The Runaways Read Online Free PDF Page B

the stairs and back to their room. One by one they climbed the flight of steps that led up into the big bed, fell among the blankets and pillows and Absolom, and snuggled down. They were asleep at once and did not see the fading of the moonlight and the growing of the dawn, or hear the morning chorus of the birds and the sound of the sheep bleating on the hills.
     
    They woke up to the smell of fried sausages and were quickly dressed and pursuing it. Just at first, after they had caught up with it in the kitchen, they wondered if that wonderful interval of song and dance in the middle of the night had been a dream, because the man who was frying the sausages, turning them over and over in the huge iron pan with a long two-pronged fork, was wearing a shepherd’s smock tied round the waist with bast. But when he turned his head it was Ezra Oake all right, and when he saw them he smiled. He had the most wonderful smile, which seemed to run up into all the wrinkles on his face. His eyes were bright blue.

    ‘Lucky us weren’t out of sausages,’ he said. ‘Nor bread. If it ’ad been pickle an’ cheese you was wantin’ for your breakfast you’d ’ave ’ad none.’ And he winked one eye and chuckled. He had a deep rumbling chuckle and a husky voice. The children gathered round him fascinated bythe interior of the frying pan, which contained not only sausages but bread, eggs and kidneys, all sizzling gloriously.
    ‘Nothin’ like a good fry for breakfast,’ said Ezra. ‘An’ a nice strong cup o’ tea. Settles the stomach.’
    The cuckoo clock in the sink struck ten.
    ‘Ten?’ gasped the children.
    ‘Aye,’ said Ezra. ‘Ten. The master ’e ’ad breakfast an’ ’e was off in the trap two hours ago.’
    ‘Where to?’ said Robert, and fear clutched at their hearts.
    ‘Down to town,’ said Ezra.
    ‘Why?’ whispered Nan.
    ‘Us be short o’ cheese, pickles, biscuits, ’am, sugar an’ marmalade,’ said Ezra, and again he winked. ‘But I reckon us should be thankful ’Ector ’as ’is sardines. ’E takes the ’uff if ’e don’t get breakfast.’
    The children now saw that Hector was sitting at the open window above the sink with an open tin in front of him. As they watched he stretched out a claw and delicately removed a sardine. It went down at one swallow and he removed another. Andromache was looking at them over the top of her basket, a tortoiseshell cat with apprehensive green eyes.
    ‘Better put the dog out,’ said Ezra.
    Nan grasped Absolom’s collar and pulled him past Andromache’s basket and out into the garden. The back door opened straight into the little yard behind the house, where there was a well and a washing line. Opposite the back door four steps led up to a small walled kitchen garden on the slope of the hill. At the top of the garden under the wall were four beehivesand beyond the wall was an old grey church with a tower that soared so far into the sky that it took Nan’s breath away. A door in the wall beside the beehives led from the garden to the churchyard. There was a jumble of whitewashed thatched cottages grouped round the church, and on the other side of the lane, and the smoke was curling lazily up from their crooked chimneys . She shut her eyes and smelt flowers, wood-smoke and sausages, and heard a real cuckoo calling and the sheep bleating, and what she heard and smelt matched what she had seen. Yet it seemed too good to be true.
    ‘Be you hungry, maid?’
    She opened her eyes and it was true and Ezra was beside her. She looked up at him and smiled and he smiled back, and again she felt that the midnight dancing had been a dream, for this Ezra did not seem quite the same as the other. That had been a many-coloured, gay, fantastic creature; this was a kindly, earthy, sober man who moved slowly on his wooden leg, and this morning his corduroy trouser-leg was pulled down to hide the bee that was carved and painted upon it. But perhaps the bee was no longer there.