and was immediately sorry. Binnie spent the next few days trying on names like hats and asking Eileen what she thought of Gladys and Princess Elizabeth and Cinderella. But as maddening as the parade of names was, it did the trick. Binnie began to make rapid progress, growing rounder and more pink-cheeked by the day.
In the meantime, the Magruders proved conclusively they hadn’t had the measles before, no matter what their mother had said, and Eddie and Patsy also broke out. By the evacuation of Dunkirk, Eileen had nineteen patients in varying degrees of spottiness and/or recovery.
Alf was thrilled about the ongoing rescue. “The vicar says they’re going over in fishing boats and rowboats to get our soldiers,” he reported happily. “I wish I could go.”
I wish I could, too, Eileen thought. Michael Davies is in Dover reporting on the evacuation right now.
“They’re gettin’ strafed and bombs dropped on ’em and everything,” Alf said, which at this point seemed infinitely preferable to caring for a score of feverish, fretful, molting children. Once the rash went away, their skin developed brownish, peeling patches. “Now you really look like a corpse,” Alf told Binnie. “If you was at Dunkirk, they’d think you was dead and leave you behind on the beach, and the jerries’d kill you.”
“They would not!” Binnie shrieked.
“Out,” Eileen ordered.
“I can’t go out,” Alf said reasonably. “We’re under quarantine.”
He was quite literally bouncing off the walls. Eileen found several portraits askew and Lady Caroline and her hunting dogs sprawled flat on the floor, and when she ordered them out of the ballroom, they retreated to Lady Caroline’s bathroom, a fact Eileen didn’t discover till water began dripping from the library ceiling.
“Alf and us were playing Evacuation from Dunkirk,” a sopping-wet Theodore explained.
The next time the vicar called up to the nursery window to ask if there was anything they needed, Eileen said yes rather desperately. “Something to amuse the ones who aren’t ill. Games or puzzles or something.”
“I’ll see what the Women’s Institute can come up with,” he said, and the next day delivered a basket full of donated books (Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Child’s Book of Martyrs), jigsaw puzzles (St. Paul’s Cathedral and “The Cotswolds in Spring”), and a Victorian board game called Cowboys and Red Indians, which inspired the Hodbins to lead the children on a whooping war-painted rampage through the corridors.
“And yesterday I caught Alf playing Burned at the Stake,” she called down to the vicar on his next visit, “with Lady Caroline’s Louis Quinze hat stand and a box of matches.”
He laughed up at her. “I can see stronger measures are required.”
He was as good as his word. The next day the basket he brought contained ARP armbands, a logbook, and an official RAF chart showing the distinctive silhouettes of Heinkels, Hurricanes, and Dornier 17s. Alf promptly became an ace aeroplane spotter, lecturing everyone on the difference between a Dornier 17 and a Spitfire—“See, it’s got eight machine guns on the wings”—and hanging out in the ballroom window and shouting, “Enemy aircraft at three o’clock,” every time a plane appeared and diving to record the number, type, and altitude in the logbook. The only plane most days was the plane carrying the post to Birmingham, but that didn’t discourage him, and comparative peace reigned for several days.
It was, of course, too good to last. Soon, Alf began flying bombing sorties through the kitchen. And the sickroom, and torturing Binnie. When she suggested Beauty for her name—“You know, like in Sleeping Beauty”—Alf hooted, “Beauty? Beast, more like! Or Baby, ’cause that’s what you are, bawlin’ when you was ill and beggin’ Eileen not to leave. You made ’er swear and everythin’.”
“I never,” Binnie said indignantly. “I don’t even like her. She can go this minute for all I care.”
I would if I could, Eileen thought, but while she’d been intent on taking care of her evacuees, Samuels had boarded up all the doors except the one in the kitchen, moved his chair in front of that, and nailed shut the windows in every room but the ballroom, which was always full of children. And she only had ten more days. If no one else came down with the measles.
But if they did, surely Oxford would attempt to pull her out. She was surprised they hadn’t already. Now that most of the children had recovered and Binnie was out of danger, Una and Mrs. Bascombe could easily handle the situation, but there was no sign of the