Part 23 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE FETCHED DOWN HALF A DOZEN PLANKS AND THE WORKMAN.]

”I 'spect she can't afford good butcher's meat,” said Mrs. Beale; ”but your pa, I expect he pays for you, and I lay he'd like you to have your fill of something as'll lay acrost your chesties.” So she made a Yorks.h.i.+re pudding as well. It was good.

After dinner we sat on the sea-wall, feeling more like after dinner than we had felt for days, and Dora said--

”Poor Miss Sandal! I never thought about her being hard-up, somehow. I wish we could do something to help her.”

”We might go out street-singing,” Noel said. But that was no good, because there is only one street in the village, and the people there are much too poor for one to be able to ask them for anything. And all round it is fields with only sheep, who have nothing to give except their wool, and when it comes to taking that, they are never asked.

Dora thought we might get Father to give her money, but Oswald knew this would never do.

Then suddenly a thought struck some one--I will not say who--and that some one said--

”She ought to let lodgings, like all the other people do in Lymchurch.”

That was the beginning of it. The end--for that day--was our getting the top of a cardboard box and printing on it the following lines in as many different coloured chalks as we happened to have with us.

LODGINGS TO LET.

ENQUIRE INSIDE.

We ruled s.p.a.ces for the letters to go in, and did it very neatly. When we went to bed we stuck it in our bedroom window with stamp-paper.

In the morning when Oswald drew up his blind there was quite a crowd of kids looking at the card. Mrs. Beale came out and shoo-ed them away as if they were hens. And we did not have to explain the card to her at all. She never said anything about it. I never knew such a woman as Mrs.

Beale for minding her own business. She said afterwards she supposed Miss Sandal had told us to put up the card.

Well, two or three days went by, and nothing happened, only we had a letter from Miss Sandal, telling us how the poor sufferer was groaning, and one from Father telling us to be good children, and not get into sc.r.a.pes. And people who drove by used to look at the card and laugh.

And then one day a carriage came driving up with a gentleman in it, and he saw the rainbow beauty of our chalked card, and he got out and came up the path. He had a pale face, and white hair and very bright eyes that moved about quickly like a bird's, and he was dressed in a quite new tweed suit that did not fit him very well.

Dora and Alice answered the door before any one had time to knock, and the author has reason to believe their hearts were beating wildly.

”How much?” said the gentleman shortly.

Alice and Dora were so surprised by his suddenness that they could only reply--

”Er--er----”

”Just so,” said the gentleman briskly as Oswald stepped modestly forward and said--

”Won't you come inside?”

”The very thing,” said he, and came in.

We showed him into the dining-room and asked him to excuse us a minute, and then held a breathless council outside the door.

”It depends how many rooms he wants,” said Dora.

”Let's say so much a room,” said d.i.c.ky, ”and extra if he wants Mrs.

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