Winter Holiday

  “But you can’t make much of an expedition with only one,” said Peggy.

  “We shall all be at school,” said Roger dolefully.

  “Will you?” whispered Nancy. “Will you? Ow! My jaw! Galoots, the whole lot of you. Why, that was the very first thing I asked him . . .”

  “Nancy, Nancy!” cried Mrs Blackett, coming out of the drawing-room with the doctor, “go back to bed this minute.”

  “Ask him yourselves,” said Nancy, and disappeared in a hurry.

  “She means we can’t get rid of you,” said the doctor. “They won’t have you back at school until I can say that there’s no chance of your coming out with mumps after you get there and giving it to everybody else.”

  “Mrs Jackson’s got a spare room at Holly Howe, hasn’t she?” Mrs Blackett asked Susan.

  “There’s the one mother and Bridget were in.”

  “We’ll have to get her to put Peggy in it. She’ll go back with you now. The doctor very kindly says he’ll drive you round.”

  “Can’t we go in the boat?” said Peggy.

  “Who is to bring it back? And what about you Swallows? Your mother told me she was leaving the health papers with one of you for me to sign the day you go back.”

  “I’ve got them,” said John.

  “If they’re the same as Nancy’s and Peggy’s you won’t be able to go back either. I don’t know what your mother’ll say. I feel most dreadfully to blame. But really, where Nancy managed to pick it up I don’t know. There’s no mumps in the valley.”

  “Not go back to school?” said Roger.

  “For how long?” asked Titty.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs Blackett. “Pretty nearly a month, I suppose, unless one of you comes out with it, and then it’ll be longer still.”

  “None of you feels like it now?” asked the doctor. “No stiff jaws?”

  And then, suddenly, Mrs Blackett turned to Dorothea. “And what about you?” she asked, making a rueful face. “Have you got certificates to sign, too?”

  “Mother put them in an envelope and gave them to Mrs Dixon,” said Dorothea.

  “And money for the tickets,” said Dick.

  Mrs Blackett laughed. “Well, well,” she said, “I’m coming round to see Mrs Jackson this afternoon to talk about Peggy, and I’ll go on and talk to Mrs Dixon at the same time. Off you go now. You mustn’t keep the doctor waiting.”

  “Oh, bother,” said Peggy. “The boat’s just tied to the bank, and there’s ice in the boathouse. We ought to take it right out if we’re not going to use it.”

  “I’ll have it hauled out for you,” said Mrs Blackett.

  “I’m sure Nancy’d say we ought to do it now,” said Peggy.

  “I’ll give them a hand,” said the doctor.

  “That’s really very good of you,” said Mrs Blackett. “I’ll just scribble a note to Mrs Jackson.”

  The doctor, with seven helpers, made short work of hauling the rowing boat up the bank and turning it over on the top of a couple of low trestles that Peggy brought out of the boathouse. The alpine rope, now not to be used for Kanchenjunga, was stowed in the car. Mrs Blackett came out with her note.

  “I suppose it’s all right my going round there this afternoon,” she said, “after being with Nancy?”

  “Don’t kiss her,” said the doctor, smiling, “or Peggy either.”

  “I don’t want to. Horrid little wretches, both of them,” said Mrs Blackett, and made a face at Peggy, when she saw how surprised she looked.

  “What about the party?” said Peggy.

  “You’ll just have to have it at Holly Howe,” said Mrs Blackett. “I’m very sorry, Dorothea, but you see how it is.”

  “Of course,” said Dorothea. She had known the moment they landed that something was wrong. Illness explained everything, and nobody could possibly mind.

  “In you go,” said the doctor. “Room for everybody.”

  Mrs Blackett waved from the step.

  In another moment the car was moving out of the gate. The visit to Beckfoot was over, and they were on their way to Holly Howe, over the little bridge, and round by the head of the lake.

  CHAPTER IX

  QUARANTINE

  “AND so Miss Nancy’s got mumps,” said Mrs Jackson at Holly Howe, looking at the note Mrs Blackett had sent her. “And Miss Peggy’s to sleep here. And none of them had a bite to eat. And you two from Dixon’s and all. Eh, deary me, but it’s a lucky thing we’ve the cold roast beef to cut at.”

