Dido and Pa by Joan Aiken Page A

then. Lotsa bringers atwixt here and there. Whitechapel way, maybe. Or Spitalfields. All rosy?" said the boy, and slipped away, shaking his head as Sophie offered to reward him. They saw him dash through the gate and disappear into the traffic of the King's Road.
    The brother and sister remained staring at one another in the doorway.
    Then Sophie asked in a low voice,
    "
Is
Dido's birthday the first of March, would you know?"
    He frowned, and rubbed his brow.
    "The first of March? How can I possibly remember?"
    "The first of March is St. David's Day," offered Sophie helpfully.
    "So it is! And—you are right—that
is
Dido's birthday. I remember her saying something about St. David once..." His voice trailed away; he stood gazing across the courtyard.
    "Whitechapel. You don't think it would be any use searching for her, or telling the Bow Street Runners?" suggested Sophie.
    Simon shook his head. "It would be looking for a grain of sand in the desert. And the boy only said
maybe
Whitechapel. But at least she said she will come when she can. Dido is certain to keep her promise."
    Sophie gently took the rusty apple core from her brother.
    "At least," she said, "we know that she is safe."

    When Dido next woke up, it was with an aching head, and a mouth that tasted, she thought with disgust, just like that musty, fusty room in the basement where all the kids spent the night, dangling in nooses. What had Mrs. Bloodvessel called them? The lollpoops. And she charged them a
farthing a night. Eighty-three of them she had counted out the door ... so that meant she made over one shilling and eightpence a night—enough to buy three or four pounds of meat or five pots of beer. She's a right shrewd one, that Mrs. B., thought Dido, raising herself up on one elbow—which caused another sharp scrunch of pain to run through her head. Massy me, what's up with me? Could it be that yellow jossop she gave me? It did taste mighty spicy. Maybe she put a hocus in it.
    Doing her best to ignore the hammer blows inside her skull, Dido struggled up into a sitting position. To her surprise, she found that she was not in the place where she had fallen asleep. Great fish swallow us, I
must
have been deep under, not to know about it when they carried me here.
    The room in which she now lay seemed to be an attic, judging from the steep slant of the ceilings and the triangular dormer windows. Scrambling to her feet—she had been curled up on a straw pallet on the floor—Dido pattered over to one of the windows and looked out. Sure enough, she was high up: she could see dozens of distant steeples, the huge black dome of St. Paul's, with its cross and ball of gold gleaming through a thin snow that fell like a curtain; closer at hand there were cranes and ships' masts and the grimy bulk of warehouses. Peering out to her left, Dido saw the wide Thames, running swift and black, snatching away the white snow as it fell, turning it to frothy dark water; one or two ships were ploughing upriver against the tide, with ruffles of dirty foam against their noses. Pushing open—with some trouble—the cracked and grimy window, Dido
took several deep sniffs of rusty-smelling sharp air into her lungs and felt a little better. She looked down, but could not see the street below; the window opened onto a ledge of roof, with a railed parapet along the edge, which was already beginning to be outlined in snow.
    I could use a drink o' water, thought Dido, looking at the river; and turned back into the attic. Its door was shut and, she found when she tried it, locked; she rattled it vigorously, and yelled:
    "Hey! Lemme outa here! Lemme out!" several times, but nobody came and nobody answered.
    Reconsidering the room, Dido found a pint mug full of water and a chamber pot. Apart from these articles, and the straw mattress with its single worn blanket, the room was unfurnished, and quite cold. Philosophically Dido drank the water, made use of the pot, and then, squatting down on