There was nothing to do but to go home, and go to sleep, knowing that when they woke the next morning it would be to a day in the course of which they would have to explain their wet clothes to their parents.
“Even you’ll have to do that,” Mavis reminded the Spangled Boy.
He received her remark in what they afterward remembered to have been a curiously deep silence.
“I don’t know how on earth we are to explain,” said Francis. “I really don’t. Come on—let’s get home. No more adventures for me, thank you. Bernard knew what he was talking about.”
Mavis, very tired indeed, agreed.
They had got over the beach by this time, recovered the wheelbarrow, and trundled it up and along the road. At the corner the Spangled Boy suddenly said:
“Well then, so long, old sports,” and vanished down a side lane.
The other two went on together—with the wheelbarrow, which, I may remind you, was as wet as any of them.
They went along by the hedge and the mill and up to the house.