Tennis Shoes Read Free Page B

pretty,’ Pinny suggested.
    â€˜It ought to have something to do with tennis or money,’ Jim pointed out, trying not to show how stupid he thought Pinny’s idea was.
    Susan clasped her hands at the back of her neck, which was a way she had when she got an idea.
    â€˜Let’s call it “The Tennis House.”’
    The other three came back to the table. They turned the house round to make sure the name would suit it. They moved the chimney and shook it to see that the notes were still inside.
    David finished examining it first.
    â€˜I think “The Tennis House” is an admirable name.’
    So ‘The Tennis House’ the money-box became.

CHAPTER II
    THE PRACTICE WALL
    You would have thought that, having the silver house, something would have been done about learning tennis the moment the family got back to Tulse Hill. It was not.
    On the journey back from grandfather’s, Dr. and Mrs. Heath travelled in one carriage and Pinny and the four children in another. This was because the train was crowded. In Dr. and Mrs. Heath’s carriage there was a woman and five children, a clergyman, an old lady with an annoying cough and a canary, and a farmer. In Pinny’s and the children’s carriage there were another family and their governess. They looked very dressed-up and affected sort of children, so, as the Heaths were in the carriage first and had got the windows, they turned their backs on them and played ‘Who can see the most cars?’ Susan and David against Jim and Nicky. They were so busy looking for cars that they never noticed the girl who sat next to Nicky. They would have noticed her in the ordinary way as she had a dreadfully swollen face, and they would have wanted to know why. After they had been travelling about an hour Dr. Heath came in to see how they were getting on. He saw the swollen face, and made a signal to them all to come out into the corridor. He told them he didn’t like the look of that face at all and they were not to go back into the carriage. Of course, as they had not noticed the face they had to look at it through the window, one by one so as not to be rude. The governess of the other children saw them looking and frowned, and made the child with the swollen face sit with her back to the corridor. They had all seen it by then, so it did not matter. Jim said he thought it was a bad tooth. Nicky thought a bee might have stung her. David said it was a ‘’brasion.’ Susan told them they were all stupid, obviously it was something infectious or daddy would not have fussed. They asked Pinny what made your face swell. Jim said he thought it was the Black Death because he was doing that in history, but Pinny said: ‘Mumps.’
    It must have been mumps because about a fortnight later lumps came up under Nicky’s ears. Although they hurt she did not say anything about them at first, because it was the last day of Jim’s holidays and they were motoring out into the country for a picnic. She was very cross at the picnic and felt so awful all over that in the end she told Pinny about the lumps. Pinny told Dr. Heath, who felt them and said: ‘That little wretch in the train! Bang goes half a term’s school fees.’
    In the end they all had it. Not together, which would have been bearable, but one by one. Nicky was getting up when David’s neck first got stiff. Jim was feeling too miserable to speak when Nicky and David felt well enough to fight noisily. Susan could not swallow at the moment when a patient of their father’s sent them peaches, so that the other three, who could eat perfectly, had hers as well as their own. In fact, an annoying illness calculated to make things like tennis houses go out of any one’s mind.
    Nobody went back to school until the half-term. It rained a great deal and they got very cross. Then, just when they were at their angriest with everybody and each other Dr. Heath