"I know. His little girl friend, Dickie. That's what he thinks." Then in a wheedling, sweet-as-sugar-candy little voice, "David dear. PLEASE let us see Peter's letter NOW. We're tired out, David dear, you makin' us hurry like this."

"It's all we ask," her twin went on. "Jus' a silly little thing like seeing a letter. Nothin' difficult like making the sweet ration go round, f'rinstance. Jus' reading a letter and findin' out when she's coming..."

"Silly, I call it..."

"We call it, twin. Jus' silly... an' selfish, of course."

David turned round.

"If you didn't talk so much, Dickie, you'd remember your jobs. Now you'll have to go back to the stream and fill the kettle. And then you'll both have to find some twigs to start the fire - there will be plenty at this time of year just inside the wood. And before you go back, Dickie, I'll tell you once and for all that I'm not going to open the letter until we're in the camp and Tom is with us. You're both little nuisances today, so buck up and get some wood and some water and we'll open up camp... And why are you so impatient, anyway? It doesn't matter, does it, when you hear what Peter has to say?"

Mary looked at her twin and they both grinned before turning back together to the stream to fill the kettle.

The Lone Pine Camp which Mary and Peter had found last summer was a lovely little hollow of green turf hidden by gorse and brambles at the top of the wild hillside of the Witchend valley. One solitary great pine tree stood as a sentinel in the centre of the clearing, and, from even its lowest branches, a look-out could see down into Witchend itself, across the dense wood below, right up the lonely winding valley to the tableland of the Long Mynd. Apart from a narrow tunnel under the gorse, through which only the twins could squeeze, there was but one entrance to the camp, and now, as David pushed his way through the brambles which seemed to have grown since the Christmas holidays, Dickie said:

"Gosh! I hope nobody has found it while we've been away."

All was well. There were no signs of enemy occupation - no scraps of paper, empty tins or cigarette ends. The stones of the fireplace were still in position and the framework of the shelter, which in the summer was covered with bracken, was still intact.

"Put down the kettle, kids," he said, "and run off for some kindling. Bring some fir cones, too, and we'll soon have the fire going."