  “No one’s ever gone short in your house yet, Mrs Jackson,” said the doctor. “Well, good luck to you all. I’ll be round to see them every now and then. And better let me know at once the moment any of them feels a bit stiff in the jaw.”

  He drove off out of the yard and up the field, taking Roger with him to hop out, open the gate into the road, and shut it after the car had gone through.

  By the time Roger had come running down again, Mrs Jackson had a cloth laid, and was dealing out platefuls of cold roast beef and ham. John had bolted upstairs to fetch their school health certificates. The doctor had just glanced at them and nodded. Susan, Titty, and Peggy were reading them now, and hungry as everybody was, they found the certificates so interesting that Mrs Jackson asked them what had become of their appetites.

  Susan showed hers to Dorothea.

  On the top of it, in large handsome letters, was the name of a school, and then, under it, in ordinary type: –

  “I hereby certify that during the last holidays ................ (‘That space is for our names,’ said Susan) has not suffered from any infectious disorder, and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, has not been where any infectious disorder existed . . .

  Signature...........................

  Note. – If the above certificate cannot be signed, the pupil concerned must not return to the school without permission.”

  “There’s no getting out of it,” said Susan. “The things can’t be signed.”

  “Who wants to get out of it?” said Peggy. “Nancy said herself it’s the very best thing that could have happened.”

  “It’s really as if the Christmas holidays began today instead of on the day they did begin,” said Titty.

  “It’s lucky it’s not the football term,” said John. “A month might make just the difference about getting into the fifteen. But anyhow, it’ll be pretty awful coming back to find everybody a whole month to windward and have all that leeway to make up.”

  “Mother’ll be awfully bothered about it,” said Susan. “She’ll be wondering if she oughtn’t to come home.”

  “Well, she jolly well mustn’t,” said John. “We’ve none of us got it yet anyway.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Titty.

  Roger, like Peggy, thoroughly agreed with Nancy. For some minutes he had been busy and silent but he had been thinking things over like the rest of them.

  “Of course it’s too late now,” he said at last, while his plate was being passed along for a second helping, “or we could have put an advertisement in the newspaper.”

  “What do you mean?” said Susan.

  “Mumps for anyone who wants them,” said Roger.

  “Anybody’d be willing to pay quite a lot of his pocket-money to have mumps so that he’d get an extra month of holiday.”

  Everybody laughed, but Roger went on: “Why not? We’ve got an extra month just because we’ve seen Nancy. She could charge sixpence each to shake hands with people. Anybody’d be glad to pay. But it’s too late now . . .”

  “How do you mean, too late?” said Peggy.

  “By the time we got the advertisement printed everybody else will have gone back to school.”

  “Money-grubbing little brute,” said John.

  “Well, of course, she could shake hands free with anybody she really liked,” said Roger.

  Dorothea had been listening as if the whole question hardly concerned Dick and herself. It was these others who were going t
o be here a whole month longer than they had expected.

  “Are your papers just the same?” Susan asked her.

  “I don’t know,” said Dorothea. “Perhaps it isn’t all schools that mind.”

  “I bet they do,” said John. “No school wants to have a whole lot of people bursting out with spots all over, or faces like pumpkins, or turning red like lobsters or green and yellow with any kind of plague. Of course, they all do their best to keep clear.”

  “Roger’s all wrong,” said Titty. “Everybody’ll want us to keep away. If it was summer, we’d have to hoist a yellow flag on Swallow.”

  “On Amazon too,” said Peggy.

  “But what for?” said Dick.

  “Haven’t you ever been to sea?” said Roger.

  “Steady on, Roger,” said John.

  “Why yellow?” asked Dorothea.

  “Quarantine,” said John.

  “To show that we’ve come from a plague port and can’t go ashore till we’ve been passed by the doctor,” said Peggy.

  “Nancy wouldn’t have a quarantine flag,” said John. “She’d have the plague flag itself, squares of yellow and black.”

