11. The Bogwoppit Goes Back to the Marsh

The bogwoppit received the aruncus wopitus leaves greedily if not graciously. Samantha rationed them as best she could, for she was well aware that the toolbag held no more than a few days’ supply, and nothing would ever persuade her to undertake another midnight raid upon the Park, nor Jeff either. Tim had bad dreams for three nights afterwards, and shrieked in his sleep. Deborah would hardly speak to any of them, because they had left her out of the adventure.

Samantha was doing her best to behave so beautifully that neither her Aunt Lily nor her Aunt Daisy would have known her. She was genuinely attached to the Price family, and took her manners from theirs, added to which she knew that the bogwoppit was behaving quite badly enough for both of them. In the drain pipe it moaned and wailed, if Samantha was within earshot, while if she let it out, unless she held it in her arms, holding it very tight and lovingly, it got into every kind of mischief, from swinging on Mrs Price’s washing to pulling the weights off the cuckoo clock. It even attacked the cuckoo when he came out to protest at such treatment. The bogwoppit then refused to be caught, and had to be bribed back into its hated cage with handfuls of aruncus wopitus and some mud, so that the supplies dwindled very quickly indeed.

At school, Miss Mellor was busy with quite a different Project featuring glow-worms, but she had not forgotten about the bogwoppits, and asked Samantha if she had seen any signs of them lately.

Samantha hesitated. She felt the time had not yet come to make a Project of the One-and-Only-Bogwoppit-in-the-World. Not, that is, until it could be returned to its natural surroundings. It was becoming such a problem that, fond of it as she was, she could not help hoping that the day was not far off.

‘I don’t think there have been any bogwoppits in the marsh lately,’ she said truthfully. ‘I haven’t seen them there myself.’

‘Well perhaps after half-term we can make a start!’ said Miss Mellor. ‘You can ask your auntie’s permission when she comes back from her visit.’

Everyone seemed to think that Lady Clandorris had gone away for a short time, and that was why Samantha was living with the Prices instead of up at the Park. Even the children who had come to the party thought it was only a temporary arrangement. They would not have believed her aunt could be so cruel as to banish Samantha for ever from her home.

Samantha realized that something would have to be done about the bogwoppit. Kind Mrs Price was becoming quite short-tempered, and when dirty footprints appeared all over Mr Price’s newly ironed pyjamas he became short-tempered, too. Also, the aruncus wopitus had run out.

‘We’ll have to take it back to the marsh!’ Deborah said. ‘Honestly, I think our dad will wring its neck if we don’t do it soon.’

‘The aruncus stuff must be growing in the marsh pools again by now,’ said Samantha. ‘What we had better do is this: Tim and Deb can go round the outside of the Park as far as the keeper’s cottage. If he is there and the dogs are shut up they can wave a hanky from the top of the back gates. We can see it if we climb on the fence this side of the Park. And if he’s out and about they needn’t wave at all. Then we’ll know not to do it just then. It’s quite safe. There’s no law against waving handkerchiefs on a Saturday afternoon, not from anybody’s back gate. He can’t get them for that!’

‘What about Lady Clandorris?’ asked Deborah. ‘She might catch you at the marsh pools.’

‘Never!’ said Samantha. ‘I’ve never seen her go near the marsh pools at all. I believe what she said about taking the bogwoppits down there fifty times a day was just twaddle. Nobody has ever seen her there or they would have said so.’

They took one further precaution.

‘Dad,’ Jeff said, ‘Samantha and me are going to take the bogwoppit back to the marsh pools.’

‘That’s a good job!’ said Mr Price.

‘But Dad,’ said Jeff, ‘can we stick something down the drain to prevent Lady Clandorris putting more disinfectant into the pools and killing it?’

