The Runaways by Victor Canning Page A

the kind of people who understood and could handle horses. There was a chestnut mare, Penny, and a bay gelding called – for some reason Smiler never discovered – Bacon. Bacon, he soon found, liked to give you a quick nip if you didn’t watch him. Penny was very even-tempered except that now and then she would see things under her nose that no one else could see – invisible fairies or dwarfs or snakes. Then, she would leap sideways or pirouette like a ballet dancer on her hind legs – and off you would come unless you were wise to her weakness. Over the stable loft there was a pigeon cote full of white fantail doves. In a run at the bottom of the vegetable garden lived twelve white Leghorn hens – known as the Apostles. At the back of the kennel runs was a storehouse where all the hound meal and dog-and-cat meat was kept and cooked in a big boiler.
    Although Smiler had nothing to do with the horses to begin with, he had plenty on his hands. It was, he soon learned, his job to cut up and cook the dog meat, weigh up the hound meal, feed all the dogs and cats and keep their water bowls full. He had to clean out the kennels twice a week and lay new bedding, feed and water the hens and collect the eggs, and exercise the setters in the five-acre paddock beyond the beech copse. He had to groom and brush all dogs twice a week, fetch in the logs for the house from the wood stack, wash down the horse-box, and dig the vegetable garden when he had any spare time. Also it was his duty to keep an eye on Tonks who was at perpetual war with the fantails and the Twelve Apostles.
    On the first morning, as Mrs Lakey rattled off all this to him and ‘showed him the ropes’, his head spun and he felt that he would never be able to manage. After a few days, however, he was managing easily, though – since he hated digging – he made sure that he didn’t often have spare time for that. His free ‘working overalls’ turned out to be ex-Army stock, green, and covered all over with brown, yellow and black camouflage markings.
    Overwhelmed a bit by all this on the first day, the most cheering thing for Smiler was Miss Milly, who was younger than Mrs Lakey. She was short and plump, fair-haired and fresh-faced, and jolly and kind. Her kitchen was spotless and smelled always of baking and cooking. She never called him ‘Boy’. Right from the first it was ‘ Johnny’ which was a bit awkward, now and then, when she called him because he forgot that he was Johnny and didn’t answer.
    Smiler’s first free lunch was a revelation that banished from his mind any culinary prowess that his Sister Ethel could show.
    When he was called for lunch. Miss Milly said, ‘Gum boots outside the door, overalls off, face and hands washed, and then to table, Johnny.’ She talked a bit like Mrs Lakey but there was always laughter and kindness in her voice.
    Johnny ate in the kitchen by himself. After he was served lunch, the two sisters would have theirs together in the diningroom. That first day he was served steak-and-kidney pie, Brussels sprouts, and butter-creamed mashed potatoes. He had a glass of milk to drink with it and fresh-baked bread. For ‘afters’ he had a great slab of treacle tart with custard and could have finished up with Cheddar cheese and homemade bread if he had had room for it. Later, when he really got into his working stride, he never missed the cheese and bread.
    That first day there was only one personally awkward moment for Smiler.
    At the end of the day he came into the scullery next to the kitchen where he had been instructed to hang his working overalls each night. Miss Milly was there, polishing a pair of tall, black riding boots belonging to Mrs Lakey.
    â€˜How long does it take you to get home, Johnny?’ asked Miss Milly.
    â€˜Oh, not long, Miss Milly.’ He had been instructed to call her that.
    Miss Milly nodded and then stared thoughtfully