  “Let’s make her one,” said Titty.

  And with that all doubts were gone. Good or bad, the mumps could not be helped. And here was something that could be done at once. The moment Mrs Jackson came in with a big cold apple tart, which she had luckily cooked the day before, Peggy and Susan and Titty, all together, asked her if she had some yellow stuff and some black that would do for the making of a flag.

  “We must put a yellow flag on the envelope when we write to Malta,” said Titty. “So as to break the news gently. I’ve got my paint-box.”

  “Let’s get a plague flag done so that mother can take it back with her this afternoon,” said Peggy.

  “We must hoist a yellow one on the igloo,” said Titty.

  “And we’ll take it with us to hoist at the North Pole,” said John.

  “The Polar bears won’t be keen on getting mumps,” said Roger. “It’ll keep them off like anything.”

  Luckily some visitor or other had been making a yellow silk frock while staying at Holly Howe and had left a lot of bits. Mrs Jackson had been meaning to send them across the lake to old Mrs Swainson down at Low End, who always wanted scraps for her patchwork quilts. “But you know how it is,” she said, “what with one thing and another, jobs don’t get done by thinking of them,” and so the yellow silk scraps were still at Holly Howe.

  “Mrs Swainson won’t mind,” said Titty. “She’s got baskets and baskets full of scraps already.”

  “And a quarantine flag’s more important than a quilt,” said Roger. “It doesn’t matter what colour a quilt is, but a quarantine flag’s simply got to be yellow.”

  So, later in the afternoon, when Mrs Blackett arrived at Holly Howe in a hired car, bringing with her into the house a strong smell of carbolic soap, she found everybody busy. Mrs Jackson had torn up an old black petticoat, and Susan had cut out two yellow squares and two black ones and she and Dorothea had stitched them neatly together, folding the edges one over another so that there should be no fraying when the flag was flying in the wind. John, with Dick and Roger as eager pupils, had put a loop in one end of a short piece of thin rope, and at the other end had fixed a little wooden toggle carved out of a bit of firewood. Susan was now putting in the last stitches in fixing the little plague flag on its rope, while the three boys were busy with more ropes and toggles for the quarantine flags of plain yellow silk that were being hemmed by Peggy and Titty.

  “What on earth are you all doing?” asked Mrs Blackett. “Is this a Dorcas party?”

  Susan held up the black and yellow flag, finished and ready for hoisting.

  “Plague flag,” said Peggy. “For you and Nancy to hoist at Beckfoot. The plain yellow ones are for us, to show that we don’t know yet whether we’re plague-stricken or not.”

  “Poor old Nancy won’t do much flag-hoisting just yet,” said her mother. “She’s got no end of a temperature this afternoon.”

  “She will when you show her the flag,” said Peggy.

  “Well, I’ll take it,” said Mrs Blackett, “but I don’t promise to hand it over at once. And now I want to see those school papers. Oh, you’ve got them ready, have you? . . . Yes. I thought so. You’ll have to make up your minds to another month of holidays, and I dare say you’re as pleased as Punch over it. I must just have a talk with Mrs Jackson and then I’ll take you two on with me and we’ll see what your schools have to say about it.”

  She went off and they heard her laughing in the kitchen with Mrs Jackson. Then they heard her going upstairs to look at Peggy’s room. “Quarantine begins from today,” they heard her saying as she was coming downstairs again. “Twenty-eight days, the doctor says, and if any of them gets mumps now, it’ll be another twenty-eight days from then. No, I’ll not be coming over again until Nancy’s clear of infection. If it was only Peggy it wouldn’t matter, but with the Walkers and these other children all with their parents out of England, I won’t take any risk at all. Anybody who gets it will come across to Beckfoot to be nursed. Oh no, not the Callum children. I’m sure Mrs Dixon will want to look after them.”

  She put her head in at the door.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Mrs Jackson’s got no one else coming, so she’s going to keep the lot of you. I’m sure that’s what Mrs Walker would like best. I’m going to write to her this evening.”

  “We all will,” said John.

  “Put a yellow flag on the back of your envelope,” said Roger.