‘Disinfectant hadn’t ought to be able to get into the pools at all,’ said Mr Price, thinking aloud. ‘The drain what she puts the disinfectant into goes into the main drain – joins it somewhere this side of the Park. There must be a leak to get it coming up in the pools, like. Now the secondary drain, what branches off the rest, that’s as high and dry as a badger’s nest. Nothing can’t get in there, short of a flood. It hasn’t been used for years. It’s a regular beauty, as big as a palace, more like a cellar than a drain. Why, a man can stand upright in it! A little damp, but not dusty. Your bogwoppit wouldn’t hurt in there.’

‘Well, couldn’t you block off the other part?’ the children asked hopefully.

‘What? Go up to the Park again? Not likely! When her Ladyship paid me for the grid she created something shocking, and said more or less that I was rooking her. I’m doing no more work for her!’ said Mr Price. ‘Not even if she asks me I won’t, and catch me chasing her for a job!’

‘The bogwoppit may die!’ said Samantha. ‘And it’s the One-and-Only-Bogwoppit-in-the-World.’

‘And the world’s a better place for that!’ said Mr Price with feeling. ‘Even if you are right about it, my dear! I haven’t seen the TV cameras rushing to take its picture yet!’

The children carried out their plan. Deborah and Tim circled the Park and saw through the windows of his cottage the gamekeeper and his wife watching Saturday sport on television. The dogs were shut up in pens, sleeping in the sun.

Climbing the Park gates at the back entrance, they waved handkerchiefs in the direction of the housing estate, where Samantha and Jeff, on the look-out, saw the small, white distant signals, and climbed over the railings of the Park, carrying the bogwoppit in the toolbag.

Samantha’s heart ached at parting with it, though Jeff had promised to give her a piebald guinea pig to take its place. Secretly she felt certain that the bogwoppit would not leave her. Somehow or other she believed it would find her again, and she refused to face the question of what was to be done with it if it did.

To their relief, all over the borders of the marsh pools small clumps of aruncus wopitus were springing into life, apparently as prolific and as vigorous as before. Samantha picked some leaves and pulled up a couple of plants, just in case. They came more easily out of the bog than from the untended clay of Lady Clandorris’s herb garden.

After a final hug she put the bogwoppit on the ground.

‘I’m sorry!’ she whispered, ‘I’m terribly sorry! I wanted you to live with me, but …’

She expected the bogwoppit to cling to her knees, to sob and cry, to fly back into her arms. She fully believed it would refuse to go into the marsh pool without her. She thought she would have to push it away and run.

But the ungrateful little creature did not give her so much as a final glance. Spreading its ridiculous whirring wings it rose spinning into the air and dropped with a plop! into the middle of the marsh pool, spattering Samantha from head to foot with mud.

For a brief moment the top of its head reappeared, and she thought she saw its round eyes glistening just below the surface of the water. Then it vanished from sight, and presently the last bubble rose and burst, the last ripple from its plunging reached the shore and died away. The marsh pool became perfectly still.

‘Great!’ said Jeff with satisfaction.

Tears rolled slowly down Samantha’s cheeks.

When he saw her distress Jeff tried to distract her.

‘I wonder where that drain leaks?’ he said. They explored the grass on the house side of the marsh pools, but there was nothing to give them any clue, and meanwhile the bogwoppit remained in terrible danger. Samantha could only hope that it would not betray itself to her Aunt Daisy by any unusual activity, or by battering too fiercely on the grid that Mr Price had made. But she knew just how noisy a noise it could make when it was bored or lonely.

She returned to the Prices feeling heavy-hearted, and Mrs Price was sorry for her missing her pet. She thought Samantha had had a hard deal in one way and another. ‘Would you like to take over feeding Bill Budgie, love?’ she offered. ‘He always whistles for you!’

But long before bedtime Samantha had something quite different to occupy her mind, for Deborah crept up to her, ashen-faced, and whispered in her ear:

‘You know those tadpoles the twins and I got that first time we went to the marsh pools? They’ve been all this time in the goldfish pond, and now they’ve just hatched. And they’re none of them tadpoles at all. They’re all bogwoppits!’