The Wind on the Moon (17 page)

In the blue lift of the sky, far above the cage, there was a little speck of matter that no one saw. It was the Silver Falcon watching like a sentry from his lonely post, and when he perceived that two small girls had halted by the cage and were pressing their faces between the bars, he turned a somersault for sheer excitement and joy, dived through the sunny air for eight hundred feet and roughly breasted the rising air to stop his swift descent, threw himself on to his back, rolled one way and then the other, and crying hoarsely, ‘Freedom's a noble thing!' climbed again to the silky fringe of a little cloud.

‘Puma, Puma!' whispered Dinah. ‘Here we are! We're going to let you out as soon as those people have gone.'

The Golden Puma lay on a rock, motionless and with unblinking eyes, about three yards away. She paid no attention.

‘You're talking English,' said Dorinda. ‘What's the use of that?'

‘I quite forgot!' exclaimed Dinah. ‘Puma, Puma—gnirk arkee ur bagreer zy rook, shim salee, gnaaar pupu, roor myaah nyiih kling. Shrings kraugh?'

Then the Puma turned her head, and her agate eyes, as if a lamp had been lighted behind them, shone suddenly with a wild joy. Swiftly she rose, and with the same movement leapt to the bars. ‘Now?' she asked. ‘Are you going to let me out now?'

‘Wait till those people are out of sight,' said Dinah. She explained what the Puma had to do, carefully described the Vicar's motor-car, and told her where to find it.

The Puma listened, purring with happiness, her whiskers stiff with excitement, her eyes like lighted lamps, and her restless tail sweeping the ground from side to side.

‘Now!' said Dorinda. ‘There's no one in sight. Quickly, Dinah!'

Dinah slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. Stretching her golden body in a great leap for freedom, the Puma bounded from the cage and a moment later was out of sight among some bushes on the other side of the road. Dinah locked the door again and she and Dorinda hurried away.

Before going to the Vicar's car they went to see Lady Lil, and found her sitting proudly on her nest with at least twenty people standing round, and Sir Bobadil beside her with a very virtuous look on his face—‘She's forgiven him,' said Dorinda—while Mr. Parker was pacing slowly behind the ring of spectators like a policeman on his beat. He was obviously determined that never again would an egg be stolen so long as he was there.

‘We have made Lady Lil happy again,' said Dinah.

‘And Mr. Parker looks quite pleased with himself,' said Dorinda. ‘I'm sure he thinks it was all due to him.'

‘I would like to speak to him,' said Dinah, ‘and tell him who we are. But he might make rather a fuss.'

‘He might be baffled again,' said Dorinda.

‘So we had better go and look for Mr. Steeple.'

They returned to the Vicar's motor-car and were greeted by a low growl from underneath it. Dinah knelt down. ‘Did anyone see you?' she asked.

‘No one,' said the Puma. ‘How long must I stay here? This machine has a most horrible smell.'

Dinah opened the door. ‘Get inside,' she said, and the Puma slid nimbly in. ‘But don't scratch the cushions,' she added, and covered the Puma with a dark-blue rug.

They waited for ten minutes and then the Vicar came.

‘What a lovely afternoon!' he exclaimed. ‘But you weren't in church this morning, and you weren't in church last Sunday, or the Sunday before, and I'm not sure of the Sunday before that. Why not?'

‘We've been away from home,' said Dinah.

‘Then I hope you have had a happy holiday,' said the Vicar. ‘And now, I suppose, you are waiting to see if I shall offer to drive you home?'

‘We're feeling very tired,' said Dorinda.

‘Then climb in,' said the Vicar, ‘and off we shall go. And as there are three of us we may as well pass the time by singing a round. Let us sing
Hot Spice Gingerbread
.'

