'It was lovely,' Doc Spencer said. 'Just lovely. Didn't you enjoy it, Danny?'
'Marvellous,' I said.
'Pity we lost them,' my father said. 'It very near broke my heart when they all started flying out of the pram. I knew we'd lost them then.'
'But 'ow in 'eaven's name did you ever catch 'em in the first place?' asked Sergeant Samways. "Ow did you do it, Willum? Come on, man. Let me in on the secret.'
My father told him. He kept it short, but even then it made a fine story. And all the way through it, the sergeant kept saying, 'Well I never! Well, I'll be blowed! You could knock me down with a feather! Stone the crows!' and things like that. And when the story was finished, he pointed his long policeman's finger straight at my face and cried, 'Well, I'll be jiggered! I never would 'ave thought a little nipper like you could come up with such a fantastical brain-wave as that! Young man, I congratulate you!'
'He'll go a long way, young Danny will, you see if he doesn't,' Doc Spencer said. 'He'll be a great inventor one day!'
To be spoken about like that by the two men I admired most in the world, after my father, made me blush and stutter. And as I stood there wondering what on earth I was expected to say in reply, a woman's voice behind me cried out, 'Well, thank goodness that's over at last!'
This, of course, was Mrs Grace Clipstone, who was now picking her way cautiously down the caravan steps with young Christopher in her arms. 'Never in my life', she was saying, 'have I seen such a shambles as that!'
The little white hat was still perched on the top of her head, and the prim white gloves were still on her hands. 'What a gathering!' she said, advancing towards us. 'What a gathering we have here of rogues and varmints! Good morning, Enoch.'
'Good morning to you, Mrs Clipstone,' Sergeant Samways said.
'How's the baby?' my father asked her.
'The baby is better, thank you, William,' she said. 'Though I doubt he'll ever be quite the same again.'
'Of course he will,' Doc Spencer said. 'Babies are tough.'
'I don't care how tough they are!' she answered. 'How would you like it if you were being taken for a nice quiet walk in your pram on a pretty autumn morning... and you were sitting on a lovely soft mattress... and suddenly the mattress comes alive and starts bouncing you up and down like a stormy sea... and the next thing you know, there's about a hundred sharp curvy beaks poking up from underneath the mattress and pecking you to pieces!'
The doctor cocked his head over to one side, then to the other, and he smiled at Mrs Clipstone.
'You think it's funny?' she cried. 'Well just you wait, Doctor Spencer, and one night I'll put a few snakes or crocodiles or something under your mattress and see how you like it!'
Sergeant Samways was fetching his bicycle from beside the pumps. 'Well, ladies and gents,' he said. 'I must be off and see who else is gettin' into mischief round 'ere.'
'I am truly sorry you were troubled, Enoch,' my father said. 'And thanks very much indeed for the help.'
'I wouldn't 'ave missed this one for all the tea in China,' Sergeant Samways said. 'But it did sadden me most terrible, Willum, to see all those lovely birds go slippin' right through our fingers like that. Because to my mind, there don't hexist a more luscious dish than roasted pheasant anywhere on this earth.'
'It's going to sadden the vicar a lot more than it saddens you!' said Mrs Clipstone. 'That's all he's been talking about ever since he got out of bed this morning, the lovely roast pheasant he's going to have for his dinner tonight!'
'He'll get over it,' Doc Spencer said.
'He will not get over it and it's a rotten shame!' Mrs Clipstone said. 'Because now all I've got to give him are some awful frozen fillets of cod, and he never did like cod anyway.'
'But,' my father said, '
surely you didn't load all those pheasants into the pram, did you? You were meant to keep at least a dozen for you and the vicar!'
'Oh, I know that,' she wailed. 'But I was so tickled at the thought of strolling calmly through the village with Christopher sitting on a hundred and twenty birds, I simply forgot to keep any back for ourselves. And now, alas, they're all gone! And so is the vicar's supper!'
The doctor went over to Mrs Clipstone and took her by the arm. 'You come with me, Grace,' he said. 'I've got something to show you.' He led her across to my father's workshop where the big doors stood wide open.
The rest of us stayed where we were and waited.
'Good grief! Come and look at this!' Mrs Clipstone called from inside the workshop. 'William! Enoch! Danny! Come and look!'
We hurried over and entered the workshop.
It was a great sight.