9
　　A strange boat
　　The girls would not go up the secret passage, no matter how much the boysurged them to. They shuddered¹ to think of the dark, narrow, winding² tunnel,and although they agreed that it was very exciting, they did not want to feelthe thrill of creeping along it by themselves.
　　‘I suppose Dinah’s afraid of giant starfish jumping out at her, orsomething,’ said Philip in disgust. ‘And Lucy-Ann takes her side.’
　　But even teasing would not make the girls try the passage, though theynever tired of hearing about it. The boys slipped down into the cellar thenext day, and found that Joe had once again piled up the boxes in front ofthe second door, so that it was quite hidden. It was puzzling, but he oftendid silly spiteful things. Anyway, they had the key of the door. That wassomething.
　　The weather became fine and hot. The sun shone down out of a cloudlesssky and the children went about in bathing-suits. They were soon burnt asbrown as toast. Philip, Dinah and Lucy-Ann spent more time than Jack³ inthe water. The boy was quite mad over the wild birds that infested⁴ the coastin such numbers. He was forever identifying terns and skuas, cormorants,gulls⁵ and others. He did not want Lucy-Ann with him, much to her dismay.
　　‘The birds are learning to know me,’ he explained to his sister. ‘But theydon’t know you, Lucy-Ann. You keep with the others, there’s a good girl.
　　Anyway, we can’t both leave Tufty and Dinah, it would be rude.’
　　So for once Lucy-Ann was not Jack’s shadow, and spent most of her timewith the others. But she usually knew where Jack was, and, when it wasabout time for him to return, she would always watch for him.
　　Dinah thought she was silly. She would never have dreamt of watchingfor Philip. ‘I’m only too glad when he gets out of the way,’ she said toLucy-Ann. ‘Horrid⁶ tease! He nearly made me go mad last year when he putearwigs under my pillow, and they all crawled out in the middle of thenight.’

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