Free Two for Three Farthings by Mary Jane Staples Page A

have to see about things,’ he said.
    â€˜Mister, you been swell,’ said Orrice, ‘and me an’ Effel don’t want to be no trouble. Yer real swell, takin’ us in for tonight, and we don’t want yer to go to no more trouble than that. Yer won’t tell no-one we’re running away, will yer?’
    â€˜No, I won’t tell, Orrice, cross my heart,’ said Jim, but that was a promise that might be difficult to keep.
    Effel whispered in her brother’s ear.
    â€˜Mister,’ said Orrice, ‘Effel wants to know are yer really goin’ to let us sleep in a bed tonight?’
    â€˜Yes, in this one,’ said Jim, ‘and I think it’s time you kipped down now.’
    A minute later they were in the bed, Effel wearing the old dressing-gown, Orrice his woollen pants. They fell asleep almost at once. Jim settled for the fireside rug, with a chair cushion for a pillow. After his years in the Army he could sleep anywhere. A fireside rug and a cushion represented relative luxury. All the same, he lay awake for a while, thinking about what alternatives there were to an orphanage. Effel and Orrice slept in bliss, Effel dreaming she was sailing through warm billowing clouds of fleecy white, and Orrice dreaming of squashy oranges.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Orrice and Effel were still asleep at half-past eight the next morning. Jim, drinking his breakfast cup of tea, sat at the little table, regarding an empty shell, all that was left of his soft-boiled egg. He was not a man of ifs and buts. He gave necessary thought to a problem and came uncompromisingly to a decision. If it did not turn out to be the right one, he was always prepared to take the consequences. He had made an instant decision once, to turn right instead of left in a captured German trench on the Passchendaele Ridge. He had had to accept the consequences of that, an amputated left arm.
    Now he came to a decision about Orrice and Effel. For the time being he must take care of them. His landlady, Mrs Palmer, would have to know about them, and he had to give her a story that would stand up. He could not bring himself to send these pathetic kids back to the streets to wander about in hope, dodging coppers, avoiding school, scraping pennies together for their sustenance, sleeping in doorways and looking for a miracle to happen. There were no miracles. Jesus had used them all up in Galilee. There were all sorts of kids in Walworth, rascals, ragamuffins and truants among them. Orrice and Effel, somehow, were not quite like most of them. Their attachment to each other was obvious and touching. He had to take care of them until a better alternative offered itself. But they had to attend school. Education, however elementary, was the most important thing in a child’s life, although few children realized it. Most would happily give it a miss, not knowing how bitterly they might regret it later on.
    These two could stay away from school again today, perhaps. But they must go tomorrow. He must speak to Mrs Palmer, and he must go out to look for new lodgings, lodgings for Orrice and Effel as well as himself. What was his weekly income? Together his modest pension and his modest wage amounted to thirty-four shillings a week. He would need two bedrooms, one for Effel and one for Orrice and himself, plus a room for living in and with cooking facilities. He might accordingly have to find as much as ten bob for rent, leaving twenty-four shillings to keep the three of them.
    He caught the smell of dates. He got up, looked in a crumpled paper bag and saw a small sticky mess of them. He put them on the fire. They fizzed and sizzled. He looked at the sleeping pair. Orrice’s tousled head was visible. Effel’s tangled hair spilled over the pillow. Their breathing was even. He went down to speak to Mrs Palmer, a woman of fifty-five, her husband a plumber. He advised her that his niece and nephew had come to stay with him for a while. Mrs