about stopping up here all night. Oh, Panther - I want to go home!
I want to go home!'

'Hush, hush,' Anthea said. 'Don't, dear. It'll be all right,
somehow. Don't, don't -'

'Let her cry,' said Robert desperately; 'if she howls loud enough,
someone may hear and come and let us out.'

'And see the soda-water thing,' said Anthea swiftly. 'Robert,
don't be a brute. Oh, Jane, do try to be a man! It's just the
same for all of us.'

Jane did try to 'be a man' - and reduced her howls to sniffs.

There was a pause. Then Cyril said slowly, 'Look here. We must
risk that syphon. I'll button it up inside my jacket - perhaps no
one will notice it. You others keep well in front of me. There
are lights in the clergyman's house. They've not gone to bed yet.
We must just yell as loud as ever we can. Now all scream when I
say three. Robert, you do the yell like the railway engine, and
I'll do the coo-ee like father's. The girls can do as they please.
One, two, three!'

A fourfold yell rent the silent peace of the evening, and a maid at
one of the Vicarage windows paused with her hand on the blind-cord.

'One, two, three!' Another yell, piercing and complex, startled
the owls and starlings to a flutter of feathers in the belfry
below. The maid fled from the Vicarage window and ran down the