“Mrs Champernowne! Mrs Champernowne!”
“Yes, my dear,” came from the foot of the stairs. “Oh, you have been quick!”
“No, no, I haven’t,” cried Rodd pettishly. “Here, I say, have you taken away my trousers?”
“Gracious me, no, my dear! What should I want with your trousers?”
“Take them down to brush perhaps,” muttered the boy to himself, as he ran back to the other side of the bed and raised the counterpane. “Haven’t slipped off and gone under,” he muttered, and then as a fresh thought struck him he clapped his hands to his forehead and stood staring before him. “The thieves!” he exclaimed. “They haven’t been in here and taken all my clothes?”
He was silent for a few minutes, as he stared vacantly about the room.
“They have, though!” he cried. “Here, Mrs Champernowne!—Boots and all. Oh, I can’t tell her. Here, I must get my other suit out of the portmanteau. I won’t wake uncle, because it’s so early. Why, it can be only just sunrise; and he’d sit up and laugh at me. Oh, bother!”
Rodd ran round to the door again, opened it about an inch, and listened.
“She’s in the kitchen,” he muttered to himself, and slipping out on to the little landing he raised the latch of his uncle’s door, glided in, and made for the big portmanteau that lay unstrapped beneath the window.
Raising the one half quickly, he twisted the whole round so that the two halves might lie open upon the whitely-scrubbed boards as silently as he could; but one corner caught against the leg of the dressing-table, jarring it so violently that a hair-brush fell on to the floor with a bang, and Uncle Paul sprang up in bed.