she ought to have all the peaches
herself."

"She couldn't want all of them. Why we couldn't. There are hundreds,"
said the Terror quickly. "And they're the very thing for Mum. Bananas
are all very well in their way; but they're not like real fruit."

"Of course; Mum _must_ have them," said Erebus with decision. "But how
are we going to get into the peach-garden? The door in the wall only
opens on the inside."

"We're not. I've worked it out. Now you just hurry up and get some
big leaves to put the peaches in. Mum will like them ever so much
better with the bloom on, though it doesn't really make any difference
to the taste."

Erebus ran into the kitchen-garden and gathered big soft leaves of
different kinds. When she came back she found the Terror tying the
landing-net they had borrowed from the vicar for their trout-fishing,
to the backbone of his bicycle. She put the leaves into her bicycle
basket, and they rode briskly to Muttle Deeping.

The Twins knew all the approaches to Muttle Deeping Grange well since
they had spent several days in careful scouting before they had made
their raid earlier in the summer on its strawberry beds. A screen of
trees runs down from the home wood along the walls of the gardens; and
the Twins, after coming from the road in the shelter of the home wood,
came down the wall behind that screen of trees.

About the middle of the peach-garden the Terror climbed on to a low
bough, raised his head with slow caution above the wall, and surveyed
the garden. It was empty and silent, save for a curious snoring sound
that disquieted him little, since he ascribed it to some distant pig.

He stepped on to a higher branch, leaned over the wall, and surveyed
the golden burden of the tree beneath him. The ready Erebus handed the
landing-net up to him. He chose his peach, the ripest he could see;
slipped the net under it, flicked it, lifted the peach in it over the
wall, and lowered it down to Erebus, who made haste to roll it in a
leaf and lay it gently in her bicycle basket. The Terror netted
another and another and another.

The garden was not as empty as he believed. On a garden chair in the
little lawn in the middle of it sat the Princess Elizabeth hidden from
him by the thick wall of a pear tree, and in a chair beside her, sat,
or rather sprawled, her guardian, the Baroness Frederica Von
Aschersleben, who was following faithfully the doctor's instructions
that her little