how black the night or how closely-fastened the ancient, creaking shutters? And where was the low, barely audible mumbling, on and on without end or outcome, that always used to accompany these nightly prowlings …?
Nightly? Why, it wasn’t even night! At that very moment the pyjama’d figure had reached the windows … was drawing back the curtains, knocking over something as he did so, letting in the first white glitter of a winter day. In the cold, sharp light, the figure was revealed to be young, and lanky: tousled, fairish hair flopped this way and that around his ears, and in his right hand he swung a large, battered aluminium kettle. With unspeakable relief, Milly recognised him as one of the young men who had been peering over the banisters last night while she and Mrs Mumford fought out their life-and-death battle of wits.
“Oh!” said the young man, apparently noticing Milly’s head on the pillow for the first time: and then “I say!”
He paused, as if for an answer, and then resumed his own train of thought: “I mean. That is. I say, I’m sorry! I didn’t think there was anybody here.”
Milly still couldn’t think of anything to say. She was limp and speechless from relaxation, the aftermath of fear, so she just lay there, contentedly enough, waiting for some sense to emerge from the encounter. He looked quite a nice young man; bearded, and with amiable greenish eyes under shaggy beige eyebrows. Just now his mouth was open.
“It’s the hotplate, you see,” he volunteered at last,hitching up his pyjama trousers as he spoke. “I suppose you don’t know what’s happened to the hotplate?”
“I’m afraid—well, you see, I only came last night,” essayed Milly, still dazed: and then she watched, quite unsurprised , while the intruder, with a muttered exclamation, flung open the door of a huge yellow-varnished wardrobe, and began rummaging in its depths. Clanking sounds … muffled thuds … and then he emerged, wild-eyed, and pushing the tumble of hair back from his face. For a second he glanced despairingly round the room, then he turned, and strode without a word to the door.
“Kev!” he yelled. “I say, Kev! The silly old cow’s gone off with the hotplate! Now what are we going to do?”
Which hotplate? What silly old cow? Before any guesses could begin to form themselves in Milly’s mind, there were suddenly two young men filling her doorway. The second one (Kev, presumably) was darker, and distinctly better groomed than his companion. His beard was trimmed, and his pyjamas firmly corded.
“I say, I’m sorry about this,” said the newcomer to Milly. “Jacko had no idea there was anyone here, you see.”
He paused, and looked thoughtfully round the room. “I say, do you mind if I come and have a look?—It must be somewhere.” He paused politely for just long enough for Milly to have said “Yes, that’s quite all right”, if she had so wished: and then he set himself to flinging open drawers and cupboards, delving among hair-curlers, outworn gloves, and long-ago relics of somebody’s gracious living—lace-edged table-mats, embroidered nightdress-cases—the sort of things that are too good to throw away and too bothersome to use, and so just right for lodgers.
‘You see ?” said the first boy, Jacko, with a sort of melancholy triumph, when it became clear that his friend’s search was destined to be as fruitless as his own: and, “I told you you should have helped her pack!” retorted Kevin, “Then she’d never have….”
At this point, both seemed to recall simultaneously theexistence of Milly, who was by now sitting up in bed with her winter coat clutched round her. They looked at her consideringly.
“Miss Childe,” observed the one called Kevin, with just the faintest touch of reproach in his voice, “always used to let us make our tea in here. On the hotplate.”
“Yes. On the hotplate.”
Milly was beginning to hate the hotplate, whatever it was.
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