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‘Do you mean the Levinnes?’
‘Yes. Why should everyone be so horrid about them?’
‘Well,’ said Vernon, trying to be strictly impartial, ‘they did look queer, you know.’
‘Well, I think people are beasts.’
Vernon was silent. Joe, a rebel by force of circumstances, was always putting a new point of view before him.
‘That boy,’ continued Joe. ‘I daresay he’s awfully jolly, even though his ears do stick out.’
‘I wonder,’ said Vernon. ‘It would be jolly to have someone else. Kate says they’re making a swimming pool at Deerfields.’
‘They must be frightfully, frightfully rich,’ said Joe.
Riches meant little to Vernon. He had never thought about them.
The Levinnes were the great topic of conversation for some time. The improvements they were making at Deerfields! The workmen they had had down from London!
Mrs Vereker brought Nell to tea one day. As soon as she was in the garden with the children, she imparted news of fascinating importance.
‘They’ve got a motor car.’
‘A motor car?’
Motor cars were almost unheard of then. One had never been seen in the Forest. Storms of envy shook Vernon. A motor car!
‘A motor car and a swimming pool,’ he murmured.
It was too much.
‘It’s not a swimming pool,’ said Nell. ‘It’s a sunk garden.’
‘Kate says it’s a swimming pool.’
‘Our gardener says it’s a sunk garden.’
‘What is a sunk garden?’
‘I don’t know,’ confessed Nell. ‘But it is one.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Joe. ‘Who’d want a silly sort of thing like that when they could have a swimming pool?’
‘Well, that’s what our gardener says.’
‘I know,’ said Joe. A wicked look came into her eyes. ‘Let’s go and see.’
‘What?’
‘Let’s go and see for ourselves.’
‘Oh, but we couldn’t,’ said Nell.
‘Why not? We can creep up through the woods.’
‘Jolly good idea,’ said Vernon. ‘Let’s.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Nell. ‘Mother wouldn’t like it, I know.’
‘Oh, don’t be a spoilsport, Nell. Come on.’
‘Mother wouldn’t like it,’ repeated Nell.
‘All right. Wait here, then. We won’t be long.’
Tears gathered slowly in Nell’s eyes. She hated being left. She stood there sullenly, twisting her frock between her fingers.
‘We won’t be long,’ Vernon repeated.
He and Joe ran off. Nell felt she couldn’t bear it.
‘Vernon!’
‘Yes?’
‘Wait for me. I’m coming too.’
She felt heroic as she made the announcement. Joe and Vernon did not seem particularly impressed by it. They waited with obvious impatience for her to come up with them.
‘Now then,’ said Vernon, ‘I’m leader. Everyone to do as I say.’
They climbed over the Park palings and reached the shelter of the trees. Speaking in whispers under their breath they flitted through the undergrowth, drawing nearer and nearer towards the house. Now it rose before them, some way ahead to the right.
‘We’ll have to get farther still and keep a bit more uphill.’
They followed him obediently. And then suddenly a voice broke on their ears, speaking from a little behind them to the left.
‘You’re trethpassing,’ it said.
They turned—startled. The yellow-faced boy with the large ears stood there. He had his hands in his pockets, and was surveying them superciliously.
‘You’re trethpassing,’ he said again.
There was something in his manner that awoke immediate antagonism. Instead of saying, as he had meant to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ Vernon said, ‘Oh!’
He and the other boy looked at each other—the cool measuring glance of two adversaries in a duel.
‘We come from next door,’ said Joe.
‘Do you?’ said the boy. ‘Well, you’d better go back there. My father and mother don’t want you in here.’
He managed to be unbearably offensive as he said this. Vernon, unpleasantly conscious of being in the wrong, flushed angrily.
‘You might manage to speak politely,’ he said.
‘Why should I?’ said the boy.
He turned as a footstep sounded coming through the undergrowth.
‘Is that you, Sam?’ he said. ‘Just turn these trespassing kids off the place, will you?’
The keeper who had stepped out beside him grinned and touched his forehead. The boy strolled away, as though he had lost all interest. The keeper turned to the children and put on a ferocious scowl.
‘Out of it, you young varmints! I’ll turn the dogs loose on you unless you’re out of here in double quick time.’
