Late, Late in the Evening

was slightly ashamed of this piece of sophistry.)

'It was good of Our Sarah to blame it on Ern, because he wasn't even there,' said Kenneth. 'We can't make her out to be a-to tell stories, can we?' (The word liar was on the forbidden list in our vocabulary; so was hell. As for damn and bloody, these were not words we ever heard except from the lips of drunken men, and even then they filled us with pity and terror, as being expressions which even God, powerful though we knew Him to be, could neither excuse nor forgive.)

It is no wonder that in some ways we were a couple of sanctimonious little prigs. Our nightly prayers, for example, were always said downstairs quite often in front of a circle of admiring relatives of whom Aunt Lally, although not the most loving, was the most sentimental. She would exclaim, when the recitation of our little piece was over: 'Don't they say them words pretty!' Then she would present each of us with a biscuit out of a special tin and we would go up to bed feeling satisfied with our performance, although a little scornful of our aunt, who had not realised what an artistic bit of eye-wash it had been.

CHAPTER TWO

MR WARD

As usual we enjoyed ourselves down at the sheepwash. Lionel asked how deep it was.

'Deep enough to drownd two loike you, you young Oi say,' replied Our Sarah. Lionel went over to the hedge which bordered Lye Hill and broke off a long stick. He lay on his stomach and tested the depth of the water at the deepest part, but the stick did not reach the bottom.

'Oh, good!' he said. 'If you girls would go away, we boys could have a good dip.'

'That ud be rude,' said Our Sarah. 'You ent got your bathers weth ee.'

'Oh, no, it wouldn't be rude. Of course it wouldn't. We always bathe naked at school.'

'Oi tell ee et's rude.'

'Then you're an ignorant peasant.'

'No, she isn't,' said Kenneth. 'It depends on the point of view. And it's very ignorant of you to talk about peasants when you only mean villagers.'

'Can you swim?' asked Lionel. We had noticed that he always retreated in some way or other when he was contradicted or challenged. We also soon found out that he blabbed, so we did not tell him much.

'He's a bit of a coward, isn't he?' said Kenneth to me, later. 'I mean, I'm a year younger than him and not nearly as tall. He ought to have busted me one. I quite expected it.'

'I expect he's been bullied at school,' I replied. In the boys' books we got from the library when we were at home there was always bullying at boarding-schools. 'It would make anybody a coward if they were always being bullied.'

'Father gave me sixpence last year for punching Tom Speery when he tried it on.'

'Because Tom was older and bigger than you. I wish I could earn sixpence that way.'

'I split it with you, didn't I?'

'It's not the same as earning it.'

'Do you suppose Lionel gets much pocket-money?'

'We've never been with him when he spent any.'

'Perhaps he's a miser as well as a coward, and I know he blabs about things you'd think ought to be a secret.'

'Some people say the old man who died-that tramp who had the tumble-down place at the bottom of the hill-some people say he was a miser.'

'I wonder! If he was, he could have left a hidden treasure-money, you know, or jewels.'

'In that cottage?'

'Well, he might have done. Such things have been known. Maybe he left a code message to say where he buried it.'

'Or a map, like Treasure Island.'

'We might go and see.'

'Would we take Lionel?'

'Why? It's our idea, not his. Besides, he's been to tea with us twice, but he's never asked us back.'

'Perhaps he can't. Besides, what would we do in a big house like his? There might be all sorts of difficulties. Suppose we spilt our tea or knocked something over?'

'It wouldn't matter. Rich children always have tea in the schoolroom or the nursery. They never have meals with their parents downstairs.'

'Anyway, what about the old man's treasure?'

We decided to try our luck at the cottage without Lionel's assistance. Breakfast for us was at eight and we always had it without Mr Ward, who did not often come downstairs until ten. Aunt Kirstie was never known to grumble at having to cook a separate breakfast for him. He seldom appeared at lunch, either. Our Sarah told us that she reckoned he got his mid-day meal at the pub and added the further information that he was a dirty old man.

'I wouldn't call him dirty, would you?' Kenneth said.

'He takes snuff and blows his nose rather a lot,' I replied. 'Perhaps that's what she meant.' It was eight