and
prepared to sleep.

With the exception of Gregory, no one slept very well. Hester was
frightened by an owl which hooted close to the caravan, and Janet had
to hold her hand for quite a long time, which is a very uncomfortable
thing to do when you are in the berth below, and then, just as she was
going off again, a rabbit, pursued by a stoat, screamed right under
their wheels, as it seemed, and Hester's fright began anew.

Jack and Horace were probably a little over excited, for they were very
restless; and to be restless on the hard ground--with no springs, as in
our beds at home--is to get sore and wakeful; while Robert was intently
conscious of every sound and if you sleep in a field you hear thousands
of them--all the rustlings of the little shy nocturnal animals, tiny
squeakings and shrillings in the grass, as well as the cries of the
birds of prey. Now and then, too, a spider ran over his face and made
him jump, and very early the strong light poured into the mouth of the
tent and made it seem absurd to be in bed any longer.

The result was, that it was not till the morning that they began to
sleep properly at all, and that made them much less ready to get up
than they had expected to be.

CHAPTER 10

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND CARAVAN

The arrival of Kink at half-past six was a great relief. Robert hailed
him, and Kink said it was a beautiful morning.

"Don't you get up yet," he said, after Robert and Janet had both told
him of the night. "I'll make the fire and boil the kettle, and fetch
water, and so on, and you get up when I tell you. Otherwise, you'll all
be too tired and get ill."

And so they had the blessed experience of lying still and drowsy, and
hearing Kink move about for their comfort.

The boys were up first, and made extremely noisy toilets in the
washing-up basin, and then Jack and Gregory went off to the farm for
milk and butter and eggs, and Mrs. Gosden, who seemed, early as it was,
to be in the very middle of a day's work, and who refused to believe
that the boys were not deceiving her when they denied having sore
throats, gave them leave to gather strawberries, so that their return
to the Slowcoach was a new triumph.

Their breakfast was chiefly scrambled eggs, ham, and strawberries, and
by ten o'clock, true to their bargain, they were out of the field and
on the highroad, and no sign of their camp remained, save a black
circle caused by the fire and a slight crushing of t