So they drove out of the zoo, and the gate-keeper opened the main gate for them, and took off his hat to the Vicar, and Dinah held Dorinda's hand very tightly and both of them thought: ‘I wonder what the gate-keeper would say if he knew that he had opened the gate for two Kangaroos and a Puma?' But with perfectly innocent faces they looked straight in front of them and loudly sang:

Then, when the round was finished, the Vicar sighed deeply and said, ‘These are sad times we live in. My poor wife is still in prison, and so are all the other people, unhappy souls, who could not agree to find Mrs. Taper guilty, and would not consent to find her not guilty. Mr. Justice Rumple keeps them all in prison still.'

Dinah and Dorinda knew nothing about that, because it was on the very morning when they became kangaroos that Mrs. Steeple and all the other Members of the Jury were sent to prison—that was the procession, of prisoners and their friends, which they had so badly frightened—so the Vicar told them the whole story of the trial of Mrs. Taper and its dreadful consequences. And by the time the story was finished, they had reached home.

Dorinda opened the door of the car, and the Puma slipped quietly out. The Vicar did not look round. They thanked him very politely, and as he drove away they could hear him singing
There is a Tavern in the Town
. Then they hurried towards the long garden at the back of the house, the Puma following them in the shadow of the hedge, and when the rhododendron thicket was between them and the house the Silver Falcon, swooping from the sky, came down to meet them.

‘But you mustn't stay here,' said Dinah, as the Falcon and the Puma greeted each other. ‘It wouldn't be safe. You would be seen, and caught again, and taken back to the zoo.'

‘Never!' exclaimed the Puma. ‘Never again shall I be taken captive. Rather death than that.'

‘But you don't want to die if you can help it,' said Dorinda sensibly.

‘Go to the Forest of Weal,' said Dinah. ‘The Falcon knows the way. And as soon as we can—we shall have to do lessons every day, you know—we'll come and meet you near the tree where we hid our clothes. The Falcon knows where that is.'

‘Then I shall wait till then,' said the Puma, ‘to thank you for your most noble gift to me.'

‘Come soon!' cried the Falcon, leaping high into the air. ‘Follow me, Puma. Come and taste your freedom in the Forest. Good-bye, children!'

‘Till to-morrow,' said the Puma. ‘Good-bye till then!' And with a bouncing joyful movement, like a kitten at play, she crossed the grass and jumped the hedge and was out of sight.

‘Yesterday,' said Dorinda jealously, ‘we could jump as well as that.'

‘And to-day,' said Dinah, ‘we can sit in a comfortable chair, and have our tea, and read a lot of books, and go to sleep in our own beds. Come on, Dorinda. We've got to go and see Mother.'

‘Are we going to tell her what happened to us?'

‘No!' said Dinah. ‘Grown-up people would almost certainly say that it's extremely naughty to turn oneself into a kangaroo, and they might think it wrong of us to let the Puma out of the zoo. So we had better say nothing about it.'

‘Then it's going to be extremely awkward,' said Dorinda, ‘to explain why we've been away for so long.'

But when they went in they found their mother standing by the fireplace with a letter in her hand and a worried look on her face, and all she said to them was, ‘Children, you're late for your tea again! Now go and wash your hands and brush your hair, and do try to be quick.'

‘Very well,' said Miss Serendip, ‘if you won't tell me, freely and willingly, where you have been, then I certainly shan't try to compel you. All I shall say is this: any children with a proper sense of affection for their teacher, and a natural courtesy, would
not
behave as you are doing. Your mother, as you know, has been very seriously worried by certain news from Bombardy, where your father, it appears, is now in circumstances of considerable danger. I do not propose to add to her worry by asking her to find out where you have been and what you have been doing all this time, because I presume, from your reluctance to speak, that you have been
up to no good
. And your mother, if she discovered that, would be very much distressed. But I am made of sterner stuff! I have known you for two years now, and nothing you can tell me would shock or surprise me. So I shall give you one more chance to behave as children should behave to a teacher who has lavished so much care on them. Dinah, will you tell me where you have been?'

‘Please, Miss Serendip, I'd rather not.'

‘Dorinda, have you no manners either?'

