The Cuckoo Tree by Joan Aiken Page A

a-seen a crumb of it if I hadn't come to fetch it, Dido thought, grasping the handle. Next moment, with a startled gasp, she almost dropped the whole supply on the bricks for, sitting on the table close by and revealed when she picked the basket up, was the largest rat she had ever seen, brindled, with a tail that must have been fully two feet long. It did not scurry away, as an ordinary rat would have done, but turned its head slowly and gave her a steady look; Dido felt a cold sensation between her shoulderblades.
    However she returned the look boldly.
    "
You'll
know me again, Frederick, that's for sure," she
said to it. "And I just hope you've kept your long whiskery nose out o' the Cap'n's cheese. Now, how'm I going to get yon basket up the rope?"
    She solved this problem by attaching the basket to the end of the rope and pulling it up after her; watched, meanwhile, by the rat, "as if," thought Dido, "he was learning how so he could do it himself next time."
    The rat was not the only creature that seemed to be watching her; she noticed, in a corner of Mrs. Lubbage's kitchen, a small carved wooden table exactly like the one she had seen at Tegleaze Manor, with little black faces and white-painted eyes that seemed to follow her.
    "If I never go back into that boggarty place again it'll be soon enough," she thought, scrambling back into her own loft; "blest if I know how Cris can stand
living
there. No wonder he seems a bit out o' the common.
    "Anyways, we got the grub."
    She lowered it down into Captain Hughes's sickroom, jumped down herself, and unpacked the hamper with exclamations of satisfaction.
    "Bread—butter—cold roast chicken—flask o' soup—cheese—red currant jelly—grapes—oranges—and a bottle o' wine. Couldn't a done you better if you'd been Admiral o' the Fleet," she told the Captain, and proceeded to heat up some of the soup for him and toast some of the bread.
    "I've poured in a dram o' wine as well, so it's right stin-go stuff," she said, giving him a bowlful. She herself ate an orange and a leg of chicken to hearten her for the scene
which she felt certain must follow Mrs. Lubbage's return and discovery that the basket was missing.
    Sure enough, at about sunset there was a tremendous thump on the door.
    "Hush! You'll wake the Cap'n!" Dido hissed, opening it.
    Outside stood Mrs. Lubbage, brawny arms akimbo, little black eyes snapping with rage.
    "Evening, missus," Dido greeted her politely, slipping out and closing the door. "Guess you was wanting to ask about the basket o' prog Lady Tegleaze sent down for us. Cap'n Hughes was fair clemmed wi' hunger, and you hadn't left word when you'd be back, so I jist nipped along and helped myself—hope that was all hunky-dory."
    The witch stared at her for a moment, started to say something, and then changed her mind.
    "How did you get in?" she asked at length, in a surly tone.
    Dido could not mention the loft, because of Cris, so she opened her eyes wide and innocently replied,
    "Why, how d'you think? Down the chimbley?"
    Mrs. Lubbage seemed annoyed but baffled by this answer and was about to ask another question; luckily at that moment a distant bleating, which had been drawing closer, became so loud that no further conversation was possible; Mr. Firkin had arrived home with his flock. Mrs. Lubbage stumped off angrily to her own cottage; Dido ran to help Mr. Firkin and Toby persuade the sheep to file through a gap between two hurdles and so into the pasture at the rear of the farmyard.
    As they passed through the gap, Mr. Firkin touched each sheep with his white crook, and Dido could hear him counting,
    "Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Pip—"
    Each time he came to
Den
he moved his hand down the crook, which had notches in it.
    "Mr. Firkin," said Dido, when the sheep were all safe in the field, and she was scrubbing potatoes in the old man's kitchen, and setting them to bake among the glowing logs in his fireplace.
    "Yes, darter?"
    "What was that you were