‘What have you done with your monkey-nuts?’ Micky had asked.
‘Oh, I just throwed ’em away. I were that sick of ’em, an’ they’d have been an awful fag to carry.’
‘You are a slacker, Diamond Jubilee!’ said Micky. ‘Why, just look at me, carrying a whole suit besides my shoes and stockings!’ It had occurred to Micky that he had better take his discarded sailor-suit and shoes and stockings with him, as they would be the handiest things to sell in case he found himself in need of money. It really was, as he said, a beautifully managed adventure!
None of the little Boltons had worn shoes or stockings for the first six years of their lives, so that Micky’s feet were too thoroughly hardened to mind stones or anything else, and the children did the first two miles of their journey at a good swinging pace, the more so, that there are plenty of sign-posts in that part of the country, so they did not have to stop and ask the way. During the third mile Diamond Jubilee began to flag badly, and Micky was secretly repenting the foresight which had given him such a troublesome bundle to carry; and at the beginning of the fourth mile both boys agreed that they must rest somewhere for the night before going on any farther.
They were just at that moment passing a farmhouse, one of the outbuildings of which proved on inspection to be a barn with some straw in it. What better sleeping-place could have been desired? The boys went in, nestled down amongst the straw, and dozed off as soundly as a couple of little tops. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the lowing of the cows woke them up next morning before anyone had come in to find them, and they stole out again, feeling wonderfully refreshed and quite ready for the remaining nine miles of their walk. They had already gone one of those miles before Micky suddenly remembered that he had left the bundle of his suit and shoes and stockings behind in the barn. It did not seem worth while to go back and fetch them, however, especially as they were such a bother to carry.
It could not have been more than about five o’clock when the boys set out again, but they made most of the remainder of their journey in so leisurely a fashion that it was past three in the afternoon before they were well into Eastwich, and they would have been later still had it not been for the secret lift which they obtained by hanging on to the pigs’ cart for the last two miles of the way. What they had been doing all the time it would have been hard to say; they had begged their breakfast at one farm and their lunch at another—neither meal was more than a drink of water and a hunch of bread each, but the bread tasted delicious, eaten under the hedge, after that long, hungry walk; they had played about; Micky had had such a successful fight with a little boy who had called after them, that Diamond Jubilee held out hopes that he might eventually develop into the same kind of person as a certain friend of his, who had, he said, ‘been in quod fifteen times for fighting, and would knock a chap down sooner than look at him’; and they had passed the time of day with most of the animals they met; but still, even allowing for all this, it must be owned that their progress was decidedly slow.
‘I reckon,’ remarked Diamond Jubilee, when at last they did find themselves strolling through the streets of Eastwich—it was at just about same time that Emmeline was making her way to Green Ginger Land—‘I reckon we’d better get some money afore we go to Mother Grimes’. She aren’t pleased if you come in without money, or wipes, or such, and sometimes she beat you something awful.’
Micky had not the slightest idea what ‘wipes’ might be, but he was not going to give himself away by asking.
‘Does she ever go on beating you till you bleed?’ he inquired with interest. He had never been beaten in his life, and was not in the least dismayed at the prospect, as a more experienced little boy might have been. On the contrary, he regarded it as adding just that touch of danger without which no adventure is complete.