“I told him you were an innocent unborn babe and that Justice had had a mis-carriage, but he only grinned and said you had got C.B. and dry bread for insilence in the Orderly Room. What is ‘insilence’?”
“Pulling Havlan’s leg, I s’pose,” opined Dam. “What about that grub? There comes a time when you are too hungry to eat and then you die. I—”
“Here it is,” squealed Lucille, “don’t go and die after all my trouble. I’ve got some thin ice-wafer biscuits, sulphur tablets, thin cheese, a slit-up apple and three sardines. They’ll all come under the door—though the sardines may get a bit out of shape. I’ll come after lessons and suck some brandy-balls here and breathe through the key-hole to comfort you. I could blow them through the key-hole when they are small too.”
“Thanks,” acknowledged Dam gratefully, “and if you could tie some up and a sausage and a tart or two and some bread-and-jam and some chicken and cake and toffee and things in a handkerchief, and climb on to the porch with Grumper’s longest fishing-rod, you might be able to relieve the besieged garrison a lot. If the silly Haddock were any good he could fire sweets up with a catapult.”
“I’d try that too,” announced Lucille, “but I’d break the windows. I feel I shall never have the heart to throw a stone or anything again. My heart is broken,” and the penitent sinner groaned in deep travail of soul.
“Have you eaten everything, Darling? How do you feel?” she suddenly asked.
“Yes. Hungrier than ever,” was the reply. “I like sulphur tablets with sardines. Wonder when they’ll bring that beastly dry bread?”
“If there’s a sulphur tablet left I could eat one myself,” said Lucille. “They are good for the inside and I have wept mine sore.”
“Too late,” answered Dam. “Pinch some more.”
“They were the last,” was the sad rejoinder. “They were for Rover’s coat, I think. Perhaps they will make your coat hairy, Dam. I mean your skin.”