‘We’re not afraid of dogs,’ said Vernon haughtily, as he turned to depart.
‘Ho, you’re not, h’aren’t you? Well, then, I’ve got a rhinoHoceras here and I’m-a going to loose that this minute.’
He stalked off. Nell gave a terrified pull at Vernon’s arm.
‘He’s gone to get it,’ she cried. ‘Oh! hurry—hurry—’
Her alarm was contagious. So much had been retailed about the Levinnes that the keeper’s threat seemed a perfectly likely one to the children. With one accord they ran for home. They plunged in a bee-line, pushing their way through the undergrowth. Vernon and Joe led. A piteous cry arose from Nell.
‘Vernon—Vernon—Oh! do wait. I’ve got stuck—’
What a nuisance Nell was! She couldn’t run or do anything. He turned back—gave her frock a vigorous pull to free it from the brambles with which it was entangled (a good deal to the frock’s detriment) and hauled her to her feet.
‘Come on, do.’
‘I’m so out of breath. I can’t run any more. Oh! Vernon, I’m so frightened.’
‘Come on.’
Hand in hand he pulled her along. They reached the Park palings, scrambled over …
‘We-ell,’ said Joe, fanning herself with a very dirty linen hat. ‘That was an adventure.’
‘My frock’s all torn,’ said Nell. ‘What shall I do?’
‘I hate that boy,’ said Vernon. ‘He’s a beast.’
‘He’s a beastly beast,’ agreed Joe. ‘We’ll declare war on him. Shall we?’
‘Rather!’
‘What shall I do about my frock?’
‘It’s very awkward their having a rhinoceros,’ said Joe thoughtfully. ‘Do you think Tom Boy would go for it if we trained him to?’
‘I shouldn’t like Tom Boy to be hurt,’ said Vernon.
Tom Boy was the stable dog—a great favourite of his. His mother had always vetoed a dog in the house, so Tom Boy was the nearest Vernon had got to having a dog of his own.
‘I don’t know what Mother will say about my frock.’
‘Oh, bother your frock, Nell. It’s not the sort of frock for playing in the garden, anyway.’
‘I’ll tell your mother it’s my fault,’ said Vernon impatiently. ‘Don’t be so like a girl.’
‘I am a girl,’ said Nell.
‘Well, so is Joe a girl. But she doesn’t go on like you do. She’s as good as a boy any day.’
Nell looked ready to cry, but at that minute they were called from the house.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Vereker,’ said Vernon. ‘I’m afraid I’ve torn Nell’s frock.’
There were reproaches from Myra, civil disclaimers from Mrs Vereker. When Nell and her mother had gone, Myra said:
‘You must not be so rough, Vernon, darling. When a little girl friend comes to tea, you must take great care of her.’
‘Why have we got to have her to tea? We don’t like her. She spoils everything.’
‘Vernon! Nell is such a dear little girl.’
‘She isn’t, Mother. She’s awful.’
‘Vernon!’
‘Well, she is. I don’t like her mother either.’
‘I don’t like Mrs Vereker much,’ said Myra. ‘I always think she’s a very hard woman. But I can’t think why you children don’t like Nell. Mrs Vereker tells me she’s absolutely devoted to you, Vernon.’
‘Well, I don’t want her to be.’
He escaped with Joe.
‘War,’ he said. ‘That’s what it is—war! I daresay that Levinne boy is really a Boer in disguise. We must plan out our campaign. Why should he come and live next door to us, and spoil everything?’
The kind of guerilla warfare that followed occupied Vernon and Joe in a most pleasurable fashion. They invented all kinds of methods of harassing the enemy. Concealed in trees, they pelted him with chestnuts. They stalked him with pea-shooters. They outlined a hand in red paint and crept secretly up to the house one night after dark, and left it on the doorstep with the word ‘Revenge’ printed at the bottom of the sheet of paper.
Sometimes their enemy retaliated in kind. He, too, had a pea-shooter and it was he who laid in wait for them one day with a garden hose.
Hostilities had been going on for nearly ten days when Vernon came upon Joe sitting on a tree stump looking unusually despondent.
‘Hallo, what’s up? I thought you were going to stalk the enemy with those squashy tomatoes Cook gave us.’
