Dido and Pa by Joan Aiken Page B

the mattress again, wrapped the blanket round her shoulders while she meditated.
    What's all this about? Some weasely scheme o' Pa's; some of his Hanoverian dealings, that's for sure. Let's think: what was they a-talking about while I was drinking that Mickey liquor? Something about B.P.G. What did Pa say? I know: he said B.P.G. has stuck his spoon in the wall. So who is B.P.G.? Was B.P.G. the one as Pa wanted me to look after?
    After a moment or two of thought the solution came to her. Love a duck! It's Bonnie Prince Georgie! He's hopped the twig! He's kicked the bucket! That's it for a certainty! Now I remember Mrs. B. saying "You can't have a party without a prince," just afore I passed out.
    Bonnie Prince Georgie has took and died on them.
    So what'll Pa and his cullies do now? They'll just have to pipe down and make the best o' King Dick.
    But no, Dido recollected, her father had said something else. Someone—she could not remember the name—"has other fish to fry."
    Fish, thought Dido; wish to goodness
I
had a few fish to fry A sudden pang of hunger made her get up and rattle the door again. She yelled, "Hey! I'm starving in here. What's the idea?" Still there came no answer.
    No use staying in here if I can find some way to get out, Dido decided. If it can't be the door, then it'll hatta be the window.
    Pushing the casement wider, she hoisted herself up, got a knee over the sill, and scrambled out onto the ledge, which ran along the edge of the roof outside. The parapet was only six inches high; kneeling against it, Dido squinted down through small, stinging snowflakes and found there was a sheer drop to the street a long way below; the house must be four, perhaps five stories high. Can't let meself down by the blanket, thought Dido; firstly, it ain't big enough, even if I could tear it into strips; and secondly, I wouldn't trust it above half, so moth-eaten as it is. Let's see what's round the corner.
    On hands and knees, proceeding with care, for the narrow ledge was aswim in wet snow, she crawled leftward, toward the river end of the house. Humph! There's those timbers a-slanting down to the river. Could slide down one o' those, maybe...
    Not overenthusiastic about this possibility—for the bulky piles were very steeply slanted and slimy-looking with age and weather—Dido explored on around the other two sides of the roof. But she found that the sloping buttresses did, in fact, offer her only chance of escape. She had hoped there might be a way of climbing across to the roof of another house, but a yard, bordered by a creek, lay at the back, and on the fourth side of the house a gully, three stories deep and too wide to jump, separated her from the next house in the alley. And even if she could clear the gully, the house on the far side had only a sloping slate roof to land on, white, now, with snow; I'd roll off there like an egg, Dido thought; that would be no manner o' use at all.
    No: it's got to be a slither down one o' the joists, I reckon; like it or lump it. Resolving to lump it, she returned to the river end of the house and glumly surveyed the sloping piles once more. There were five of them, and they met the wall of the house some six feet below the parapet over which she peered. Slanting outward, they went into the river about fifteen to twenty feet away from the ground floor of the house; twenty feet of swirling, frothing, freezing Thames water. But the end pile, the westward one, entered the water only a short distance from the iron fence, embellished with spikes, which ran out past the house and curved into the water.
    If I can climb down that joist, thought Dido—and it'll be as quick as a monkey sliding down an organ grinder's stick—I ought to be able to reach across and grab the railing, if the beam ain't so slimy I shoot straight into the water. Thing is to try and go slow. Well: best get it over and done with, light's going fast, shan't be able to see in ten minutes.
    The parapet had a