Just as we were putting the lunch into the kit-bag Greg came staggering downstairs, trailing along the weirdest lot of stuff he’d collected.
“What on earth is all that?” Jerry asked him. “Drop it and get your hat.”
“It’s—my costume,” Greg explained, out of breath from having dragged all the things down from the attic.
“Glory!” Jerry said, “You don’t suppose you’re going to lug all that rubbish on to the ferry, do you? Not while I’m with you, my boy.”
“You couldn’t begin to put on half of it, Gregs,” I said. “Let’s weed it out a little.”
“And look sharp about it,” Jerry said, jingling the money for the ferry in his pocket.
Greg finally took a Turkish fez thing, and a black-and-orange sash, and a white brocade waistcoat that Father once had for a masque ball ages ago. We hadn’t time to tell him that it was no sort of outfit for an explorer, so we bundled the things up with our own and stuffed them all into the kit-bag on top of the lunch.
Luke Street has a turn in it just beyond our house, so neither Katy nor Lena could have seen which way we went; anyhow, I think they were both in the back kitchen, which looks out on the clothes-yard. I thought perhaps we should have told Katy where we were going after all, but Jerry said:
“Fiddlesticks, Chris; we’re not babies. I suppose you’d like Katy to take us in a perambulator.”
This was horrid of him, but he made up for everything later on.