"I like the Vicar very much," he said to Harold in the churchyard afterwards.
"So does May," Harold replied; "she thinks there's no one like Mr. Singleton. Can you find your way home by yourself, Billy?"
"Oh, yes," assented Billy, "of course I can."
"That's all right, then," smiled Harold, adding: "you'll meet nothing you need be afraid of, and hear nothing—being Sunday there's no blasting going on at the stone quarry to-day."
[CHAPTER V.]
BILLY'S PRESENT.
NEXT morning Billy came downstairs looking heavy-eyed and poorly. He had had bad dreams, he said, when his grandfather asked him if he had not slept well; but he did not say that in them he had lived again through the night of the air raid and the grievous time which had followed, so that the hours of darkness had been a horror to him.
"You'd better spend the morning out-of-doors," remarked Mrs. Brown. "It couldn't be finer weather—a good thing, too, as it's washing-day. I hope Mrs. Varcoe will come early, then we shall get the clothes dried during the day."
Mrs. Varcoe was a woman from the village, Billy learnt, who came to Rowley Cottage every Monday morning to do the washing. He met her in the yard, after breakfast, where he was waiting for his grandfather, who was getting his wheel-barrow and gardening tools from an out-house, and she paused to look at him. She was a tall, muscular, red-headed woman, with a big freckled face and small greenish eyes.
"Good morning!" he said politely, thinking that she was certainly the ugliest woman he had ever seen.