The Long Walk Home Read Online Free Page B

her back and hung her head.
    'He has gone to prison,' he said scathingly. 'The best place for him. But not for long enough, in my opinion. One month is not sufficient time for him to consider the error of his ways. Look at me, girl! You are not to even think about it, do you understand?'
    'Edgar, dear,' her mother protested, but uneasily. 'I'm sure she won't. She is merely curious. Isn't that so, Eleanor?'
    'Yes, Mama.' Eleanor heard the entreaty in her mother's voice, but was exceedingly glad that her father wasn't able to read her mind, for if he could she would surely get a whipping, just as Simon sometimes did.
    Her father ignored her mother's appeal. 'You must take a lesson from it. Breaking the law is a crime and punishment is the only answer. It's a great pity that public whipping and the pillory are no longer sanctioned,' he continued, getting on to his favourite topic. 'That's the answer: sharp deterrents to stop these young criminals from offending again.'
    Eleanor was excused and told to return upstairs. Nothing was asked about her day. Supper was always served promptly and her allotted time had been taken up by her father's disquisition on crime. She still had no answer to her most pressing question: why had the boy stolen the rabbits?
    She decided she would consult Nanny. Nanny wouldn't shout at her or tell her it was nothing to do with her. Nanny had been her mother's nurse, and had looked after Mrs Kendall when she was young. She was old and white-haired and stricken with rheumatism, but she regularly gave Eleanor a hug when she sensed the girl was feeling sad or lonely. It was the only affection that Eleanor received. Her mother gave her a peck on the cheek every evening, but her father only inclined his head as she dipped her knee in goodnight.
    Eleanor hadn't discussed the subject with Nanny before, but she told her now as they sat by the nursery fire and she drank milk and ate bread and butter and Nanny had a glass of stout.
    Eleanor was, of course, too big for a nursery now and the old bassinet which had been Simon's and then hers had been removed. When Simon came home he slept in a small room, not much bigger than a cupboard, on a truckle bed which was put away when he returned to school, and the nursery now only contained Eleanor's bed and washstand and chest of drawers. But Nanny kept her squashy old chair by the fire and Eleanor had a cane basket chair drawn up on the other side of the hearth, and here they sat in companionship every evening, although Nanny often fell asleep after finishing her stout whilst her charge read a book for an hour until bedtime.
    'So this young feller-me-lad stole some rabbits and got caught,' Nanny mused, and took a sip from her glass. 'And went to prison?'
    Eleanor nodded. 'That's what Papa said. He said he had gone for a month and that it wasn't long enough. But I wondered— I wondered why he had stolen them. Do you think, Nanny, that he did it for a lark, or was someone going to cook them for supper?'
    Nanny pondered and took another satisfying draught of ale. 'Did he look like a young swell that'd do such a thing for a lark, or a roughneck from the hoi polloi who was down on his uppers?'
    'Oh, he wasn't a swell,' Eleanor protested. 'And he had blood on his hands which would have been distasteful to a gentleman.' She considered. 'He had a dirty face and his boots were shabby. Oh, yes, and his breeches were ragged.'
    'So what do you think?' Nanny asked softly. 'It would seem to me to be quite obvious.'
    'Yes.' Eleanor felt very sad. 'I think that he must have been very hungry to do such a shameful thing. But I'm sorry that he had to stoop so low.'
    'Yes, indeed,' Nanny commented sourly. 'The butcher must have been devastated to lose his income, and who knows what happened to the rabbits.'
    'Oh, the policeman took the one the boy had. He said it would be used in evidence. But I don't know about the one he dropped; perhaps whoever found it took it back to the