“Come your ways in,” said the plump old lady. “Now you’ll have to take what we’ve got. I’m busy today and haven’t had time for cooking. You can have a bit of home-made meat-pie, or a slice or two of ham and tongue, or hard-boiled eggs and salad. Bless you, you look as pleased as Punch! I’ll put the lot on the table for you and you can help yourselves! Will that do? There’s no vegetables though. You’ll have to make do with pickled cabbage and my own pickled onions and beetroot in vinegar.”

“It sounds too marvellous for words,” said Julian. “We shan’t want any sweet after that!”

“There’s no pudding today,” said the old lady. “But I’ll open a bottle or two of our own raspberries and you can have them with cream if you like. And there’s the cream cheese I made yesterday too.”

“Don’t tell us any more!” begged Dick. “It makes me feel too hungry. Why is it that people on farms always have the most delicious food? I mean, surely people in towns can bottle raspberries and pickle onions and make cream cheese?”

“Well either they can’t or they don’t,” said George. “My mother does all those things - and even when she lived in a town she did. Anyway, I’m going to when I’m grown-up. It must be so wonderful to offer home-made things by the score when people come to a meal!”

It was extraordinary to think that any children could possibly eat the meal the four did, after having had such a huge breakfast. Timmy ate an enormous dinner too, and then lay down with a sigh. How he wished he could live at that farm-house! How lucky those other two dogs were!

A small girl came in shyly as they ate. “I’m Meg,” she said. “I live with my Gran. What are your names?”

They told her. Then Julian had an idea, “We’re walking over your moor,” he said. “We’ve been to lots of nice places. But there’s one we haven’t been to yet. Do you know it? It’s called Two-Trees.”

The little girl shook her head. “Gran would know,” she said. “Gran! Where’s Two-Trees?”

The old lady looked in at the door, “What’s that? Two-Trees? Oh, that was a lovely place once, but it’s all in ruins now. It was built beside a queer dark lake, in the middle of the moors. Let’s see now - what was it called?”

“Gloomy Water?” said Dick.

“Yes! That’s right. Gloomy Water,” said the old lady. “Are you thinking of going by there? You be careful then, there’s marshland around there, just when you least expect it! Now - would you like anything more?”

“No thank you,” said Julian, regretfully, and paid the very modest bill. “It’s the nicest lunch we’ve ever had. Now we must be off.”

“Off to Two-Trees and Gloomy Water, I hope!” George whispered to Dick. “That would be really exciting.”

Chapter Eleven

Julian’s idea

Once outside the farm-house Julian looked round at the others. “We’ll find out how far Two-Trees is and see if we’ve got time to pay it a visit,” he said. “If we have, we’ll go along there and snoop round. If we haven’t we’ll go tomorrow.”