Alice and Thomas and Jane

Once upon a time Peter Pan crept through the nursery window but the nocturnal visitor who climbs in at the window of Alice, Thomas and Jane Budd's nursery is a villainous onion boy in search of their father's invention. This exploit takes Alice, Thomas and Jane from the comparatively easy experience of holding a pavement art exchibition in aid of their parents to the tremendous business of recovering their father'sinvention from the Black Pig at Dieppe. The stratagems by which they make the Channel crossing, their meeting with predestined deliverers in the persons of a dancing bear and his master, the narrow escape from a "disappearing experience" at the hands of Pierre Leroux, landlord of the Black Pig, and his nephew the onion boy, all go to form a great adventure.