"All I ask," he said, "is that you don't burn the place down with your cooking."
The pot was then filled and placed on the fire. Kink skinned the rabbits and Janet and Mary put them in, while Jack and Robert and Horace walked into Cirencester to buy eatables and picture postcards and send off the telegram.
That evening after supper Janet suggested that it might be the best opportunity they would have to write the letters to X. of which they had often talked; so they made themselves comfortable in the caravan and on the barn floor, and each wrote something, not after the style of the Snarker's game at Oxford, but quite separately.
Janet wrote:
"Saturday Evening, July 8,
"In a Barn near Cirencester.
DEAR X.,
"We thank you very much for the caravan, which is much the most beautiful present that anyone can ever have had. We have now been in it nearly ten days, and we like it more every day. We have called it the Slowcoach. The party is seven, and Kink, who drives. We have with us Mary and Jack Rotheram and Horace Campbell; but whether you know who they are or not, of course I don't know. I hope some day you will tell us who you are.
"I am,
"Yours sincerely,
JANET AVORY.
Mary Rotheram wrote:
DEAR MR. X.
Then she crossed out the "Mr." because, as she said, it might be a lady, and began again:
DEAR X.,
"I am not one of the Avories, and the caravan was therefore not given to me, but my brother and I have been so happy in it that I want to say thank you for it quite as if I were an Avory all the time. We live near them at Chiswick, you know. It has been a supreme holiday, with hardly any rain and no real troubles, although even the strongest people must sometimes get a little tired of walking on dusty roads and having to wait for meals. We each have a special duty, and I am the head cook, but Janet is really better at it than I am. Our only real disappointment is that caravaning makes you so tired that there is no chance of cricket, for we brought cricket things with us, but have never been able to use them. We might have done so at Salford, perhaps, but the river was so very tempting that we rowed about instead.
"Yours sincerely and gratefully,
MARY ROTHERAM.
Jack Rotheram wrote: