Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/27

 "I bet she would." She lay still a moment, then rolled over on her back again and looked up at her friend with dancing eyes. "I say, May, what do you think of the brawny Scot? 'Fine nicht!' he said. I'm going to call him 'Fine Nicht.' Isn't it a good name for him? Isn't he a scream?"

"I think 'e's 'andsome. And look 'ow kind 'e was, carrying your basket and all. You're too uppish, Delight."

"He wasn't just kind, May; he was curious. He made me tell him my name, out there in the passage. I mean to have a little fun with him."

May, now in her nightdress, her head covered with curling-pins, said solemnly: "You better be careful of men out 'ere. You're in a strange country, and you 'aven't no one to look arter you but me."

"You hop into bed, old Lady Croak. You hate men yourself, don't you?"

May turned out the light and got into the narrow, lumpy bed beside her. She had not opened the window, and the air was filled with the smell of the charred wick. A steady hum of voices rose from the bar. She turned towards the young girl and laid her arms across her supple hips.

"Is my tea-set safe?" whispered Delight.

"In a corner of the clothes cupboard. I laid a petticoat over it in case anyone comes nosing around in the morning."

"I think I'll put it under the bed tomorrow. It'd be safer there."

"Oh, you silly, under the bed's the first place any burglar 'ud look."

"Under the bed! Oo—May, s'pose there was someone under the bed now! S'pose he'd been there waitin' for us!" She wriggled frantically against May. "S'pose it