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and prepared to sleep. With the exception of Gregory, no one slept very well. Hester was frightened by an owl which hooted close to the caravan, and Janet had to hold her hand for quite a long time, which is a very uncomfortable thing to do when you are in the berth below, and then, just as she was going off again, a rabbit, pursued by a stoat, screamed right under their wheels, as it seemed, and Hester's fright began anew. Jack and Horace were probably a little over excited, for they were very restless; and to be restless on the hard ground--with no springs, as in our beds at home--is to get sore and wakeful; while Robert was intently conscious of every sound and if you sleep in a field you hear thousands of them--all the rustlings of the little shy nocturnal animals, tiny squeakings and shrillings in the grass, as well as the cries of the birds of prey. Now and then, too, a spider ran over his face and made him jump, and very early the strong light poured into the mouth of the tent and made it seem absurd to be in bed any longer. The result was, that it was not till the morning that they began to sleep properly at all, and that made them much less ready to get up than they had expected to be. CHAPTER 10 THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND CARAVAN The arrival of Kink at half-past six was a great relief. Robert hailed him, and Kink said it was a beautiful morning. "Don't you get up yet," he said, after Robert and Janet had both told him of the night. "I'll make the fire and boil the kettle, and fetch water, and so on, and you get up when I tell you. Otherwise, you'll all be too tired and get ill." And so they had the blessed experience of lying still and drowsy, and hearing Kink move about for their comfort. The boys were up first, and made extremely noisy toilets in the washing-up basin, and then Jack and Gregory went off to the farm for milk and butter and eggs, and Mrs. Gosden, who seemed, early as it was, to be in the very middle of a day's work, and who refused to believe that the boys were not deceiving her when they denied having sore throats, gave them leave to gather strawberries, so that their return to the Slowcoach was a new triumph. Their breakfast was chiefly scrambled eggs, ham, and strawberries, and by ten o'clock, true to their bargain, they were out of the field and on the highroad, and no sign of their camp remained, save a black circle caused by the fire and a slight crushing of t
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