“Rummy show. How far does it go?”
“Right along, Muster Corkran—right along from end to end. Her runs under the ’ang of the heaves. Have ’ee rached the stopcock yet? Mr. King got un put in to save us carryin’ watter from down-stairs to fill the basins. No place for a lusty man like old Richards. I’m tu thickabout to go ferritin’. Thank ’ee, Muster Corkran.”
The water squirted through the tap just inside the cupboard, and, having filled the basins, the grateful Richards waddled away.
The boys sat round-eyed on their beds considering the possibilities of this trove. Two floors below them they could hear the hum of the angry house; for nothing is so still as a dormitory in mid-afternoon of a midsummer term.
“It has been papered over till now.” McTurk examined the little door. “If we’d only known before!”
“I vote we go down and explore. No one will come up this time o’ day. We needn’t keep cavé.”
They crawled in, Stalky leading, drew the door behind them, and on all fours embarked on a dark and dirty road full of plaster, odd shavings, and all the raffle that builders leave in the waste room of a house. The passage was perhaps three feet wide, and, except for the struggling light round the edges of the cupboards (there was one to each dormer), almost pitchy dark.
“Here’s Macrea’s house,” said Stalky, his eye at the crack of the third cupboard. “I can see Barnes’s name on his trunk. Don’t make such a row, Beetle! We can get right to the end of the Coll. Come on!... We’re in King’s house now—I can see a bit of Rattray’s trunk. How these beastly boards hurt one’s knees!” They heard his nails scraping, on plaster.
“That’s the ceiling below. Look out! If we smashed that the plaster ’ud fall down in the lower dormitory,” said Beetle.
“Let’s,” whispered McTurk.