t the inside of a caravan is so exciting that I hardly know
how to hold my pen. The inside of a caravan! Can you imagine a better
phrase than that? I can't. If Coleridge's statement is true that poetry
is the best words in the best order, then that is the best poem: the
inside of a caravan!

The caravan was sixteen feet six inches long and six feet two inches
high inside. From the ground it stood ten feet. It was six feet four
inches wide. If you measure these distances in the dining room, you
will see how big it was, and you will be able to imagine yourselves in
it.

The woodwork was all highly varnished, and very new and clean. More
than halfway down the caravan were heavy curtains hanging across it,
and behind these was the bedroom, containing four beds, two on each
wall, on hinged shelves, that could be let down flat against the
wall-by day, when the folding chairs could be unfolded, and the bedroom
then became a little boudoir.

The floor space was, however, filled this afternoon with great bundles
which turned out to be gypsy tents and sleeping sacks. "For the boys
and Kink to sleep in," said Janet; "but we must be very careful about
waterproof sheeting on the ground first."

The rest of the caravan, between the door and the bedroom--about ten
feet--was the kitchen and living room. Here every inch of the wall was
used, either by chairs that folded back like those in the corridors of
railway carriages, or by shelves, racks, cupboards, or pegs. There were
two tables, which also folded to the wall.

The stove was close to the door, but of course, no one who lives in a
caravan ever uses the stove except when it is raining. You make the
fire out of doors at all other times, and swing the pot from three
sticks. (Hedgehog stew! Can't you smell it?) There were kitchen
utensils on hooks and racks on each side of the stove which was covered
in with shining brass, and rows of enameled cups and saucers, and
plates, and knives and forks. The living room floor was covered with
linoleum; the bedroom floor had a carpet. Swinging candlesticks were
screwed into the wall here and there. It was more like the cabin of a
ship than anything on land could ever be, and Jack Rotheram began to
weaken towards it.

In course of time other things were discovered, showing what a thorough
person X. was. A large India rubber bath, for instance, and a bath
sheet to go under it. A Beatrice oil stove and oil. An electric torch
for sudden req