“Well, they may,” said Jack. “You never know. I’ve always been a bit afraid that the smoke from our fire will give the game away to someone. But don’t let’s worry about that till it happens.”
“Are the police looking for us, too?" asked Peggy.
“Oh yes,” said Jack. “Everyone is, as far as I can make out. I heard Grandad tell how they’ve searched barns and stacks and ditches, and gone to every town for twenty miles round, thinking we might have run away on a lorry. They don’t guess how near we are!”
“Is Aunt Harriet very upset?” asked Peggy.
“Very!” grinned Jack. “She’s got no one to wash and scrub and cook for her now! But that’s all she cares, I expect! Well, it’s good news about my Granddad going to live with my aunt. I can slip to and fro and not be seen by him now. My word, I wished Mike was with me when I got these hens. They did peck and scratch and flap about. I was afraid someone would hear them.”
“Where shall we put them?” said Mike, helping Jack to carry them up the beach.
“I vote we put them into Willow House till the morning,” said Jack. “We can stop up the doorway with something.”
So they bundled the squawking hens into Willow House, and stopped up the doorway with sticks and bracken. The hens fled to a corner and squatted there, terrified. They made no more noise.
“I’m jolly tired,” said Jack. “Let’s have a few cherries and go to bed.”
They munched the ripe cherries, and then went to their green bedroom. The bracken which they had picked and put on the hillside to dry had been quite brown and withered by that afternoon, so the girls had added it to their bed and the boys’, and to-night their beds seemed even softer and sweeter-smelling than usual. They were all tired. Mike and Jack talked for a little while, but the girls went to sleep quickly.