said Dora. 'And do you like cheese or cold bacon best?'
'I'll leave it to you entirely,' he answered. And he added, without a pause, 'I'm sure I can trust you.'
'Indeed you can,' said Dora earnestly; 'you needn't be a bit afraid. You're perfectly safe with us.'
He opened his eyes at this.
'He didn't expect such kindness,' Alice whispered. 'Poor man! he's quite overcome.'
We gave him cocoa, and cheese, and bacon, and butter and bread, and he ate a great deal, with his feet in Mr. Sandal's all-wool boots on the kitchen fender.
The girls wrung the water out of his clothes, and hung them on the clothes-horse on the other side of the fire.
'I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you,' he said; 'real charity I call this. I shan't forget it, I assure you. I ought to apologise for knocking you up like this, but I'd been hours tramping through this precious marsh of yours wet to the skin, and not a morsel of food since mid-day. And yours was the first light I'd seen for a couple of hours.'
'I'm very glad it was us you knocked up,' said Alice.
'So am I,' said he; 'I might have knocked at a great many doors before I got such a welcome. I'm quite aware of that.'
He spoke all right, not like a labouring man; but it wasn't a gentleman's voice, and he seemed to end his sentences off short at the end, as though he had it on the tip of his tongue to say 'Miss' or 'Sir.'
Oswald thought how terrible it must be to be out alone in the rain and the dark, with the police after you, and no one to be kind to you if you knocked at their doors.
'You must have had an awful day,' he said.
'I believe you,' said the stranger, cutting himself more bacon. 'Thank you, miss (he really did say it that time), just half a cup if you don't mind. I believe you! I never want to have such a day again, I can tell you. I took one or two little things in the morning, but I wasn't in the mood or something. You know how it is sometimes.'
'I can fancy it,' said Alice.
'And then the afternoon clouded over. It cleared up at sunset, you remember, but then it was too late. And then the rain came on. Not half! My word! I've been in a ditch. Thought my last hour had come, I tell you. Only got out by the skin of my teeth. Got rid of my whole outfit. There's a nice thing to happen to a young fellow! Upon my Sam, it's enough to make a chap swear he'll never take another thing as long as he lives.'
'I hope you never will,' said Dora earnestly; 'it doesn't pay, you know.'
'Upon my word, that's nearly true, though I don't know how you know,' said the stranger, beginning on the cheese and pickles.
'I wish,' Dora was beginning, but Oswald interrupted. He did not think it was fair to preach at the man.
'So you lost your outfit in the ditch,' he said; 'and how did you get those clothes?'
He pointed to the steaming gray suit.
'Oh,' replied the stranger, 'the usual way.'
Oswald was too polite to ask what was the usual way of getting a gray suit to replace a prison outfit. He was afraid the usual way was the way the four-pound cake had been got.
Alice looked at me helplessly. I knew just how she felt.
Harbouring a criminal when people are 'out after him' gives you a very chilly feeling in the waistcoat—or, if in pyjamas, in the part that the plaited cotton cord goes round. By the greatest good luck there were a few of the extra-strong peppermints left. We had two each, and felt better.
The girls put the sheets off Oswald's bed on to the bed Miss Sandal used to sleep in when not in London nursing the shattered bones of her tract-distributing brother.
'If you will go to bed now,' Oswald said to the stranger, 'we will wake you in good time. And you may sleep as sound as you like. We'll wake you all right.'
'You might wake me about eight,' he said; 'I ought to be getting on. I'm sure I don't know what to say in return for the very handsome reception you've given me. Good-night to you all, I'm sure.'
'Good-night,' said everyone. And Dora added, 'Don't you bother. While you're asleep we'll think what's best to be done.'
'Don't you bother,' said the stranger, and he absently glanced at his own clothes. 'What's big enough to get out of's big enough to get into.'
Then he took the candle, and Dicky showed him to his room.
'What's big enough to get out of,' repeated Alice. 'Surely he doesn't mean to creep back into prison, and pretend he was there all the time, only they didn't notice him?'
'Well, what are we to do?' asked Dicky, rejoining the rest of us. 'He told me the dark room at Dover was a disgrace. Poor chap!'
'We must invent a disguise,' said Dora.
'Let's pretend he's our aunt, and dress him up—like in "Hard Cash,"' said Alice.
It was now three o'clock, but no one was sleepy. No one wanted to go to sleep at all till we had taken our candles up into the attic and rummaged through Miss Sandal's trunks, and found a complete disguise exactly suited to an aunt. We had everything—dress, cloak, bonnet, veil, gloves, petticoats, and even boots, though we knew all the time, in our hearts, that these were far too small. We put all ready on the parlour sofa, and then at last we began to feel in our eyes and ears and jaws how late it was. So we went back to bed. Alice said she knew how to wake exact to the minute, and we had known her do it before, so we trusted her, and agreed that she was to wake us at six.
But, alas! Alice had deemed herself cleverer than she was, by long chalks, and it was not her that woke us.
We were aroused from deep slumber by the voice of Mrs. Beale.
'Hi!' it remarked, 'wake up, young gentlemen! It's gone the half after nine, and your gentleman friend's up and dressed and a-waiting for his breakfast.'
We sprang up.
'I say, Mrs. Beale,' cried Oswald, who never even in sleep quite loses his presence of mind, 'don't let on to anyone that we've got a visitor.'
She went away laughing. I suppose she thought it was some silly play-secret. She little knew.
We found the stranger looking out of the window.
'I wouldn't do that,' said Dora softly; 'it isn't safe. Suppose someone saw you?'
'Well,' said he, 'suppose they did?'
'They might take you, you know,' said Dora; 'it's done in a minute. We saw two poor men taken yesterday.'
Her voice trembled at the gloomy recollection.
'Let 'em take me,' said the man who wore the clothes of the plain-living and high-thinking Mr. Sandal; 'I don't mind so long as my ugly mug don't break the camera!'
'We want to save you,' Dora was beginning; but Oswald, far-sighted beyond his years, felt a hot redness spread over his youthful ears and right down his neck. He said:
'Please, what were you doing in Dover? And what did you take yesterday?'
'I was in Dover on business,' said the man, 'and what I took was Hythe Church and Burmarsh Church, and——'
'Then you didn't steal a cake and get put into Dover Gaol, and break loose, and——' said Dicky, though I kicked him as a sign not to.
'Me?' said our friend. 'Not exactly!'
'Then, what are you? If you're not that poor escaped thief, what are you?' asked Dora fiercely, before Oswald could stop her.
'I'm a photographer, miss,' said he—'a travelling photographer.'
Then slowly but surely he saw it all, and I thought he would never have done laughing.
•••••