‘P’r’aps you could catch hold of the sash if I toss up the middle,’ suggested Micky. They tried, but of course in vain. ‘Well, I’ll just have to wind it round my neck and swarm up with it,’ said Micky, and Emmeline saw that there was nothing else for it, though she felt very uneasy as to the fate of the tumblers.
Her fears were only too well justified. Micky found swarming up the water-pipe a far more difficult feat in the twilight, and with a heavy can almost throttling him, than it had been in broad daylight without a can. Several times he tried, and only slipped back panting to the ground.
‘I can’t do it with that beastly can,’ he declared at last. ‘I’ll have to leave it behind a bush just for to-night.’
‘But, Micky, Jane will come in and wonder where the glasses are,’ said Emmeline in despair, ‘and then it will all be found out. Oh dear! what shall we do?’
‘Oh, I’ll put the glasses in my trouser pockets,’ said Micky cheerfully; ‘I think there’ll be room if I turn out all the string and stuff.’
It took a minute or two for Micky to turn out all the ‘string and stuff’—under which designation he included such various articles as a broken pocket-knife, a half-eaten apple, odds and ends of sealing-wax, a piece of very messy toffee, marbles, old postage stamps, and crumbs of yet older biscuits—and a minute or two more to hide this and the can under a bush, and when at last he and the glasses had begun their journey up the water-pipe, it was not as prosperous as might have been wished. It is true that Micky, red, panting, and very dirty, did finally reach the schoolroom window-sill in safety, but this was not until after various adventures, in the course of which one of the tumblers was smashed to pieces, and the other rather badly cracked.
‘Oh dear, I wish we had never tried to get the milk out to Diamond Jubilee!’ sighed Emmeline, ‘if we had just taken him the biscuits it would have been keeping my promise, but I did so want to make a good impression this first evening!’
‘You haven’t made it, anyhow,’ said Micky, ‘he said he was still hungry even after he’d drunk the two glasses of milk!’
‘You’re sure you took him the two glasses?’ asked Emmeline, with sudden suspicion. ‘You didn’t drink some of it on the way, did you, Micky?’