The Summer Goes By
No one came to interfere with the children. They lived together on the island, playing, working, eating, drinking, bathing - doing just as they liked, and yet having to do certain duties in order to keep their farmyard going properly.
Sometimes Jack and Mike went off in the boat at night to get something they needed from either Jack’s farm or Aunt Harriet’s. Mike managed to get into his aunt’s house one night and get some of his and the girls’ clothes - two or three dresses for the girls, and a coat and shorts for himself. Clothes were rather a difficulty, for they got dirty and ragged on the island, and as the girls had none to change into, it was difficult to keep their dresses clean and mended.
Jack got a good deal of fruit and a regular amount of potatoes and turnips from his grandfather’s farm, which still had not been sold. There was always enough to eat, for there were eggs, rabbits, and fish, and Daisy gave them more than enough milk to drink.
Their seeds grew quickly. It was a proud day when Peggy was able to cut the first batch of mustard and cress and the first lettuce and mix it up into a salad to eat with hard-boiled eggs! The radishes, too, tasted very good, and were so hot that even Jack’s eyes watered when he ate them! Things grew amazingly well and quickly on the island.
The runner beans were now well up to the top of the bramble bushes, and Jack nipped the tips off, so that they would flower well below.
“We don’t want to have to make a ladder to climb up and pick the beans,” he said. “My word, there are going to be plenty - look at all the scarlet flowers!”
“They smell nice!” said Nora, sniffing them.
“The beans will taste nicer!” said Jack.
The weather was hot and fine, for it was a wonderful summer. The children all slept out of doors in their “green bedroom,” as they called it, tucked in the shelter of the big gorse bushes. They had to renew their beds of heather and bracken every week, for they became flattened with the weight of their bodies and were uncomfortable. But these jobs were very pleasant, and the children loved them.