"I know! The Mill. There are heaps and heaps of fishing-nets there, and
we could each take a blanket like Indians and creep over under cover of
the night after the Beale has gone, and get back before she comes in the
morning."
It seemed a sporting thing to do, and we agreed. Only Dora said she
thought it would be draughty.
Of course we went over to the Mill at once to lay our plans and prepare
for the silent watches of the night.
There are three stories to a windmill, besides the ground-floor. The
first floor is pretty empty; the next is nearly full of millstones and
machinery, and the one above is where the corn runs down from on to the
millstones.
We settled to let the girls have the first floor, which was covered with
heaps of nets, and we would pig in with the millstones on the floor
above.
We had just secretly got out the last of the six blankets from the house
and got it into the Mill disguised in a clothes-basket, when we heard
wheels, and there was the gentleman back again. He had only got one
portmanteau after all, and that was a very little one.
Mrs. Beale was bobbing at him in the doorway when we got up. Of course
we had told her he had rented rooms, but we had not said how many, for
fear she should ask where we were going to sleep, and we had a feeling
that but few grown-ups would like our sleeping in a mill, however much
we were living the higher life by sacrificing ourselves to get money for
Miss Sandal.
The gentleman ordered sheep's-head and trotters for dinner, and when he
found he could not have that he said--
"Gammon and spinach!"
But there was not any spinach in the village, so he had to fall back on
eggs and bacon. Mrs. Beale cooked it, and when he had fallen back on it
she washed up and went home. And we were left. We could hear the
gentleman singing to himself, something about woulding he was a bird
that he might fly to thee.
Then we got the lanterns that you take when you go "up street" on a dark
night, and we crept over to the Mill. It was much darker than we
expected.
We decided to keep our clothes on, partly for warmness and partly in
case of any sudden alarm or the fishermen wanting their nets in the
middle of the night, which sometimes happens if the tide is favourable.
We let the girls keep the lantern, and we went up with a bit of candle
Dicky had saved, and tried to get comfortable among the millstones and
machinery, but it was not easy, and Oswald, for one, was not sorry when
he heard the voice of Dora calling in trembling tones from the floor
below.
"Oswald! Dicky!" said the voice, "I wish one of you would come down a
sec."
Oswald flew to the assistance of his distressed sister.
"It's only that we're a little bit uncomfortable," she whispered. "I
didn't want to yell it out because of Noel and H.O. I don't want to
frighten them, but I can't help feeling that if anything popped out of
the dark at us I should die. Can't you all come down here? The nets are
quite comfortable, and I do wish you would."
Alice said she was not frightened, but suppose there were rats, which
are said to infest old buildings, especially mills?
So we consented to come down, and we told Noel and H.O. to come down
because it was more comfy, and it is easier to settle yourself for the
night among fishing-nets than among machinery. There _was_ a rustling
now and then among the heap of broken chairs and jack-planes and baskets
and spades and hoes and bits of the spars of ships at the far end of our
sleeping apartment, but Dicky and Oswald resolutely said it was the wind
or else jackdaws making their nests, though, of course, they knew this
is not done at night.
Sleeping in a mill was not nearly the fun we had thought it would
be--somehow. For one thing, it was horrid not having a pillow, and the
fishing-nets were so stiff you could not bunch them up properly to make
one. And unless you have been born and bred a Red Indian you do not know
how to manage your blanket so as to make it keep out the draughts. And
when we had put out the light Oswald more than once felt as though
earwigs and spiders were walking on his face in the dark, but when we
struck a match there was nothing there.
And empty mills do creak and rustle and move about in a very odd way.
Oswald was not afraid, but he did think we might as well have slept in
the kitchen, because the gentleman could not have wanted to use that
when he was asleep. You see, we thought then that he would sleep all
night like other people.
We got to sleep at last, and in the night the girls edged up to their
bold brothers, so that when the morning sun "shone in bars of dusty gold
through the chinks of the aged edifice" and woke us up we were all lying
in a snuggly heap like a litter of puppies.
"Oh, I _am_ so stiff!" said Alice, stretching. "I never slept in my
clothes before. It makes me feel as if I had been starched and ironed
like a boy's collar."
We all felt pretty much the same. And our faces were tired too, and
stiff, which was rum, and the author cannot account for it, unless it
really was spiders that walked on us. I believe the ancient Greeks
considered them to be venomous, and perhaps that's how their venom
influences their victims.
"I think mills are merely beastly," remarked H.O. when we had woke him
up. "You can't wash yourself or brush your hair or anything."
"You aren't always so jolly particular about your hair," said Dicky.
"Don't be so disagreeable," said Dora.