Five Boys Read Online Free Page A

out of mind and the moment he disappeared down the lane she began to worry what she was going to do with him when he returned.
    Considering how long it took her to come up with theidea of giving him breakfast and getting him out of the house, the idea of bathing him came to her with comparable ease. Certainly, it came a good deal easier than the effort necessary to generate enough hot water to fill her old tin bath. The fire in the range needed stoking, then constant attention, and there were countless trips between the boiler and the pump out in the yard, as well as dragging the bath in from the outhouse in order to bring it up to room temperature and avoid it instantly chilling any hot water introduced to it.
    She began heating the water soon after lunchtime, convinced that Bobby would come skipping up the path at any moment, covered from head to toe in mud. Meanwhile, Bobby, mindful of her instructions regarding his return was, in all his mindfulness, having difficulty recalling whether it was meant to precede, coincide with or follow the onset of darkness. So, having had his elevenses at the Captain’s and investigated the last few corners of the village soon afterward, he climbed through a hedge halfway down the leafy lane and spent most of the afternoon throwing stones into a field.
    He must have lain down and closed his eyes at some point for he dreamed of old Mr. Evans (which was odd as he hadn’t seen Mr. Evans in years). Then he climbed a tree, kept an eye on the sun until it began to sink between the hills and went down the lane after it.
    Bobby had no trouble finding the old woman’s cottage. He just followed the thick column of smoke pouring from its chimney, but it wasn’t until he entered the house that he appreciated what was producing it. As soon as he opened the parlor door the heat hit him with all the force of acricket bat and a great cloud of steam billowed out into the hall. The windows dripped with condensation. The sills were dappled with small, mercurial pools. There was so much steam that all the linen on the clothes rack, which had been bone-dry that morning, looked as if it had just been dragged out of the wash. Bobby could just make out Miss Minter, bent over the range like a fireman on the foot plate of a locomotive. She looked over her shoulder, but her spectacles were so fogged up she had to tip her head forward and peer over them.
    “Here he
is,”
she said, without a hint of reproach. “I’ve been keeping the water hot.”
    She dragged a damp tangle of hair back from her forehead and hooked it behind an ear. Stepped forward and took Bobby’s hands in hers.
    “Good God,” she said. “You’re freezing.”
    On the contrary, Bobby thought the old lady was roasting. Miss Minter, meanwhile, was noticing how little mud Bobby had on him, but taking solace from the fact that the bath would at least heat him up.
    She picked up the poker and struck the tap on the boiler. A plume of steam flew out with the jet of boiling water and Miss Minter had to wave a hand through it to make sure the water was landing in the bath. Then she stood aside as the range gushed and spluttered, like some geyser running its course, added a dash of salts from a green glass beaker and several jugs of cold water and invited Bobby to climb in.
    When he was undressed and in the bath, Lillian Minter pulled up a stool and they sat silently beside one another, as if Bobby was in the sidecar of her motorbike and they were enjoying a country run. Miss Minter was tempted to askwhat he had been up to, but knew that whatever he said would only give her more to worry about. Besides, the parlor was calm for the first time in hours.
    “Is that nice?” she said.
    Bobby nodded. The way the water cradled him, the smell of the soap, the roaring fire—all were recognizably nice. As he pulled his shoulders down under the milky water the strange Captain and his homemade ships came back to him and Bobby wondered if the old man was