‘Yes, Miss Serendip.'

‘Then will you tell me?'

‘I promised I wouldn't, Miss Serendip.'

That was more than a week after their return. Every day Miss Serendip had done her best to discover where they had been, but neither Dinah nor Dorinda would offer the smallest explanation, and Miss Serendip, because she could not satisfy her curiosity, was in a very ill humour.

‘Very well,' she repeated. ‘if you won't, you won't. But I shan't think any the better of you for this wanton, wilful, woeful display of hateful, horrible, heinous manners. And now to our lessons. We had begun, I think, the study of Geography.

‘Geography is the science that describes the earth. It is a very useful science. It teaches you that Coal comes from South Wales, Tapioca from Brazil, Tigers from Bengal, Nougat from Montélimar, and Sleepy Sickness from Portuguese Angola. When you are a little older you will also learn Philosophy. Philosophy is more difficult than Geography, because it tries to explain why, and for what purpose, there is coal in South Wales, tapioca in Brazil, tigers in Bengal, nougat in Montélimar, and the tsetse-fly which carries sleepy sickness in Angola. But do not think about such difficult questions in the meantime. For the present we shall occupy ourselves with Geography only, which is a good straightforward subject, and would be quite easy if it were not so big. But it happens to be a very big subject indeed, because the diameter of the Earth, measured round the Equator, is 24,901.8 English miles.

‘If we found ourselves upon the Equator in the middle of the South Atlantic—which, however, is unlikely to happen—and from there decided to travel westward, we should come in time to the mouth of the River Amazon, which drains four-fifths of South America, and for that, if for no other reason, must always be esteemed. If, however, we travelled eastward along the Equator, we should arrive on the coast of Africa a few miles south of the River Gabun, which is not really a river but an estuary of the sea, and was discovered by Portuguese navigators near the end of the fifteenth century. I would not, however, advise you to continue your journey any further in that direction, because it would be highly unpleasant and most unhealthy.

‘To find a really healthy climate, I should rather suggest your going to Bournemouth, in the county of Hampshire, which has an area of 1623.5 square miles and several streams where there is very good trout-fishing. It was invaded in
a.d.
495 by the West Saxons under Cerdic and Cynric. Cerdic later gave the Isle of Wight to a nephew of his called Stuf. Little did he think that many years later it would be the scene of Queen Victoria's death. Queen Victoria was born in Kensington Palace, but her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, had previously lived in Franconia, which was not without amenities of its own, and much cheaper to live in than Kensington.

‘Franconia was one of the principal duchies of mediaeval Germany. It lay along the valley of the River Main, which is 310 miles long, and winding its way among vine-clad hills, washes the walls of the University city of Würzburg.'

‘Are they dirty?' asked Dorinda.

‘Kindly refrain from interruption,' said Miss Serendip. ‘Würzburg is an interesting city where they make bricks and vinegar. The art of making bricks dates from very early times. Many are to be found in the ruins of Babylon, and the Great Wall of China, which is 1500 miles long and from twenty to thirty feet high, is partly constructed of brick. . . .'

Miss Serendip went on and on, talking in this manner about all sorts of things, until it seemed that even the Great Wall of China could be no longer than her idea of a geography lesson. And immediately after lunch, Dinah and Dorinda were horrified to hear her say: ‘In the ordinary way you would be receiving instruction this afternoon in Music and Dancing. But your teacher in those subjects, Mr. Casimir Corvo, is unhappily still in prison. We shall therefore take a walk in the Forest of Weal and pursue the study of Botany.'

But no sooner had they entered the Forest than Dinah and Dorinda took to their heels, ran down a ride, dodged behind an oak-tree, scampered along a twisting path where undergrowth concealed them, trotted up a soft and leafy slope under the shadow of enormous smooth-sided beeches, hurried over a low crest where holly grew, and in a little while were far away from Miss Serendip, who, having no wish to study botany all by herself, went home again and wrote long letters to most of her sisters.