Missing Person by Mary Jane Staples Read Free Book Online

middle room. She stopped to open a door and found the upstairs lav, complete with a small handbasin. The middle room proved to be the bedroom. It looked quite attractive, and a very nice eiderdown covered the bed. Well, she couldn’t complain about either room, they represented lodgings a lot better than her abode with George Rice, the paunchy old goat who’d got above himself.
    One thing, she’d never had to fight Frank Golightly off. He’d always behaved like a regular gent, and hadn’t even touched her proud bosom, which might not have objected to a squeeze or two. Frustrating that had been sometimes. A gel didn’t mind a fiancé enjoying a bit of lovey-dovey with her bosom. Crikey, Frank had been courting her for four years and never undone a single button of any of her blouses. Funny thing, she hadn’t missed him a bit in all of the six months she’d been in Walworth. All the same, she was twenty-six now, and there ought to be some exciting bloke ready to enter her life or she’d wake up an old maid one day. Dressmaking was all right, but she hadn’t been born to make a lifelong career of it. Blow that for a lark, twice over and with knobs on.
    A crashing sound swept up from the kitchen, startling her out of her reverie. Down she went, and in a hurry. In the kitchen the two little angels were on their feet, blue frocks long to their ankles, blue eyes gazing at a porridge bowl lying shattered on the stone floor of the scullery.
    ‘Blessed fing,’ said Penny-Farving.
    ‘I dropped it, that’s all,’ said Bubbles, ‘and look what’s ’appened.’
    ‘No wonder your dad told you not to carry things to the sink,’ said Tilly.
    ‘Yes, it’s ’cos I’m too young,’ said Bubbles.
    ‘I dunno why fings break so easy,’ said Penny-Farving, ‘Bubbles only dropped that a little bit. You goin’ to smack ’er?’
    ‘I’ll leave that to your dad,’ said Tilly.
    ‘Our dad don’t smack us,’ said Penny-Farving indignantly, ‘he likes us, we’re ’is little sausages.’
    ‘Glad to ’ear it,’ said Tilly. ‘All right, where’s a brush and pan?’
    ‘On there,’ said Penny-Farving, pointing to the scullery copper. On top of it were the brush and pan. ‘We can’t reach ourselves.’
    Tilly brought the brush and pan into play, and emptied the shattered remains of the porridge bowl into the yard dustbin, at which precise moment the front door opened to a pull on the latchcord and a hearty voice was heard.
    ‘Dust-oh! Comin’ through!’
    A hefty dustman clumped through the passage to the back door on the other side of the kitchen. He stopped to look through the open kitchen door at the scene in the scullery. He grinned broadly beneath his large leather headgear that covered his hair, his neck and his shoulders.
    ‘’Ello, me little pickles, is that yer Aunt Gertie lookin’ after yer today?’
    ‘No, it ain’t, you saucebox,’ said Tilly, ‘I’m nobody’s Aunt Gertie.’
    ‘She’s goin’ to live wiv us in upstairs rooms,’ said Penny-Farving, ‘she’s Tilly.’
    ‘Pleased to meet yer, Tilly,’ said the dustman, ‘like a ride on me dustcart come Sunday?’
    ‘Blimey O’Reilly,’ said Tilly, ‘a gel can ’ardly wait, can she?’
    ‘I can ’ardly wait meself,’ grinned the dustman, ‘yer a fair old treat to me mince pies after all the kipper bones on me cart.’
    Penny-Farving giggled.
    ‘We’re not keepin’ you, are we?’ said Tilly.
    ‘I wouldn’t mind keepin’ you, love, corblimey I wouldn’t,’ said the hearty dustman. ‘Say in the private apartments of me palace.’
    ‘Flattered, I’m sure,’ said Tilly. ‘Well, don’t break your leg emptyin’ the dustbin.’
    ‘Ain’t she a caution, me little pickles?’ grinned the dustman. ‘Well, must git on, yer know, or I’ll never git the baby washed.’ He made short work of carrying the dustbin out.
    ‘Has ’e got a palace?’ asked Bubbles.
    ‘Yes, in Peabody’s Buildings, probably,’ said Tilly, ‘but