The Reluctant Time Traveller by Janis Mackay Read Free Book Online Page B

banged the broom on the floor.
    I made a dive for the coat stand, yanked at the cape and pulled it off the hook. The stand overturned and crashed to the ground.
    “STOP, THIEF!” Elsie yelled. The heavy bundle of the cloak fell into my arms. I turned and ran, my heart hammering like a war drum.

10
    I wriggled through the open window with the bulky coat in my arms. Agnes was under the window, hiding in the shadows.
    “The height of fashion,” she whispered. “Ok Saul, time to go to town!”
    The two of us pounded up the garden, Elsie still shrieking behind us. We knew the garden well, and were soon out of sight of the house. No one was coming after us. We darted round behind the den, and stopped there, hidden. My heart was pounding.
    There was no more shrieking. We were going to have to make ourselves scarce, but we were hiding behind our den! I so wanted to go in and see what it was like in 1914. By the way Agnes was staring at it, so did she.
    “Just a quick peek,” I whispered. I shot a glance back up the garden. Still no movement.
    Agnes lowered her rucksack. I dropped the stolen cape over it and we sidled round the hut. “What if someone’s in here?” We were both pressed up against the hut, trying not to make a sound. “Budge over,” she whispered, nudging me, and she lent sideways to peer in through the window. “Oh,” she gasped, “it’s lovely.”
    She was right. It was so tidy inside. No one was there. There was a bed, a little table and a chair. A jar of roses stood on the table beside a pile of books. Leaning up against onewall of the room was a row of garden tools.
    “You are nearer God in a garden
than anywhere else on earth”
    whispered Agnes, reading a piece of stitching on the wall above the bed. “How cute.”
    “Someone lives here,” I said.
    Agnes elbowed me. “There’s someone over there,” she whispered, “where we usually play. Look!” She was right. Where we were used to seeing our grassy mucking-about space there was a big vegetable garden with rows and rows of green stuff. And there was someone in it, hunched over. “Probably the gardener. I think he’s picking carrots,” Agnes whispered. Thankfully he was so focussed on his carrots he didn’t turn round.
    We hurried back to where we’d left our stuff, grabbed it and pelted for the hole in the hedge. By habit, we were going our usual way. But the hole in the hedge wasn’t there. And the hole in the wall wasn’t there either. There was no way we could wriggle through a thick hedge then scale a high wall. And we had to get out of this garden before Elsie rounded up the servants to search for us. It felt a shame to leave the den, but it wasn’t ours yet, and if we didn’t get a move on it wouldn’t be ours ever again.
    “I saw a gate,” Agnes said, “we can get out that way. Let’s go.”
    So away we ran, down the long garden, darting from tree to tree. Now we had a gardener to avoid as well as a maid, a stable boy and a housekeeper. He might pelt carrots at us. And what about the dreaded master who might turn up at any moment? He might lock us in the broom cupboard, and whack us with a stick. He might cart us off to a home for misbehaving children. When we reached the farthest end ofthe garden, we were out of breath and a bit panicked.
    “There!” Agnes hissed, pointing to tall black iron gates. These didn’t survive into the future. But right now they were ahead of us, closed, and very high. Agnes stepped boldly out onto the gravel drive to try the big black iron latch. The gates were locked. I tried too but they wouldn’t budge.
    I groaned.
    “We’ll have to climb over,” Agnes said, like it would be easy-peasy. Did she not notice these gates were way higher than the climbing wall at school? And there were no foot grips. Was she mad? “We can grab one of the iron rails and go up hand over hand. Unless,” she said, “you’ve got any better suggestions?”
    I could hear distant drumming. I tugged