Enid Blyton: The Valley of Adventure (Adventure #3)
Chapter 1
UP IN BILL’S AEROPLANE
KIKI the parrot was annoyed. She had been left all alone for a day, and she talked angrily to herself.
“What a pity, what a pity, what a pity, poor, poor Polly! Ding-dong bell, Polly’s down the well, good morning, good morning!”
Mrs. Mannering put her head in at the door of the room where Kiki was sitting.
“Kiki, don’t be so absurd! Talking away to yourself all day like that! The children will soon be back.”
“Ding-dong bell,” said Kiki mournfully, and made a cracking noise with her beak.
“I suppose you miss Jack,” said Mrs. Mannering, coming into the room and shutting the door carefully behind her. “He won’t be long now, Kiki. You’ll hear him and the others any minute. Now be a good bird and don’t make any more noise.”
Kiki opened her beak, swelled up her throat and gave her famous imitation of an express train screeching on entering a tunnel. Mrs. Mannering put her hands to her ears.
“Naughty Kiki, naughty! How many times have we told you not to do that?”
“How many times have I told you to shut the door, shut the door, shut the door,” answered back Kiki, and ruffled up her feathers so cheekily that Mrs. Mannering gave her a tap on her beak.
“Funny old bird,” she said. “Ah, listen — that sounds like the children coming back. They’ve been up in an aeroplane, Kiki! Fancy that! That’s why you had to be left alone all day!”
“Jack, Jack, Jack!” screamed Kiki, hearing the voice of her owner. Four children burst into the room, their faces red with excitement.
“Hallo, all of you!” said Mrs. Mannering. “How did you like it? Was it fun being so high up in the air?”
“Oh, Mother! It was the greatest fun in the world!”
“Aunt Allie, I shall buy an aeroplane of my own as soon as ever I’m grown up.”
“Mother, you ought to have come. Bill piloted the plane and he was marvellous.”
“I wasn’t air-sick, Aunt Allie, though Bill gave me a paper bag to be sick in.”
Mrs. Mannering laughed. All the four spoke at once, and she had hard work to make out what they said. Kiki gave a loving screech and flew to Jack’s shoulder.
The four children sank into chairs and prepared to relate their day’s adventure. There were Philip and Dinah, Mrs. Mannering’s children, dark-eyed, dark-haired just as she was, and both with queer tufts of hair that insisted on sticking up in front. Both Dinah and Philip were called Tufty at school. Then there were the other two, Jack and Lucy-Ann, brother and sister, who had no mother and father, and lived with “Aunt Allie,” as they called Mrs. Mannering. All four were like one family.
Jack and Lucy-Ann Trent were very alike. They both had red hair and green eyes, and were so covered with freckles that it was quite impossible to find a bit of pink skin on their faces, arms or legs. It was not surprising that Jack was so often called Freckles.
Kiki the parrot belonged to him. He had had her for years, an amusing and talkative parrot, with a gift for repeating anything she heard, and for imitating any noise, from a sewing-machine to an express train. She adored Jack and was miserable when she was not with him.
Jack had a passion for birds, and Philip had a great liking for animals of all kinds. He was wonderfully good with them, and they obeyed him and loved him in a marvellous manner. He always had some kind of queer pet about him, which caused quarrels between him and his sister Dinah, who was scared of most animals and of nearly all insects. But now all four were thinking of nothing whatever but their glorious flight in their friend Bill’s new aeroplane.
Bill Smugs was their firm friend. He and they had had hair-raising adventures together. In one adventure they had gone down old copper-mines to track clever forgers. In another they had happened on a nest of dangerous spies. As Bill Smugs said, those children simply “fell into adventures.”
Now Bill had actually been presented with a fine aeroplane, to help him in his work. The children had been wild with excitement when he had written to tell them this at school.
“I bet he’ll take us up for a flight,” said Jack. “I just bet he will.”
“We’ll make him,” said Philip. But they didn’t need to make him, for he was quite willing to show off his aeroplane to them, and to demonstrate how well he could fly it after only a short training.
