THE FIRST NIGHT
"Well," said Janet, "that's a very nice start. It would have been horrid if the first farmer had been crusty."
"Ah," said Mary Rotheram, "but you should see his wife! It was she who did it for us really. Perhaps after dinner we might walk up there to thank her."
After dinner! How recklessly young caravaners can talk. But you shall hear....
Kink with much skill got Moses and the Slowcoach into the field and shut the gate, and then the great carriage rocked and swayed over the grass, making no sound but a mixture of creaking and crockery. At last he brought it to a stand just under a tall hedge, and Moses was at once taken out and roped to a crowbar driven in the ground.
"The first thing," said Janet, "is the fire," and Jack and Horace were sent off to collect wood and pile it near the Slowcoach, and fix the tripod over it. As it was quite dry, one of Mr. Scott's lighters soon had it blazing, and Mary, as chief cook, threw quickly into the water in the pot the large piece of brisket they had bought at Woodstock, together with potatoes and carrots and little onions and pepper and salt.
That done, and leaving Horace with strict orders to keep the fire fed, the others began to unpack. First of all mackintosh sheets and rugs were thrown on the ground round the fire, and then Robert and Jack drew out their tent and set it up on the farther side of the fire, some four or five yards away, so that the fire was midway between the tent and the caravan.
The tent was similar to those which gipsies use—not with a central pole, but stretched over half-hoops which were stuck in the ground. It was wide enough for three boys to lie comfortably in their sleeping-bags side by side. Gregory was to sleep in the caravan with the girls; Kink was to go to Woodstock.
Meanwhile, with all of them, except Mary and Gregory, who had done well with Mrs. Gosden's tea, the pangs of hunger were at work, and the steam of the great iron pot hanging over the fire did nothing to allay them. Mary and Janet every now and then thrust a fork into the meat, but its resistance to the point was heart-breaking.
"Hadn't you better have some biscuits to go on with?" Janet said at last; but the others refused. It would spoil the stew, they thought.