Free i e6a2876c557e1281 by Unknown

about, I would rather be on my own, but I had strict orders from mother never to be cheeky, not to anyone, but particularly not to Aunt Phyllis. When speaking about Aunt Phyllis my mother always finished with, "She has enough on her plate."
    And so I walked in the wood with Stinker at my heels. He seemed to feel the coming breach, too, for he didn't scamper about among the undergrowth but walked with his tail between his legs and his head cast down. He was taking his cue from my feelings. I went through one bay after the other, and it was when turning to make my way home again from the tree bay that I saw Fitty Gunthorpe.
    When I had come across him in the wood following the incident of the rabbit I had run to get out of his way, but now I didn't run, for as on the morning that I had been riveted to the ground at the sight of the nailed rabbit, so I was equally riveted now, for Fitty was looking at something in his hand. It was a small bird. It was bare and had been plucked clean. If it had been large I would have known he had killed a pigeon and was going to eat it, but this was a small bird, too small to eat. Its body looked the size of a tiny mouse. It lay on its back in his great palm, its two spidery little legs sticking up into the air.
    As if coming out of a trance Fitty took his eyes from the bird and looked at me, then he dropped it on to the ground, so quickly that it seemed as if someone had shot it from his hand, and he nicked his hand twice as if to throw off contact with the poor thing. Then coming towards me with slow steps, his eyes darting from my face to Stinker, who was growling now, he began to jabber.
    "I didn't ... Listen ... listen, I found it. It wasn't me, I've done nothin' to it.... You're the one that's ..."s ... said about the r ...
    rabbit... aren't you?"
    I could only stare unblinking into his face. He was standing an arm's length from me now, and I was terrified. Then he frightened me still further by flinging his arms wide and crying "You've ... you've got to listen, see. I found it. I tell you I found it, it was still warm.
    Somebody's plucked it, not me, not me. I swear by Christ, not me! "
    Then his manner changed, and his voice dropped to a whining whisper, as he pleaded, "Don't say anythin', will you? They'll say it was me. It wasn't me. Please, for Christ's sake, dont say anythin'."
    I backed from him, and when he cried again, his voice breaking as if on the verge of tears, "Don't, will you?" I shook my head in a sickly daze and whispered, "No, no, I won't." Then I turned and went out of the wood, not running, yet not walking. But when I reached the top of the street, away from the shadow of the trees, I had my work cut out not to fly into our house and cry, "The poor bird! the poor bird!"
    I said nothing about the bird to anyone, not because I was thinking of Fifty, but because I was seeing his father's face as he had looked at me all those years ago. Next morning I presented myself at a quarter to nine at Mrs. Tumbull's shop. Dad had gone with me to the bridge, and before leaving me he had grinned down at me, saying, "Well, lass, you are on your own now, life starts from this morning Away you go now." With a pressure of his hand he pushed my reluctant body across the bridge, and now here I was, confronted by Mrs. Tumbull and meeting, for the first time, Mollie Pollock.
    Mrs. Turnbull was a short woman, and very fat. She seemed to me to be all large bumps, and strangely enough Mollie Pollock too was short and fat, but her fat didn't appear like bumps, it was more like molten flesh, pouring continuously from some central point of her body, for ever mobile.
    Mrs. Tumbull informed us both abruptly and without any' preamble that we had a lot to learn and we had better get started. The shop had two compartments but only one entrance. Into the second compartment she led me, and placed on the counter, apparently all ready for me, were numerous boxes, some holding cards of buttons, and others, a