“Mother, we went far, far higher than the clouds,” said Dinah. “I looked down on them and they didn’t look like clouds a bit. They looked like a great big snow-field. It gave me quite a funny feeling.”
“I had a parachute strapped to me in case I fell, and Bill showed me the rip-cord I had to pull in case of danger,” said Lucy-Ann, the youngest, her eyes shining. “But there wasn’t any danger.”
“We flew right over our old home, Craggy-Tops,” said Philip. “It was so queer looking down on top of it. And we flew over here too, Mother, and our house looked like a toy one.”
“Aunt Allie, Bill says it’s frightfully exciting flying at night, and seeing the little pin-pricks of light shining up from the dark countryside,” said Jack. “We begged and begged him to take us on a night flight, but he said he would have to ask you. You will say we can go, won’t you? Golly! I can’t imagine what the boys at school will say when I tell them about going up in a plane, day and night.”
“Day and night,” repeated Kiki. “Ding-dong bell.”
“She’s got ding-dong bell on the brain,” said Jack. “There’s a small child next door who keeps reciting nursery rhymes, and Kiki listens and picks up bits of them. Yesterday she kept moaning about ‘three blind mice,’ today it’s ‘ding-dong bell.’ Don’t know what it will be tomorrow.”
“Humpy dumpy,” said Kiki obligingly.
“Humpty, dumpty,” corrected Jack. “Not humpy dumpy.”
“Humpy dumpy bumpy,” said Kiki solemnly, and scratched her head with a claw. “Humpy, dumpy . . .”
“All right, all right,” said Jack. “Aunt Allie, can we go up at night with Bill? He’s coming to ask you tomorrow, so do say yes.”
“I suppose I shall have to,” said Mrs. Mannering with a laugh. “You and Bill. So long as you don’t go headlong into another awful adventure.”
“Adventures aren’t awful,” said Philip. “They are simply lovely!”
“Not to the people who aren’t in them,” said Mrs. Mannering. “I feel quite ill sometimes when I think of the adventures you children have been in the middle of. No more, please.”
“All right. We won’t get into any more these summer holidays,” said Lucy-Ann, giving her aunt a hug. “We won’t worry you. I don’t want any more adventures anyhow. I’ve had enough.”
“Baby!” said Dinah scornfully. “Well, if we do have another, we’ll leave you out of it, Lucy-Ann.”
“No we won’t,” said Philip, giving Dinah a poke in the back. “We can’t do without Lucy-Ann.”
“Now, don’t quarrel, you two,” said Mrs. Mannering, foreseeing one of their everlasting squabbles boiling up. “You’re tired now, all of you, after all your excitement. Go and do something quiet till supper-time.”
“Sing for your supper,” put in Kiki. The children laughed.
“You’re an idiot, Kiki,” said Jack affectionately. “Did you miss us today? Well, I was scared you might fly out of the aeroplane in fright, if we took you. But I expect you’d have been quite a sensible old bird, wouldn’t you, and sat on my shoulder all the time?”
Kiki pecked lovingly at Jack’s ear, and made a crooning noise. She sat as close to him as she could. The children began to talk about their exciting day.
“Wasn’t it lovely going to the aerodrome and getting in on our passes, and walking up to Bill just as if we were grown-ups?” said Philip. “And golly, wasn’t Bill’s aeroplane fine?”
“I didn’t think it would be so big,” said Lucy-Ann. “You know, it was funny — I sort of held my breath when we started off, thinking I’d get a funny feeling when we left the ground, like I do in a lift — and I never even knew when the wheels left the runway and we were in the air! I got quite a shock when I looked down and saw we were over the house-tops.”
“It seemed awfully easy to fly a plane,” said Jack. “Easier than driving a car. I wish Bill would let me have a shot.”
“Well, he won’t,” said Philip. “I say, wasn’t it queer when we got into that air-pocket and the plane suddenly dropped down without warning? My tummy sort of went up into my throat.”