“And now?”
“Now? Now? We won’t talk about that, Edward. Get your Donne and read to me.”
“I read so badly.”
“You read excellently. You’re a little slow sometimes.”
“I can’t vary my voice. I could, before it broke. Now I read so monotonously.”
“Verse ought to be read in a monotone, but there is a passionate monotone. Read me the Second Anniversary, and we’ll forget our worries. That sounded rather like a step in the alleyway.”
Perrin leaned out of the door and looked aft.
“It’s no one,” he said. “A beam creaked. Stukeley’s asleep on the cabin lockers.”
“It sounded like a step.”
“I’ll just make sure. No. It can’t have been anybody.” He tiptoed lightly to the cabin door, and looked through. Stukeley was asleep on the locker-tops, his face buried in the cushions. Perrin closed the door quietly, and took his book from his shelf. “It was no one,” he said. “No one at all. Only a beam.”