Night Birds On Nantucket by Joan Aiken Page A

Mamma, saying she was a dragon that I remembered. She looks older than I expected. And even crosser!’
    Dido pondered over Pen’s words. Really, she thought, there’s nothing to prove that this lady is Aunt Tribulation at all. This is a mouldy lookout for me getting back to England; I don’t see leaving Pen with old Gruff-and-Grumble.
    She thought this again when the noon hour came and they entered the house to the accompaniment of a regular hurricane of thumps from upstairs. Pen ran up to inquire her aunt’s wishes and returned trembling and in tears, so fierce had been the request for ‘gingerbread and apple sauce and look sharp about it, miss! What have you been doing all morning, I’d like to know? Idling and playing and picking flowers, I suppose!’
    â€˜Oh, pray don’t scold, Aunt Tribulation, pray don’t. Indeed, indeed, we haven’t been idling; we have hoed more that half the potato field.’
    â€˜Old harridan. I wonder how she knew you’d made some gingerbread?’ Dido said. ‘She must have a nose on her like a bloodhound. There’s some apples down cellar, Penny, I saw them when I was getting the kindling for the stove. And there’s hams and onions and molasses and bushels of beans, so we shan’t starve and nor will old Mortification upstairs.’
    As Pen hurried to get the apples Dido, stoking the stove, muttered, ‘Ill, my eye! If she’s so ill, what’s hernightcap ribbon doing on the kitchen floor? You’ve been poking and snooping and spying, you old madam, you, to see whether we did the housework, you horried old hypocrite!’
    When the apple sauce was made she took a saucerful up to Aunt Tribulation with the cap ribbon ostentatiously stuck like an ornament at the side of the dish. ‘I guess this is yours, Auntie Trib,’ she remarked innocently. ‘I can’t
think
how it come to be lying on the floor downstairs. Acos you haven’t been down, have you?’
    Aunt Tribulation took this very much amiss. ‘Impertinent girl! Don’t speak to me in that way. Apologize immediately!’
    â€˜Why should I?’ Dido said reasonably. ‘You ain’t been extra polite to us.’
    â€˜You shall be shut up in the attic till you learn better manners.’
    â€˜Tally-ho! I’m agreeable,’ said Dido. ‘I can jistabout do with a nap arter all that hoeing.’
    â€˜Not now,’ said Aunt Tribulation, who appeared suddenly to recollect that she had other plans for the girls. ‘I want you and Penitence to shift the sheep up to the high pasture. And mind you count them! Do that as soon as you’ve washed the dishes. And don’t forget to make up the stove. And feed the hens and pigs.’
    â€˜Sure that’s all?’ inquired Dido. ‘Nothing else as how you can lay your mind to? Sartin? Tooralooral, then.’
    â€˜Now, how the mischief are we to count these here blame sheep?’ Dido said, as the girls walked down the sandy lane to the pasture where the sheep were grazing.
    â€˜There’s a gate in those railings over there,’ Pen said. ‘If you could get behind them and drive them, I could count them as they came through.’
    â€˜Clever girl, Pen. You’ve got a right smart head on your shoulders when you doesn’t get all of a-pucker and a-fluster.’
    Dido ran off across the rough pasture which was not grass but low-growing scraggy shrubs and bushes. Pen waited by the gate, and, conquering a slight tendency to shrink in alarm as the sheep streamed towards her, manfully counted them.
    â€˜Two hundred and twenty-three,’ she said when they were all through and being driven up towards the high pasture. ‘I wonder if that is the right number?’
    â€˜Well if it ain’t you may lay Auntie Trib will tell us fast enough. Croopus, don’t the wind blow up here, and can’t we see a long way!’
    â€˜All