Bill the Bargee rose slowly and heavily. But his wife was a hundred yards up the road before he had quite understood what was the matter.
Phyllis, shivering by the canal side, had hardly heard the quick approaching feet before the woman had flung herself on the railing, rolled down the bank, and snatched the baby from her.
“Don’t,” said Phyllis, reproachfully; “I’d just got him to sleep.”
Bill came up later talking in a language with which the children were wholly unfamiliar. He leaped on to the barge and dipped up pails of water. Peter helped him and they put out the fire. Phyllis, the bargewoman, and the baby—and presently Bobbie, too—cuddled together in a heap on the bank.
“Lord help me, if it was me left anything as could catch alight,” said the woman again and again.
But it wasn’t she. It was Bill the Bargeman, who had knocked his pipe out and the red ash had fallen on the hearthrug and smouldered there and at last broken into flame. Though a stern man he was just. He did not blame his wife for what was his own fault, as many bargemen, and other men, too, would have done.
Mother was half wild with anxiety when at last the three children turned up at Three Chimneys, all very wet by now, for Peter seemed to have come off on the others. But when she had disentangled the truth of what had happened from their mixed and incoherent narrative, she owned that they had done quite right, and could not possibly have done otherwise. Nor did she put any obstacles in the way of their accepting the cordial invitation with which the bargeman had parted from them.
“Ye be here at seven tomorrow,” he had said, “and I’ll take you the entire trip to Farley and back, so I will, and not a penny to pay. Nineteen locks!”
They did not know what locks were; but they were at the bridge at seven, with bread and cheese and half a soda cake, and quite a quarter of a leg of mutton in a basket.
It was a glorious day. The old white horse strained at the ropes, the barge glided smoothly and steadily through the still water. The sky was blue overhead. Mr. Bill was as nice as anyone could possibly be. No one would have thought that he could be the same man who had held Peter by the ear. As for Mrs. Bill, she had always been nice, as Bobbie said, and so had the baby, and even Spot, who might have bitten them quite badly if he had liked.
“It was simply ripping, Mother,” said Peter, when they reached home very happy, very tired, and very dirty, “right over that glorious aqueduct. And locks—you don’t know what they’re like. You sink into the ground and then, when you feel you’re never going to stop going down, two great black gates open slowly, slowly—you go out, and there you are on the canal just like you were before.”
“I know,” said Mother, “there are locks on the Thames. Father and I used to go on the river at Marlow before we were married.”
“And the dear, darling, ducky baby,” said Bobbie; “it let me nurse it for ages and ages—and it was so good. Mother, I wish we had a baby to play with.”
“And everybody was so nice to us,” said Phyllis, “everybody we met. And they say we may fish whenever we like. And Bill is going to show us the way next time he’s in these parts. He says we don’t know really.”
“He said you didn’t know,” said Peter; “but, Mother, he said he’d tell all the bargees up and down the canal that we were the real, right sort, and they were to treat us like good pals, as we were.”
“So then I said,” Phyllis interrupted, “we’d always each wear a red ribbon when we went fishing by the canal, so they’d know it was us, and we were the real, right sort, and be nice to us!”
“So you’ve made another lot of friends,” said Mother; “first the railway and then the canal!”
“Oh, yes,” said Bobbie; “I think everyone in the world is friends if you can only get them to see you don’t want to be un-friends.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Mother; and she sighed. “Come, Chicks. It’s bedtime.”
“Yes,” said Phyllis. “Oh dear—and we went up there to talk about what we’d do for Perks’s birthday. And we haven’t talked a single thing about it!”
“No more we have,” said Bobbie; “but Peter’s saved Reginald Horace’s life. I think that’s about good enough for one evening.”
“Bobbie would have saved him if I hadn’t knocked her down; twice I did,” said Peter, loyally.
“So would I,” said Phyllis, “if I’d known what to do.”
“Yes,” said Mother, “you’ve saved a little child’s life. I do think that’s enough for one evening. Oh, my darlings, thank God you’re all safe!”
IX
The Pride of Perks
It was breakfast-time. Mother’s face was very bright as she poured the milk and ladled out the porridge.
“I’ve sold another story, Chickies,” she said; “the one about the King of the Mussels, so there’ll be buns for tea. You can go and get them as soon as they’re baked. About eleven, isn’t it?”
Peter, Phyllis, and Bobbie exchanged glances with each other, six glances in all. Then Bobbie said:—
“Mother, would you mind if we didn’t have the buns for tea tonight, but on the fifteenth? That’s next Thursday.”
“I don’t mind when you have them, dear,” said Mother, “but why?”
“Because it’s Perks’s birthday,” said Bobbie; “he’s thirty-two, and he says he doesn’t keep his birthday any more, because he’s got other things to keep—not rabbits or secrets—but the kids and the missus.”
“You mean his wife and children,” said Mother.
“Yes,” said Phyllis; “it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“And we thought we’d make a nice birthday for him. He’s been so awfully jolly decent to us, you know, Mother,” said Peter, “and we agreed that next