  “I’ll paint one at once,” said Titty.

  “Good,” said Mrs Blackett. “I’ll use it if you have it ready by the time I come back. Are you ready, you two?”

  “Are you going to signal tomorrow?” said Dick as he went out.

  “Signalling as usual,” said John.

  “Don’t forget your quarantine flag,” said Titty, and Dick put it in his pocket and took it with him.

  *

  Ten minutes later, Mrs Blackett, Dorothea and Dick were at Dixon’s Farm, and Mrs Blackett was saying that really just then she would rather not have any elderberry wine, and how was Mr Dixon, and was Silas still bothered with his rheumatism, and what a hand Mrs Dixon had for pastry . . . those pork pies . . . and so to the question she had come about – of Nancy’s mumps, and whether it would affect Dick’s and Dorothea’s going back to school. With Mrs Dixon and Mrs Blackett in the room together, the air was so full of talk that it left Dorothea feeling almost out of breath, although she herself had said nothing at all.

  “Aye,” said Mrs Dixon, at last, “I have them. Mrs Callum, poor lamb, she gave them to me just as we were catching that train, and you know what it is, Mrs Blackett, catching trains in towns, not like going up to the station here and having a word with old Bob, that’s been porter and guard these thirty year. Yes, she gave me all their papers, but I’ve never looked into them to this day, though I had it in my mind to look tomorrow, with them going back to school so soon.”

  “But they won’t be going back. At least I don’t think so. Mumps. Didn’t I explain? Nancy’s gone down with it today, so I’ve sent Peggy over to stay with the Walker children at Holly Howe. They can none of them go back to school for a month, because they’ve been playing with Nancy right up to the last minute. The same with these. They may not be able to go back, either. And what’s to be done about that? We’d better have a look at those papers, to make sure.”

  “What’s to be done about it, Mrs Blackett? Why, what do you think, now? I nursed their mother through mumps thirty year ago, and if they get mumps here, why, they’re welcome, and I’ll nurse them, too. With Mrs Callum away with the Professor, digging up bones and rubbish heaps, poor lambs, they’ll be better with me than in any school . . .”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  “And what is mumps, after all?” said Mrs Dixon. “Why, in my young days we thought nothing of it. Bu
t where’s the good of them taking it back to school with them and having it there, lying in a draught likely, and Mrs Callum so far away . . . Why,” Mrs Dixon suddenly laughed, “I mind now, when she had mumps herself, she had two of her dolls have mumps at the same time, and the way she looked after them would have been a lesson to a doctor. She kept me fairly on the run, what with hot poultices for their poor cheeks, and tying handkerchiefs round their swollen jaws. And I mind now how angry she was if I said owt to make her laugh, not that she cared for herself, oh no, but her two dolls had mumps so bad they couldn’t bear laughing, no, not so much as a smile.”

  “Mother’s often told us about those two dolls,” said Dorothea.

  “And are you like Nancy and Peggy, not caring about dolls?” asked Mrs Blackett, when Mrs Dixon had hurried upstairs at last to find that envelope.

  “I used to like them once,” said Dorothea, “a long time ago.”

  Mrs Blackett was already thinking of something else. “There’s this about it,” she said. “You might have picked up mumps anywhere – in the train or, oh, anywhere, even if you had never met Nancy at all.”

  Mrs Dixon came down with the certificates, and one glance was enough to show Mrs Blackett that it was the same with the Callums as it was with the Walkers. “There you are,” she said, “‘suffered from . . . associated with any person suffering from any infectious disorder . . . not to return to school until expiration of the normal quarantine period for such disorder.’ No. There’s no going back to school for either of them.”

  Letters had to be written to explain that Dick and Dorothea would not be coming back on the usual day, and as Mrs Dixon said she was no hand at letter-writing and Dixon was no better, Mrs Blackett sat down to write the letters at once so that Mrs Dixon could sign them. After that she drove off again in a hurry to call at Holly Howe to make sure of Mrs Walker’s address in Malta, and then to go back to Beckfoot to care for her exulting patient.