“Well, it seems like it. I haven’t had a morsel since yesterday morning. Get me something, there’s a dear girl—bread, meat, tea, coffee, anything, if it’s only oats or barley.”
“Wait a minute,” cried the girl, turning to go.
“You mustn’t be longer, or I shall be dead,” shouted Hilary as she ran off; and then, dropping from the window, the young fellow executed a figure out of the dance of delight invented for such occasions by Dame Nature to aid young people in getting rid of their exuberance, stopped short, pulled out a pocket-comb, and carefully touched up his hair, relieving it from a number of scraps of straw and chaff in the process.
“A nice Tom o’ Bedlam I must have looked,” he said to himself. “No wonder she didn’t know me.”
“Hil! Hil!”
“Ahoy!” he shouted, scrambling up to the window and slipping down again, to try the next time more carefully and on regaining the window-sill there was the bright, eager-looking girl beneath, with a jug of milk and a great piece of bread.
“This was all I could get now, Hil,” she said, her eyes sparkling with pleasure.
“All!” he cried. “New bread and new milk! Oh, Addy, it’s lovely! There’s nothing I like better for breakfast, and our cow on board won’t milk and our oven won’t bake. Give us hold: I’m ravenous for the feast.”
Hilary reached one arm down and Adela Norland reached one arm up, but when they had strained to the utmost a good six feet intervened between Hilary’s hand and the slice of bread.
“Oh, I say, how tantalising!” he cried, giving a shake at the bars. “Make haste, Addy, and do something. Isn’t there a ladder?”