Wet Magic
ticed. Of course, you can't shove an aquarium into the old portmanteau—nor a pair of abbits, nor a hedgehog—but anything in reason you can.
The luggage that goes in the van is not much trouble—of course, it has to be packed and to be strapped, and labeled and looked after at the junction, but apart from that the big luggage behaves itself, keeps itself to itself, and like your elder brothers at college never occasions its friends a moments anxiety. It is the younger fry of the luggage family, the things you have with you in the carriage that are troublesome—the bundle of umbrellas and walking sticks, the golf clubs, the rugs, the greatcoats, the basket of things to eat, the books you are going to read in the train and as often as not you never look at them, the newspapers that the grown-ups are tired of and yet don't want to throw away, their little bags or dispatch cases and suitcases and card cases, and scarfs and gloves—
The children were traveling under the care of Aunt Enid, who always had far more of these tiresome odds and ends than Mother had—and it was at the last moment, when the cab was almost to be expected to be there, that Aunt Enid rushed out to the corner shop and returned with four new spades, four new pails, and four new shrimping nets, and presented them to the children just in time for them to be added to the heap of odds and ends with which the cab was filled up.
"I hope it's not ungrateful," said Mavis at the station as they stood waiting by the luggage mound while Aunt Enid went to take the tickets—"but why couldn't she have bought them at Beachfield?"
"Makes us look such babies," said Francis, who would not be above using a wooden spade at the proper time and place but did not care to be branded in the face of all Waterloo Junction as one of those kids off to the seaside with little spades and pails.
14
