Free The Cuckoo Tree by Joan Aiken

Godwit you mention—"
    They turned and paced away again.
    "Let's go after them!" breathed Tobit, and tweaked Dido's hand; the two listeners slipped from their hiding place and crossed to the shadow of a pair of yews.
    "—rollers," they heard Colonel FitzPickwick say. "They are fixed already. And the diamond will pay for
half. But the rest of the money—" The two men passed behind a tree and their words were lost. "—still to come," the Colonel was saying when they reappeared. "If Lady Tegleaze—" another pair of trees cut off his words—"certain His Highness Prince George would lend a favorable ear to your claim."
    "Rot it, so I should hope! But as to these rollers—" the stammering man was beginning, when Dido heard a soft hiss beside her, a phtt! and Colonel FitzPickwick raised a hand to his cheek.
    "Strange! I could have sworn I felt a hailstone. Yet there's not a cloud in the sky."
    "Oh, famous!" Tobit breathed in Dido's ear. "I got him fair and square."
    "'Twas a m-mosquito, I daresay. Rollers, now: rollers are all very fine. But where's your motive power?"
    "A mosquito? You forget you are in England in November, my dear sir. If the weather's breaking I must be off. My mare's a thoroughbred—she has an aversion to hail."
    "You shoot now!" whispered Tobit. "'Go on—I dare you!"
    "I druther listen," Dido muttered crossly. "Hush! I've a notion—"
    "Motive power yet remains to be found. Godwit thinks a system of levers. Now, if humans were as easily moved as my mannikins—Devil take it! That was certainly a hailstone. It hit me on the ear."
    Tobit was suffocating with suppressed laughter.
    "Got the old windbag again. Him and his mannikins!"
    Colonel FitzPickwick turned and walked off decisively, his companion following with reluctance, turning back for many glances at the house.
    The shadows of the two men followed them like long black-velvet trains.
    "Now we ain't sure what it was all about," Dido complained when they were out of earshot.
    "Oh, pho, what does it matter? Just old Pickwick's usual hocus-pocus about puppets."
    "But it seemed to be about your grandmother and this place."
    "What do I care about this place? As soon as I'm of age I shall run off to sea and turn pirate. Yo, ho, ho, and the jolly black flag," said Sir Tobit, and aimed a broadside of peas into the yew tree. "Come on, we'll spy on old Wilfred and the sawbones." He tugged Dido at a run along the yew hedge, up the steps, and around the end of the house. They looked through a window into a small room where, by the light of one dim candle, two men were crouched over a tiddlywinks board. Dido recognized the doctor; the other was a little tiny gray-haired old fellow like a water rat in a velvet robe and nightcap.
    "Pity the window's shut," Tobit muttered. "I'd like to give old Wilfred a fright, in return for all the games of tiddlywinks he's bored me with. D'you dare me to break the window?"
    "O' course not! What a mutton-headed notion."
    Dido, becoming more and more impatient, was about to
take her leave, when a sudden fierce whisper from behind startled them both.
    "Bad, bad boy! What you doing, what you about?"
    Like a black, angry dragonfly the tiny figure of Tante Sannie darted from a patch of shadow, hissing reproaches at To bit.
    "You not allowed out after darkfall, you know that! Spose a memory bird hear you, spose the Night Lady catch you in her claws?"
    "Oh, stuff. Don't talk such nonsense, Sannie," Tobit said, but he glanced behind him uneasily, then put a couple of peas in his mouth. "Anyway, I'll be of age next week and can do as I please!"
    "Also, who is
this?
" Sannie peered up at Dido. Over the black-and-white draperies muffling the lower part of the old woman's face, her tiny eyes glittered like the points of nails. "Hah! I know you! You little bad sickness girl, Sir Tobit not allowed to play with you. Lady Tegleaze be very angry when she hear."
    "We weren't playing," Sir Tobit said sulkily. "I was showing her the grounds by