The Bunk Bed Conspiracy Chinese Short Drama

'Do the thing that's nearest,

Though it's dull at whiles.'

If anybody wanted to go down and have a look round Northbourne for himself, it would be necessary to take a railway journey as far as Brattlesby town, and then tramp the rest of the road, unless a friendly chance befell the traveller of a lift in some passing vehicle.

There had never been so much as a talk of extending the railway line to Northbourne, which was a quaint little fishing village tucked away under the shelter of a long stretch of downs. It consisted of a few small thatched cottages that had seated themselves, as it were, in a semicircle round the tiny bay, to peep out from its shelter at the far, open ocean, the highway of waters on which the outward-bound liners loomed like grey ghostly shadows as they passed.

There were but two of what is known as gentry's houses in Northbourne. Oddly enough, each of them finished off the half-circle of cottages, and in that way they stared across the bay at one another, face to face.

One of the two, the Bunk, had been for some years inhabited by an elderly half-pay naval officer, Captain Carnegy, and his motherless boys and girls. The other house was the Vicarage, the habitation of Mr. Vesey, the good old vicar, his invalid wife, and a pair of excitable Yorkshire terriers, Splutters and Shutters, thus curiously named for the sake of rhyme, it is to be presumed. They were brothers, and as tricky a pair as one could meet, ever up to their eyes in mischief from morning until night. Indeed, Splutters and Shutters kept what would have been a still, staid household in nearly as great a ferment as did the captain's crew the Bunk across the bay.

'They two dogs, they be summat like a couple o' wild b'ys; they keeps the passon and the mistress in, not for to say hot water, but bilin' water, for the livelong day!' constantly declared Binks, who was the handy-man at the Vicarage, and, in fact, handy-man at the little church as well, he being both factotum and sexton. Binks was a worthy old soul whom the terriers led a troubled life by their destructive capers in the garden and lawn, which he vainly tried to keep trim. Still, on the whole, Binks, harassed as he was by the dogs, was apt to thank his stars that Splutters and Shutters were not actually boys; such boys, for instance, as those of the captain at the Bunk across the bay, who were a sore handful, as any one could see for themselves, without the prompt testimony of all Northbourne to that effect.

'You be a plaguey pair, you b'ys!' was the unfailing greeting of Binks, when he encountered Geoff and Alick Carnegy.

'Come, you shut up, Binks! You surely would not have us a couple of mincing girls peacocking round in this fashion, would you now?' And the captain's boys affectedly pirouetted up and down on the shingle below the low wall of the Vicarage garden, laughing boisterously the while.

'I dunno, young musters!' rejoined Binks, contemplating the ridiculous spectacle with much the same gravity as he would have regarded a funeral. 'P'raps it'd be a sight better if so be as you was gells. That is, gells after the pattern of your sister, Miss Theedory!'

'Oh, Theo! Well, she's different!' and Geoff sobered down his antics, and stood still to retort. 'That just reminds me I've brought a note for Mrs. Vesey from Theo. I'll run up to the house with it. I don't remember if it wants an answer; but don't you go away, Alick. Wait for me!'

'All right!' Alick nodded, and swinging himself up on the wall, he watched Binks, who was patiently pottering over the carrot-beds. The ceaseless tussel he had to induce these refractory vegetables to make a fair show was one of the minor crosses of the old man's life.