The Secret Island by Enid Blyton

might make certain the cave-cupboard is hidden by a curtain of bracken or something.”
    “Ay, ay, Captain!” said Peggy. “Now we’ve all got our duties to do - but you’ve got the hardest, Jack! I wouldn’t like to hide Daisy away down that narrow passage! What will you do if she gets stuck7”
    “She won’t get stuck,” said Jack. “She’s not as fat as all that! By the way, we’d better put a cup or two in the cave, and some heather, in case we have to hide up for a good many hours. We can drink milk then, and have somewhere soft to lie on.”
    “We’d better keep a candle or two in the entrance,” said Peggy. “I don’t feel like sitting in the dark there.”
    “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said Jack thoughtfully. “We won’t go in and out of that big inner cave by the narrow passage leading from the outer cave. We’ll go in and out by that tiny cave we can hardly squeeze in by. It leads to the inner cave, as we found out. If we keep using the other cave and the passage to go in, we are sure to leave marks, and give ourselves away. I’ll have to take Daisy that way, but that can’t be helped.”
    “Those caves will be cosy to live in in the wintertime,” said Peggy. “We could live in the outer one, and store our things in the inner one. We should be quite protected from bad weather.”
    “How lucky we are! ” said Nora. “A nice house made of trees for the summer - and a cosy cave-home for the winter!”
    “Winter’s a long way off yet,” said Jack. “I say! - I’m hungry! What about frying some eggs, Peggy, and sending Mike to get some raspberries?”
    “Come on!” shouted Peggy, and raced off down the hillside, glad to leave behind the dark, gloomy caves.

The Summer Goes By

    No one came to interfere with the children. They lived together on the island, playing, working, eating, drinking, bathing - doing just as they liked, and yet having to do certain duties in order to keep their farmyard going properly.
    Sometimes Jack and Mike went off in the boat at night to get something they needed from either Jack’s farm or Aunt Harriet’s. Mike managed to get into his aunt’s house one night and get some of his and the girls’ clothes - two or three dresses for the girls, and a coat and shorts for himself. Clothes were rather a difficulty, for they got dirty and ragged on the island, and as the girls had none to change into, it was difficult to keep their dresses clean and mended.
    Jack got a good deal of fruit and a regular amount of potatoes and turnips from his grandfather’s farm, which still had not been sold. There was always enough to eat, for there were eggs, rabbits, and fish, and Daisy gave them more than enough milk to drink.
    Their seeds grew quickly. It was a proud day when Peggy was able to cut the first batch of mustard and cress and the first lettuce and mix it up into a salad to eat with hard-boiled eggs! The radishes, too, tasted very good, and were so hot that even Jack’s eyes watered when he ate them! Things grew amazingly well and quickly on the island.
    The runner beans were now well up to the top of the bramble bushes, and Jack nipped the tips off, so that they would flower well below.
    “We don’t want to have to make a ladder to climb up and pick the beans,” he said. “My word, there are going to be plenty - look at all the scarlet flowers!”
    “They smell nice!” said Nora, sniffing them.
    “The beans will taste nicer!” said Jack.
    The weather was hot and fine, for it was a wonderful summer. The children all slept out of doors in their “green bedroom,” as they called it, tucked in the shelter of the big gorse bushes. They had to renew their beds of heather and bracken every week, for they became flattened with the weight of their bodies and were uncomfortable. But these jobs were very pleasant, and the children loved them.
    “How brown we are!” said Mike one day, as they sat round the fire on the beach, eating radishes, and potatoes cooked in their jackets. They all looked at one