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They changed trains at Shrewsbury. So begins the first of what was to become the long series of Lone Pine books. Mr Morton has joined the R.A.F and his last words to David were, ‘Take care of Mummy for me, old chap,’. As an adult reader, you have to feel for Mrs Morton. She’s been driven out of her home by bombing, must be worried about her husband and is now on her way to live in a house she’s never seen, with only David to help her with the luggage, the awful twins and Mackie the dog. As this is wartime, unusual events take place before they get to Witchend and when they do arrive, they are met by ‘a tall, thin, forbidding-looking woman’. This is Mrs Braid, soon known as Agnes and an excellent housekeeper who comes to dote on the twins. At some time during the series, Agnes disappears from the books, without any explanation.
Mrs Morton tells the children they must all help out: David is to fetch water, the twins to bring milk from Ingles farm and everyone to collect wood, to save coal. Almost as soon as they arrive, the Mortons meet Tom and Peter. Then, what happened to ‘look after Mummy’? They discover a nest of traitors hiding out nearby and before the book is out, poor Mummy has the worry of the twins going missing. They have, of course, been locked up. The twins are rescued, for the first but not the last time, and the baddies rounded up by Mr Ingles and the local Home Guard.
I really don’t understand the Morton parents. The children are all at boarding school, so they see little enough of them, yet they are permitted to gad off to Yorkshire, Dartmoor and Rye, when their parents must know that no good ever comes of these holidays. In Seven White Gates, they are allowed to camp at a place owned by people they don’t know. The Mortons put far too much responsibility on poor old David, expecting him to keep the twins safe but in Lone Pine Five and The Elusive Grasshopper they are in great danger.
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Mrs Morton tells the children they must all help out: David is to fetch water, the twins to bring milk from Ingles farm and everyone to collect wood, to save coal. Almost as soon as they arrive, the Mortons meet Tom and Peter. Then, what happened to ‘look after Mummy’? They discover a nest of traitors hiding out nearby and before the book is out, poor Mummy has the worry of the twins going missing. They have, of course, been locked up. The twins are rescued, for the first but not the last time, and the baddies rounded up by Mr Ingles and the local Home Guard.
I really don’t understand the Morton parents. The children are all at boarding school, so they see little enough of them, yet they are permitted to gad off to Yorkshire, Dartmoor and Rye, when their parents must know that no good ever comes of these holidays. In Seven White Gates, they are allowed to camp at a place owned by people they don’t know. The Mortons put far too much responsibility on poor old David, expecting him to keep the twins safe but in Lone Pine Five and The Elusive Grasshopper they are in great danger.
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