“But I gotta mark down where I seen the Wellington.” He pulled out the map the vicar’d given him and began to unfold it.
Eileen snatched the map away from him. “Not till you give me that mouse.” She held out her hand.
“All right,” Alf said grudgingly, bringing it out of his pocket. “It’s only a bit of string.” He held a faded pink cord out in his open palm.
It looked oddly familiar.
“Where did you get this?”
“That carpet of Lady Caroline’s,” Binnie said.
“It fell off,” Alf said.
Lady Caroline’s priceless medieval tapestry. And when she finds out…
But by then Eileen would be long gone, Lady Caroline would blame it on the Army, and Alf and Binnie would have been long since hanged for some other crime, so she settled for an admonition against frightening people and gave the three of them the sandwiches and bottles of lemonade in the basket, which they were happily drinking when a woman with iron-gray hair and a no-nonsense air opened the door.
“No,” Eileen said to Alf and Binnie.
The woman sat down across from Eileen, both hands on the handbag on her lap. “You should not allow your children to have lemonade,” she said sternly. “Or sweets of any kind.”
“Would you like to see my mouse?” Alf asked.
The woman turned a gimlet eye on him. “Children should be seen and not heard.”
“It’s to feed my snake with.” He showed her the dangling tapestry cord.
She looked coldly at it. “I have been a headmistress for thirty years,” she said, taking hold of the cord and pulling it from his fist. “Far too long to be fooled by schoolboy tricks regarding imaginary mice.” She handed the cord to Eileen. “And imaginary snakes. You need to be firmer with your children.”
“She isn’t my mother,” Theodore piped up, and the headmistress turned the gimlet eye on him. He shrank back against Eileen.
“They’re evacuees,” Eileen said, putting her arm around him.
“All the more reason for you to use a strong hand with them.”
Alf put his hand on his stomach. “I don’t feel well, Eileen.”
“Alf allus gets sick on trains,” Binnie said.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” the headmistress said to Eileen. “This is what comes of giving them lemonade. A dose of castor oil will cure them.”
Alf promptly removed his hand from his stomach, and he and Binnie both scooted over to the corner.
“It’s clear all three of your charges have been pampered and indulged far too much,” she said, glaring at Theodore.
Theodore. Who’s had a luggage tag pinned to his coat and been handed over to strangers and shipped off to a strange place how many times?
“Coddling is not what children need,” the headmistress said. She turned to glower momentarily at Alf and Binnie, who were whispering in the corner. “They need discipline and a firm hand, particularly during times like these.”
I’d have thought they needed more “coddling” during a war, Eileen thought, not less.
“Being nice to children only makes them dependent and weak,” which weren’t exactly the words Eileen would have used to describe Alf and Binnie. “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
“You mean beating?” Theodore asked tremulously, burrowing into Eileen’s side.
“When necessary,” the headmistress said, looking over at Alf and Binnie with an expression that clearly indicated she thought it was necessary now.
Alf had stepped up on the seat to reach the luggage rack and Binnie was standing below to catch him. “Alf, sit down,” Eileen said.
“I’m lookin’ for my planespotter log,” he said, “so I can write down the planes I seen.”
“Children should not be allowed to talk back to their elders,” the headmistress said. “Or to clamber about like monkeys. You there,” she shouted to them, “sit down at once,” and, amazingly, they both obeyed her. They sat down next to her, their hands folded on their laps.
“You see?” she said. “Firmness is all that is required. These modern notions of allowing children to do whatever they—yowp!” She shot to her feet, flung her handbag at Eileen, and brushed madly at her lap as if it had caught fire.
“Alf, what did you do?” Eileen said, but he and Binnie were already on their knees scrabbling to retrieve something off the floor. Alf jammed it in his pocket.
“Nuthin’,” he said, standing up and holding out his empty hands.
“We was just sittin’ there,” Binnie said innocently.
“Horrid children,” the headmistress said furiously and wheeled on Eileen. “You are obviously unfit to have children in your care.” She snatched her handbag out of Eileen’s hands. “I intend to report you to