It could not have been more than about five o’clock when the boys set out again, but they made most of the remainder of their journey in so leisurely a fashion that it was past three in the afternoon before they were well into Eastwich, and they would have been later still had it not been for the secret lift which they obtained by hanging on to the pigs’ cart for the last two miles of the way. What they had been doing all the time it would have been hard to say; they had begged their breakfast at one farm and their lunch at another—neither meal was more than a drink of water and a hunch of bread each, but the bread tasted delicious, eaten under the hedge, after that long, hungry walk; they had played about; Micky had had such a successful fight with a little boy who had called after them, that Diamond Jubilee held out hopes that he might eventually develop into the same kind of person as a certain friend of his, who had, he said, ‘been in quod fifteen times for fighting, and would knock a chap down sooner than look at him’; and they had passed the time of day with most of the animals they met; but still, even allowing for all this, it must be owned that their progress was decidedly slow.
‘I reckon,’ remarked Diamond Jubilee, when at last they did find themselves strolling through the streets of Eastwich—it was at just about same time that Emmeline was making her way to Green Ginger Land—‘I reckon we’d better get some money afore we go to Mother Grimes’. She aren’t pleased if you come in without money, or wipes, or such, and sometimes she beat you something awful.’
Micky had not the slightest idea what ‘wipes’ might be, but he was not going to give himself away by asking.
‘Does she ever go on beating you till you bleed?’ he inquired with interest. He had never been beaten in his life, and was not in the least dismayed at the prospect, as a more experienced little boy might have been. On the contrary, he regarded it as adding just that touch of danger without which no adventure is complete.
‘I’ve bled whole basins’ full before now!’ boasted Diamond Jubilee. ‘It aren’t much of a treat, I can tell you, when once Mother Grimes starts a good old set-to, so I reckon we’ll go to the Fair for a bit and do coach-wheels for the folks to throw us money before we go home.’