were right.
Quite soon Caroline returned bearing a wrinkled black tray with three bottles of lemonade, three glasses, and the little round wooden thing that you press the glass marble down with into the neck of the bottle.