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Wet Magic look as if I was going to eat you, you little Peter Grievouses. I'll hot up some milk and here's a morsel of bread and dripping to keep the cold out. Lucky for you I was up—getting the boys' breakfast ready. The boats'll be in directly. The boys will laugh when I tell them—laugh fit to bust their selves they will." "Oh, don't tell," said Mavis, "don't, please don't. Please, please don't."

"Well, I like that," said Mrs. Pearce, pouring herself some tea from a pot which, the children learned later, stood on the hob all day and most of the night; "it's the funniest piece I've heard this many a day. Shrimping at high tide!"

"I thought," said Mavis, "perhaps you'd forgive us, and dry our clothes, and not tell anybody."

"Oh, you did, did you?" said Mrs. Pearce. "Anything else—?"

"No, nothing else, thank you," said Mavis, "only I want to say thank you for being so kind, and it isn't high tide yet, and please we haven't done any harm to the barrow—but I'm afraid it's rather wet, and we oughtn't to have taken it without asking, I know, but you were in bed and—"

"The barrow?" Mrs. Pearce repeated. "That great hulking barrow—you took the barrow to bring the shrimps home in? No—I can't keep it to myself—that really I can't—" she lay back in the armchair and shook with silent laughter.

The children looked at each other. It is not pleasant to be laughed at, especially for something you have never done—but they both felt that Mrs. Pearce would have laughed quite as much, or even more, if they had told her what it really was they had wanted the barrow for.

"Oh, don't go on laughing," said Mavis, creeping close to Mrs. Pearce, "though you are a ducky darling not to be cross any more. And you won't tell, will you?" 64