‘Micky darling,’ said Emmeline, so much touched and ashamed that the tears quite came into her eyes this time, ‘I really can’t take your penny. Besides, it was all my fault for interfering.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Micky stoutly. ‘And anyhow, please do take it. I shan’t feel a gentleman again till you do. Perhaps,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘you might spend it on some marbles. I’ve lost so many of mine down the mouse-hole and other places that there really aren’t enough now when Kitty wants to play too, and perhaps if you had some of your own you wouldn’t mind lending them us sometimes. But don’t, of course, get them unless you like; it’s only a suggestion.’
CHAPTER III
THE FEUDAL CASTLE
The early days of the children’s new life were so full of interest and discoveries that even Emmeline did not manage to be nearly as homesick as she fancied she was.
To begin with, they had explored the whole house, a good deal of the wood, and every inch of the garden. They had discovered, moreover, that the said garden was the most delightful of play-places, chiefly because it was splendid for story games. It owed its excellence from this point of view to the fact that it contained a summer-house and a wood-pile, either or both of which could serve if need were as houses for the story people to live in, which, as Kitty remarked, ‘made things seem ever so much realer.’ To be sure, there were times when they had to pretend a good deal about the wood-pile; it just depended how Mr. Brown, the gardener, had arranged it, but it usually did for desert islands, where the dwellings might be supposed to be rather rough and ready, and if the worst came to the worst there was always the summer-house.
For the whole of one glorious red-letter afternoon, indeed, the story people had revelled in the run of yet a third house. Just outside the back-yard was a little shed, always respectfully referred to by Micky and Kitty as ‘Mr. Brown’s study,’ that being the place where he was accustomed to black the boots and clean the knives. On the afternoon in question Mr. Brown had stayed at home for some reason, so that his study was left undefended from the twins, who entered in and took possession. It made an even more desirable abode than the summer-house, for not only was it pervaded by a delicious smell of knife-powder and boot-blacking and mustiness, but also it was much better furnished; there were stools, and shelves, and knives, and boots, and packets of seeds and queer little pots, with nice messy stuff inside them, whereas in the summer-house there was nothing at all except a wooden bench, which was fixed to the wall and ran round three sides of it. So the story people lived there for the whole of that afternoon with great satisfaction to themselves, but, unhappily, not with any satisfaction at all to Jane when she came to fetch them in to tea and found Mr. Brown’s usually neat ‘study’ turned almost inside out, and Micky and Kitty all over boot-blacking. Aunt Grace and Emmeline returned from a garden-party to find not only the twins, but Alice, the little day-girl who had been inveigled into joining the game, in the deepest disgrace, and Jane muttering terrible things about ‘warnings.’ Fortunately the affair passed off without such dire consequences, but from that time forward Mr. Brown’s study was forbidden ground.
It was a great disappointment; but consolation was not long in coming, for it was only a very few days later that they discovered the Feudal Castle.