“After all,” said David reflectively, “it’s much jollier being friends with everybody, instead of enemies. I’m glad Miss Prince and Danny came and turned us into Cubs.”
They worked like niggers all the morning. Jerseys soon came off, and scarves were turned into a kind of Arab headgear. David and Nipper raked the hay into long lines, and Bill and Danny turned these over with pitchforks.
At about one o’clock the womenfolk belonging to the haymakers began to arrive with dinners tied up in red handkerchiefs.
Suddenly a cheer went up from the Cubs.
“Miss Prince—bringing us dinner!” They were as hungry as wolves, and it made you feel so like a real farm hand to have your dinner brought you. So they made a camp in a shady corner of the field, and while Miss Prince and the Cubs unpacked the basket, Danny went off in search of the tramp.
Before long they returned together. The tramp still looked very thin, but his face had been burned brown by exposure to the sun during his long hours of farm work. The Cubs leapt at him like a crowd of real young wolves and dragged him down into their hay fort. “Tell us a story!” “No, draw us a picture!” “Make the cuckoo noise; perhaps a real one will answer now!” Everyone shouted at the same time.
The tramp laughed.
“I should say, have some lunch first!” said Miss Prince. “You must all be hungry.”
So everybody settled down to ham sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and cucumber, and cake, and gooseberry turnovers, and lots and lots of lemonade. Of course the food got all mixed up with hay, grasshoppers, and little wee spiders, but no one seemed to mind.
“A funny thing, my turning up here again, isn’t it?” said the tramp. “It was quite by accident. In fact, I didn’t know I was coming here until I arrived at the cross-roads, and recognized the place by that little church. A man I worked for, for a few days, said he knew of a farmer friend of his who badly wanted help with his hay, and so he offered to give me a forty-mile lift on a motor-lorry of his that was coming this way. I never asked where the place was, but I felt Providence had meant me to come back when I found myself at those cross-roads again!”