Cregga stopped talking. Holding up a paw for silence, she listened, and after a while she smiled. “Come out, you two. Blinny and Wugger, if I’m not mistaken.”

The two molebabes crawled from behind the sofa.

“Hurr, you’m surrpintly bain’t mistaken, ’tis us’ ’n’s.”

“Burr, ’ow did ee knowed ’twas us’n’s, mum?”

Cregga judged they were within paw range and swept both Dibbuns up onto her lap. “I just knowed, that’s all. Now what are you two after in Friar Butty’s gatehouse?”

“We’m horful thursty, marm. Ee sun be ’ot out thurr!”

Song poured them a beaker each of the cool rosehip tea, smiling as she watched them noisily sucking it up.

“Been playing hard, I suppose. Where’s your pal got to, that rascally mousebabe Dwopple?”

Blinny drained the last of her drink, wiping a paw across her mouth. “Us’n’s never goed on ee walltop, miz, ’onest we’m din’t!”

Butty wagged his quill pen at the molebabes. “But Dwopple did, eh? What was he doing up there?”

“Ee’m talkin’ to mista Stickybee. We’m tol’ ’im not to go oop thurr, but D’opple a likkle naughtybeast, hurr aye.”

Friar Butty shook his head wearily. “He certainly is. Song, would you and your friends like to go and get that little wretch down off the ramparts before he does something silly and injures himself? Which wall was it, Blinny?”

“Norff wall, zurr. Ee’m oop thurr a-talkin’ wi’ mista Stickybee.”

Dannflor patted the molebabe’s velvety head. “Don’t you fret, young ’un, we’ll get mister Stickybee down too, whoever he is. Come on, Dipp.”

The three chums mounted the walltop by the gatehouse steps and trotted along the north wall. Song searched carefully around the angle of each battlement, while Dippler and Dann covered the east wall adjoining.

“There’s no sign of ’im ’ere, Song.”

“No, he’s not here either, Dipp. What d’you think, Dann?”

“Oh, the little wretch prob’ly got fed up and got down by himself. Perhaps he’s by the pond. Let’s take a look over that way.”

Florian and the troupe were singing a comic song for their audience, who were not just Dibbuns, but many Redwallers who had finished their chores. The onlookers were in pleats laughing at the antics of the Noonvale Companions as they performed funny walks in time to their song, encouraging the Dibbuns to get up and join in with them. The little creatures needed no second urging and paraded joyfully with the troupe.

“Oh come along dearies follow me,

I’ll take ye down t’the sycamore tree,

Plum pudden an’ turnover, apple pie.

Beneath its spreadin’ boughs we’ll lie,

With veggible pasty an’ damson tart,

We’ll wheel it along in a little cart,

The birds will sing ’Give us some do.’

Oh the food’s for us an’ the crumbs for you,