“He always thinks it’s us,” said John.
“I was just going to tell him that it couldn’t have been you that night,” said Nancy, “because you were up the Amazon River when we saw the light in his ship, but Peggy nudged me just in time and I remembered that we were in bed that night, so I shut up. I began to think it was a good thing we’d already got leave to camp with you. Any minute someone might have told us not to, they were all in such a stew. So we slipped off and stowed our things in Amazon last night and hid her up the river. And then this morning we lay low until Uncle Jim had rowed away back to the houseboat. When we did start there wasn’t much wind, or we’d have been here before. We had to row through the islands, and then we waited for a bit watching all the boats taking people to Houseboat Bay to see the burglary.”
“You got back in time yesterday morning?” said Susan.
“It was a near squeak, but we did,” said Nancy.
“We just had time to get into bed with our clothes on when they came banging at the door,” said Peggy.
“I say,” said John. “Were they burgling the very night of our war?”