Peter was now so weary that she had no answer to this. But she knew that she was going to like these Warrenders, and especially the girl at her side with the red hair and laughing grey eyes.

5. Mr Cantor

Keep View was a very ordinary and rather ugly house. It was not old, but there are tens of thousands of boarding houses like it all over the country, particularly at the seaside. The stairs were steep and led straight down into the hall, which smelt of furniture polish and linoleum. There was some coloured glass in the front door, and the dining-room on the left, and what Agnes called "the lounge" on the right.

Peter and Penny, who shared a room, were first up next morning. They were chatting away as they went into the dining-room where a cheerful fire was already blazing in the grate and a table set for eight was in the window. Outside the morning looked cold, grey and uninviting.

Jenny was next down.

"Oooh!" she said as she saw the fire and ran to it. "Isn't this fun? I had Mary in with me and she's still asleep. Every time I tried to wake her she just said: 'Go away, you beasts'... Besides, Mackie is on her bed and he growled at me... What shall we do this morning, do you think?... Oh! I know what we must do, don't you, Peter? We'll have to have a secret meeting first, won't we? I do wish the others would come... It's too bad of those boys to waste all this time. I know Dad said I could stay all the time until you all came back, but we do want to make the most of every minute, don't we?... Oh! Hello, Tom, where are the others?"

Tom yawned.

"This is a rum place isn't it? Not like I expected. I thought maybe it would be old and what Mary calls ghosty."

Next Jon and David clattered down the stairs, and as half past eight struck on the hall clock Agnes appeared, opened the hatch in the wall and called, "Porridge for all. Come and help yourselves. Hot porridge on a morning like this is as good as an overcoat my old father used to tell me..."

Then the twins, looking surprisingly bright and clean, slipped round the door and joined the porridge queue.

"You see how it is, twin?" Dickie was heard to murmur. "Another second and they would have taken our porridge... Nothing kept for us o' course."

"Just because we're the smallest, 'cept Mackie, we're kept out of the bathroom," Mary said, and then bowed almost graciously to Jon. "Good morning, big Jon! Was it you I heard snoring in a disgustin' manner in the middle of the night?... Mackie and me were disturbed..."

Jon knew the twins well enough to ignore this and Mary was not surprised when he got on with his porridge.