The Children's Book Read Online Free PDF Page A

stuff. You can open your eyes. I’ve wiped the soap off, it won’t sting.”
    He didn’t want to open his eyes.
    He was encouraged to dry himself whilst Violet Grimwith held up various garments against him, for size. He struggled, still damp, into some patched long-johns, and chose a plain dark-blue twill shirt out of the three presented to him. Tom’s breeches were too small. “I
knew
it, really,” said Violet. A pair, presumably belonging to the master of the house, in brown cord, sagged a little, but could be, as Violet suggested, hauled in with a thick belt. She produced a truss of needles and bobbins, told him to stand still, and took in a pleat on each side over his hips,sewing fast and precisely. “I know how young folk are, they are ashamed to look
odd
and hate things
not fitting right
. This is only makeshift, but it’ll hold for the duration. You’ll forget they’re too big, this way. One thing less to bother yourself about.” She put one hand on each of his hips and turned him round like a mannequin. She gave him a stout pair of new socks, but none of the shoes she had brought fitted, and he had to put on his old dirty boots—after she had given them a brush over. A tweed jacket with leather trim completed the outfit. She even gave him a clean handkerchief. And a pocket-comb, made from white bone, with which she tugged at his hair before inserting it into his jacket pocket. There was no mirror in Birch Cottage, so he couldn’t look at her handiwork. He wriggled; the underwear bothered him. Violet ran her fingers round inside his waistband, and straightened him. She rolled his old dirty clothes into a bundle. “I’m not stealing them, young man, they’ll come back darned and laundered.”
    “Thank you, mam,” said Philip.
    “If you want anything at all,
I’m the one
. Remember that. There’s a nightshirt on your bed, and a pot under it, and a toothbrush by the pump. I’ll give you matches and a candle when you come back. You’ll sleep deep in the good Kent air.”
    Supper was ready in the dining-hall. The table was laid with pretty earthenware plates and mugs, glazed in yellow, with a border of black-eyed daisies. Robin and Florian had been put to bed, but Hedda, who was five, was still there, as they ate early. Olive summoned Philip to sit at her side, and said he was handsome. Humphry Wellwood nodded to him from the other end of the table. He was a tall, thin man, with a fox-red beard, neatly trimmed, pale blue eyes and a dark brown velvet jacket.
    There was cauliflower soup, followed by a lamb stew, and a vegetable and pumpkin pie for the vegetarians (Olive, Violet, Phyllis and Hedda). Philip took two bowls of soup. Prosper Cain’s fruitcake was a long time away; he had two weeks of near-starvation and a lifetime of perpetual hunger to feed. He had supposed Mr. Wellwood, who worked in the Bank of England, would be like the factory owners in the Potteries, stiff, grand and condescending. But Humphry told the children what was clearly an instalment in a running tale of secret naughtiness amongst the bank clerks in the depths of the Bank, who kept tethered bull terriers attached to the legs of their desks, and dividedsides of meat from Smithfield before going home for the weekend. Phyllis and Hedda shuddered dramatically. Humphry recounted a jape in which one young man had tied the laces of another man’s boots to his high desk-stool. Dorothy said that wasn’t really funny, and Humphry agreed immediately, saying with half-mock sadness that the poor young creatures were confined in the shadows with no outlet for their animal energies. They are like the Nibelungen, said Humphry, they go to the bullion-vaults to stare at the machines that weigh the gold sovereigns—like half-human creatures that swallow the good coins and spit out the light ones into copper vessels. Tom said they had seen an amazing candlestick which Major Cain had said might be made out of melted-down gold coins. With dragons