t, and the farmer advised its being
taken into a yard where there was a great empty barn and backed against
that; so that they had the whole of the barn as a kind of anteroom, and
a most enchanting smell of hay everywhere.

"All I ask," he said, "is that you don't burn the place down with your
cooking."

The pot was then filled and placed on the fire. Kink skinned the
rabbits and Janet and Mary put them in, while Jack and Robert and
Horace walked into Cirencester to buy eatables and picture postcards
and send off the telegram.

That evening after supper Janet suggested that it might be the best
opportunity they would have to write the letters to X. of which they
had often talked; so they made themselves comfortable in the caravan
and on the barn floor, and each wrote something, not after the style of
the Snarker's game at Oxford, but quite separately.

Janet wrote:

"Saturday Evening, July 8,

"In a Barn near Cirencester.

DEAR X.,

"We thank you very much for the caravan, which is much the most
beautiful present that anyone can ever have had. We have now been in it
nearly ten days, and we like it more every day. We have called it the
Slowcoach. The party is seven, and Kink, who drives. We have with us
Mary and Jack Rotheram and Horace Campbell; but whether you know who
they are or not, of course I don't know. I hope some day you will tell
us who you are.

"I am,
"Yours sincerely,
JANET AVORY.

Mary Rotheram wrote:

DEAR MR. X.

Then she crossed out the "Mr." because, as she said, it might be a
lady, and began again:

DEAR X.,

"I am not one of the Avories, and the caravan was therefore not given
to me, but my brother and I have been so happy in it that I want to say
thank you for it quite as if I were an Avory all the time. We live near
them at Chiswick, you know. It has been a supreme holiday, with hardly
any rain and no real troubles, although even the strongest people must
sometimes get a little tired of walking on dusty roads and having to
wait for meals. We each have a special duty, and I am the head cook,
but Janet is really better at it than I am. Our only real
disappointment is that caravaning makes you so tired that there is no
chance of cricket, for we brought cricket things with us, but have
never been able to use them. We might have done so at Salford, perhaps,
but the river was so very tempting that we rowed about instead.

"Yours sincerely and gratefully,

MARY ROTHER