It was a real caravan.That is to say, either gypsies might have lived in it, or anyone that did live in it would soon be properly gipsified.It was painted in gay colours, and had little white blinds with very neat waists and red sashes round them.That is the right kind of caravan.The brown caravans highly varnished are wrong: they may be more luxurious, but no gypsy would look at them.
The body of it was green--a good apple green--and the panels were lined with blue.Some people say that blue and green won't go together; but don't let us take any notice of them.Just look at the bed of forget-me-nots, or a copse of bluebells; or, for that matter, try to see the Avories' caravan.
The window frames and bars were white.The spokes and hubs of the wheels were red.It was most awfully gay.
Inside--but the inside of a caravan is so exciting that I hardly know how to hold my pen.The inside of a caravan! Can you imagine a better phrase than that? I can't.If Coleridge's statement is true that poetry is the best words in the best order, then that is the best poem: the inside of a caravan!
The caravan was sixteen feet six inches long and six feet two inches high inside.From the ground it stood ten feet.It was six feet four inches wide.If you measure these distances in the dining room, you will see how big it was, and you will be able to imagine yourselves in it.
The woodwork was all highly varnished, and very new and clean.More than halfway down the caravan were heavy curtains hanging across it, and behind these was the bedroom, containing four beds, two on each wall, on hinged shelves, that could be let down flat against the wall-by day, when the folding chairs could be unfolded, and the bedroom then became a little boudoir.
The floor space was, however, filled this afternoon with great bundles which turned out to be gypsy tents and sleeping sacks."For the boys and Kink to sleep in," said Janet; "but we must be very careful about waterproof sheeting on the ground first."The rest of the caravan, between the door and the bedroom--about ten feet--was the kitchen and living room.Here every inch of the wall was used, either by chairs that folded back like those in the corridors of railway carriages, or by shelves, racks, cupboards, or pegs.There were two tables, which also folded to the wall.
The stove was close to the door, but of course, no one who lives in a caravan ever uses the stove except when it is raining.You make the fire out of doors at all other times, and swing the pot from three sticks.
(Hedgehog stew! Can't you smell it?) There were kitchen utensils on hooks and racks on each side of the stove which was covered in with shining brass, and rows of enameled cups and saucers, and plates, and knives and forks.The living room floor was covered with linoleum; the bedroom floor had a carpet.Swinging candlesticks were screwed into the wall here and there.It was more like the cabin of a ship than anything on land could ever be, and Jack Rotheram began to weaken towards it.
