The girl looked at the twins in astonishment. "Why, you're exactly alike," she said. "What fun!" Then she must have seen Dickie dash a hand across his eyes. "I'm sorry I laughed," she went on. "It was silly of me. Expect it was the excitement... it was jolly plucky of you standing still like that. Much more difficult for you than for us. He was brave, wasn't he?" she finished, turning to David. Then "Let's be friends, shall we?" and she held out her hand.

"All right. ALL RIGHT," muttered the embarrassed Dickie, trying to scrape some slime off his face. "That's all right."

But he made an ineffectual grab at the girl's hand while Mary said, "We don't mind being friends, but you mustn't come and say things like that to us. Not to Dickie and me."

David was pulling his shoes on again. He laughed. "We're all being a bit silly, but let's get away from this smelly place. No, it's not you, Dickie. Only the bog! Let's go and clean ourselves up and have something to eat. I'm famished."

The girl and the pony led the way back over the stream, and they climbed up to where they had first seen her on the top of the ridge. There they took stock of each other properly.

The Mortons saw a girl of between fourteen and fifteen with a brown, laughing face, clear blue eyes, and two long, fair pig-tails. She was wearing old brown jodhpurs and a bright blue shirt open at the neck. She stood with one hand on her pony's neck, smiling at them.

"Who are you? How did you get up here?"

David told the girl briefly who they were and where they had come from.

When he had finished she laughed. "But how lovely! We must form a secret club or something. I live here - not far away, at Hatchholt by the reservoir."

"By the what?" said David excitedly.

"The reservoir, silly! But of course you wouldn't know. My father looks after it, and we live up here all alone. Except for my pony, Sally," she went on. "You must all come and see it now and you can have your picnic while Father and I have our dinner, and then I'll show you some more this afternoon."

"But we're on our way to the top of the Mynd," said David. "Can you show us the way up? We must find it today."

"Yes, I'll take you up this afternoon," said the girl, "but let's get going now. I can't think how you got up here, though. This is a stupid gutter, and it's dangerous, too, with all those bogs. Did you come up by the waterfall?"

"We were just exploring," he said, "and the waterfall looked fun so we thought we'd climb up and look round... But we don't know your name, and you know ours."

"It's Peter," the girl said.

"But it can't be," said Mary.