“Whooee!” breathed Kipper. “Where’s she going? To the pokey to get someone out?”
“Do you mean the Remembrance Room?” asked Emily.
“No other.”
“I think so. Tilly said this is when—when it should come out.”
“Well, Tilly ought to know,” Kipper said matter of factly. “She’s up on all them things.” Then he lapsed into silence, absently scraping his knife across a fish.
A cloud seemed to have settled over the kitchen. Emily went back to her scrubbing. In any event, it was only a few minutes before Mrs. Meeching returned to the kitchen, and this time she was not alone.
Shuffling slowly behind her was an old, shriveled, white-haired little woman, as bent as a hairpin. Her trembling hands seemed no larger than bird claws, and her ankles were as thin as twigs. All told, she was hardly much bigger than Emily! With a mixture of horror and wonder, Emily watched this sad little parade pass into the dining room.
“Dingus, Emily!” Kipper exclaimed softly. “That’s little Mrs. Poovey! If I never seen it with my own peepers, I wouldn’t o’ believed it. You know, none o’ them says much, but that Mrs. Poovey, she ain’t opened her mouth once what I know of. And most o’ them cry, at first leastways, but she never even done that.”
Kipper scratched his red curls with a finger still liberally coated with fish scales. “Well, I’ll be a whale’s tail, as Pa always says. Mrs. Poovey taking a peppermint! O’ course, don’t know if that’s what she done, but like I said, if Tilly thinks so, ain’t anyone got better credentuals for ferreting out news. Wonder how ’twas found out?”
From the eyes and ears in the walls, thought Emily. But she was suddenly frightened by the curious, sharp look in Kipper’s eyes, too frightened to speak. She dipped her brush in the bucket and swept it intently across the floor. Then Kipper simply turned back to the sink and began to scrape his fish. Soon there was only the sound of scraping and brushing in the kitchen.
“Say, why ain’t you back to singing your ‘London Bridge’?” Kipper asked lightly.
“Because I only know one verse,” Emily replied. “I just say it over and over.”
“If you’ll pardon my saying so, that ain’t very exciting. I make up my own!” Kipper said proudly. “Would you like to hear some?”
Emily sat back on her heels, and nodded eagerly.
Then Kipper raised his knife and began waving it in the air like a conductor’s baton as he started to sing.
“When I was young I went to sea,
Went to sea, went to sea,
The name of my ship was the Fiddle Dee Dee
My fair lady!
“Up came a storm and blew us all ’round,
Blew us all ’round, blew us all ’round,
Next I knew we was upside down,
My fair lady!
“Then right to the bottom went the Fiddle Dee Dee,
Fiddle Dee Dee, Fiddle Dee Dee,
But everyone was saved excepting me,
My fair lady!”
At this unexpected turn in the song, Emily began to giggle. Kipper grinned, and then dropping his voice so low it could have gone right through the floor to the cellar, he sang slowly and sonorously,
“Now bones is all that’s left of me,
Left of me, left of me,
It’s just me and the sea and the Fiddle Dee Dee,
My fair lady!”
By now Emily was giggling uncontrollably.
Kipper beamed. “Would you like me sing it again?”
Emily had no sooner nodded, however, than he said suddenly, “Whoops! No more o’ that.” He grimaced at her. “Morning, Tilly!”
Tilly had appeared before an angrily swinging dining room door, her hands planted on her hips. “What’s this all ’bout?” she said, glowering at Kipper.
Kipper threw her a dazzling smile. “Don’t be cross at us, Tilly!” he said in a wheedling voice. “I was just singing Emily a verse or two o’ my ‘London Bridge’ whilst she was scrubbing and I was scraping. See, look here, Tilly, two whole fish from Pa! And I know you don’t like cleaning ’em, so I was doing ’em for you.” Kipper held up one half-cleaned fish for Tilly to inspect. “Don’t smell so bad as usual, neither. Only three days old, Til!”
Tilly’s flat face moved, in only a few moments, from anger to bewilderment to a pleased kind of dazed look at having this unpleasant task done for her. “Well, you goes right on with it,” she said pleasantly to Kipper. But when she looked at Emily, she gave a disgusted sniff. “Hmmmph! Y’r a mess, ain’t you? And that ain’t ’zactly the best looking floor job I ever seen.”
“Yes, and looky here, Til!” Kipper interrupted.
Then, to Emily’s horror, he quickly ground under his heel a bit of fishy newspaper that had fallen to the floor. He lifted it up to reveal an ugly black stain on the linoleum. “She ain’t going to be much help ’round here,” he said almost gleefully. “Look what she missed!”
It was clear that Tilly had seen this whole act from first to last, but she rewarded Kipper with a brazen smile of approval. Then she turned to Emily with a look that could have soured milk. “You gets to do that when you comes back. Right now you has to come with me and learn ’bout doing ’round upstairs. You puts y’r stuff ’way, and be quick ’bout it. Us ain’t got all day!”
Emily took her brush and pail to a corner of the kitchen and followed Tilly to the door without even a backward look at Kipper. She would not for all the world allow him to see the tears of rage that had sprung to her eyes. She had been taken in by his cheerful look and his good humor,
