"Blyton, Enid - Adv 04 - Sea of Adventure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blyton Enid)

Enid Blyton: The Sea of Adventure (Adventure #4)





Chapter 1

NO GOVERNESS, THANK YOU!



"DO YOU know, it's May the fifth already!" said Jack, in a very gloomy voice. "All the fellows will be back at school today."

"What a pity, what a pity!" said Kiki the parrot, in just as gloomy a voice as Jack's.

"This awful measles!" said Lucy-Ann. "First Philip had it as soon as he came home for the hols, then Dinah, then she gave it to me, and then you had it!"

"Well, we're all out of quarantine now," said Dinah, from her corner of the room. "It's just silly of the doctor to say we ought to go away and have a change before we go back to school. Isn't it enough change to go back to school? I do so love the summer term too."

"Yes Ч and I bet I'd have been in the first eleven," said Philip, pushing back the tuft of hair he had in front. "Golly, I'll be glad to get my hair cut again! I feel like a girl, now it's grown so long!"

The four children had all had a bad attack of measles in the holidays. Jack especially had had a very nasty time, and Dinah's eyes had given her a lot of trouble. This was partly her own fault, for she had been forbidden to read, and had disobeyed the doctor's orders. Now her eyes kept watering, and she blinked in any bright light.

"Certainly no school work for Dinah yet," the doctor had said, sternly. "I suppose you thought you knew better than I did, young lady, when you disobeyed orders. Think yourself lucky if you don't have to wear glasses a little later on!"

"I hope Mother won't send us away to some awful boarding-house by the sea," said Dinah. "She can't come with us herself, because she's taken on some kind of important job for the summer. I hope she doesn't get us a governess or something to take us away."

"A governess!" said Philip in scorn. "I jolly well wouldn't go. And anyway she wouldn't stay now that I'm training young rats."

His sister Dinah looked at him in disgust. Philip always had some kind of creature about him, for he had a great love of animals. He could do anything he liked with them, and Lucy-Ann secretly thought that if he met a roaring tiger in a jungle, he would simply hold out his hand, and the tiger would lick it like a dog, and purr happily like a cat.

"I've told you, Philip, that if you so much as let me see one of your young rats I'll scream!" Dinah said.

"All right, then, scream!" said Philip obligingly. "Hey, Squeaker, where are you?"

Squeaker appeared above the neck of Philip's jersey collar, and true to his name he squeaked loudly. Dinah screamed.

"You beast, Philip! How many of those things have you got down your neck? If we had a cat I'd give them all to her."

"Well, we haven't," said Philip, and poked Squeaker's head down his collar again.

"Three blind mice," remarked Kiki the parrot, with great interest, cocking her head on one side and watching for Squeaker to appear again.

"Wrong, Kiki, old bird," said Jack, lazily putting out a hand and pulling at his parrot's tail feathers. "Far from being three blind mice, it's one very wide-awake rat. I say, Kiki, why didn't you catch measles from us?"

Kiki was quite prepared to have a conversation with Jack. She gave a loud cackle, and then put her head down to be scratched. "How many times have I told you to shut the door?" she cried. "How many times have I told you to wipe your feet? Wipe the door, shut your feet, wipe the . . ."

"Hey, you're getting muddled!" said Jack, and the others laughed. It was always comical when Kiki mixed up the things she loved to say. The parrot liked to make people laugh. She raised her head, put up her crest, and made a noise like a mowing-machine outside in the garden.