The children and Mother stared at the dark house.
"I wonder why the windows are closed.
I asked Mrs. Viney to open them," Mother said.
"Who's she?" asked Bobbie.
"The woman I asked to clean and make some supper for us."
They walked to the back of the house.
The cart clattered onto the cobblestones and stopped at the back door.
The children knocked but no one answered.
The cart driver said that Mrs. Viney had probably gone home.
The train had arrived very late.
"But she has the key!" Mother said.
"Oh, I'm sure she left it under the doorstep," the cart driver said.
"That's what people do around here."
He took the lantern off his cart and bent down.
"Here it is, sure enough!"
He unlocked the door.
The cart driver put down his lantern and lit a candle.
The kitchen was large, with a stone floor.
The table was in the middle.
The chairs, pots, pans, and crockery were in all corners of the room.
There was no fire, just cold ashes.
A rustling sound came from inside the walls.
"Oh, what's that?" cried the girls.
"It's only the rats," said the cart driver.
He left and shut the door, and a sudden wind blew out the candle.
"Oh dear," said Phyllis, "I wish we hadn't come!"
And she knocked a chair over.
"Only the rats!" said Peter in the dark.
"What fun!" said Mother, feeling for the matches on the table.
"I'm sure they are mice, not rats!"
She struck a match and everyone looked at each other.
"Well," Mother said, "you've often wanted something to happen and now it has.
This is quite an adventure, isn't it?
Let's go and eat the supper Mrs. Viney made."
The dining room was next to the kitchen.
The kitchen was white.
But the dining room was made of dark wood from floor to ceiling.
There was a table and chairs, but there was no supper.
"Let's look in the other rooms," said Mother, and they looked.
In each room there were furniture and boxes, but nothing to eat.
Even in the pantry there was only a rusty cake tin.
"What a horrible woman!" said Mother.
"She's taken the money but got us nothing to eat at all!"
"Then we can't have any supper," said Phyllis unhappily.
"Yes, we can," said Mother.
"We can unpack one of the boxes.
There's some food from the old house."
They were all very, very tired, but they cheered up at their unusual supper.
There were biscuits, sardines, raisins, and jam.
After supper they put sheets and blankets on the beds.
"Good night, darlings," said Mother.
"I'm sure there aren't any rats.
But I'll leave my door open, and if a mouse comes, you can scream.
I'll come and tell the mouse to go away!"
Bobbie, Peter, and Phyllis were not convinced by her answer.
They left candles burning and spent the first night in their new home.