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Then there was the question of the water supply. True, there were adequate tanks on the craft and a stand-pipe reasonably near on the bank. But to fill the one from the other meant at least a dozen trips backwards and forwards carrying a couple of pails. It was both laborious and uncomfortable, for it required skill if one wanted to avoid spillage and consequent soaking of clothes and shoes. And the fact that his neighbour, with the aid of a sort of primitive milkmaid's yoke, performed the same task without difficulty, did nothing to decrease his sense of frustration.

It was all such a waste of time ! For months past he’d had the bare framework of the play he intended to write clear and precise in his mind. All he had to do was clothe it in words. And words kept bubbling up into his consciousness—but always at the time when he was occupied with one of the wretchedly mundane jobs. Worse than that, by the time he was free to get them down on paper, the brilliance of inspiration had gone and what he wrote seemed second-rate and lacking in impact.

He was driven to working out a system. The household chores
must
take second place to his writing. There was only one way to make sure that they did. However disinclined he might feel, they must wait until he had already written himself out. Then inspiration was far less likely to visit him. He learned, from sheer necessity, that plates and pots and pans, if submerged in cold water, could safely wait without disaster.

But there was still shopping to do, and that meant observing other people’s times. Thanks to the little refrigerator, he could, he had thought, cut down to a single trip a week—except for the question of milk. Even with a refrigerator, he doubted if it would keep that long. Besides, there wasn’t room for more than a couple of pint bottles.

He almost wished he’d agreed to let Sid Watchett deliver whatever was necessary—but not quite. He’d seen Sid just once—and he
was
a gangling, goggled-eyed youth. Inquisitive, too, like his mother.

Besides, the fewer people who visited his retreat the better. To have a neighbour was bad enough, though he had to admit that, to use a favourite phrase of his old nannie, she did keep herself to herself. An artist, apparently, though whether amateur or professional he neither knew nor cared. At least her work absorbed her. He had seen her literally start inches from her little stool when a cow in a nearby field had given vent to a sudden bellow.

So, taking it by and large, life settled into a satisfactory rhythm and he found that he had not been mistaken. By sheer luck he had found ideal conditions for producing what, without vanity, he knew was good work. He had never been so happy in his life or so absorbed. But that was his trouble. It was all very well working out a system, but if one had reached a place where words were coiled up like a spring in one’s brain, just waiting to be released, it was so easy to forget everything else.

That happened one day when, having got up early and without stopping even for breakfast, he had worked at white heat for hours on his first act of the play. Then,' suddenly, he had remembered that he ought to get in supplies. He was out of tea, out of milk and very low on both bacon and eggs—his main standbys. And he’d got to see that chap Mangell about a new container of Calor gas.

He looked at his watch. Twelve o’clock—and, confound it, early closing day! He’d have to get off at once or go on very short commons until the next day. He pushed his chair back savagely, collected a carrier bag from the galley and went up on deck. That was when, for the first time, he realised that it was raining, not heavily, but with dreary persistence.

In a thoroughly bad temper he hunted out his mackintosh and set off. In an hour's time he returned in an even worse one. It hadn’t seemed worth while getting the car out seeing that it was such a short distance that he had to go, but that had been a mistake. The rain had come on more heavily and, never a man to wear a hat if he could avoid it, his hair was soaked and streams of chilly water were running down inside his collar. Shivering, he planned to have a good stiff toddy when he got back and wished to goodness that, by the simple method of turning on taps, he could have a hot bath—and with a groan, remembered that he couldn’t even have a cold one unless he filled the tank.

It was the last straw. He gained the comparative comfort of the galley, dumped the carrier bag and was just going to pick up the two pails when something caught his eye.

Last night he had worked so late that he had turned in without doing his day’s washing up. He had dunked it in a bowl in the little sink and had left it. Now the bowl was empty and what had been in it, was dried and neatly stacked on the draining board. What was more—he sniffed experimentally—there was an unmistakable smell in the galley. Within the last hour someone had cooked bacon and eggs there.

Clearly he had entertained a visitor unawares. But no? Not his next-door neighbour whose name, he had been gratuitously told by Mrs. Watchett, was Miss Alice Coates, though she preferred to be known just as Miss Alice. No, not her. She might, just conceivably, have seen him go off and have been sufficiently curious to pry. She bright, with that appalling sense of superiority possessed by so many females, have done his washing up for him. it she certainly wouldn’t have cooked a meal for herself—

A tramp, then? No, she might have stolen food but certainly wouldn’t have washed up. With a shrug, John temporarily dismissed the problem. The most important thing was to get himself into dry clothes. As for the water, it could wait. He’d enough for the day if he was careful.

He took off his mackintosh, hung it up where it could drip in safety and made for the cabin. Passing through the ting room, he glanced at the table and saw to his relief at the papers on it were just as he had left them. Then he went into the cabin—and came abruptly to a dead stop, his jaw dropping.

There, lying on his bed, fast asleep, was a girl. Her fair hair was spread all over the pillow
—his
pillow—and she had pulled the coverlet roughly over herself.

For a moment John was too astounded to do anything it stare incredulously. Things like this just didn’t happen—

But evidently they did, and indignation surged up. The cheek of it! To steal his food and then calmly to take possession of his bed!

He took a couple of quick strides and catching hold of her shoulder, shook it energetically.

“Wake up, Goldilocks!” he requested harshly. “The big bear has come home!”

Possibly that fitted in with her dreams, for without opening her eyes she made a petulant little movement as if to free herself from his grasp. So he shook her again.

“Wake up!” he ordered more loudly.

This time he got results. The girl’s eyes opened. For a moment she lay still, half way between sleep and consciousness. Then, with a horrified gasp, she propped herself up on one elbow.

“Oh, my goodness!” she ejaculated. “This is the last thing I meant to happen ! What must you think of me?”

John didn’t answer immediately. Waking up, the girl had added still another shock to those she had already dealt him.

With fair hair like hers he would naturally have supposed, had he given the matter a thought, that her eyes would be blue. They weren’t. They were green.

Then, because her pale cheeks were suddenly flooded with colour while her free hand clenched tightly, he realised that she was genuinely frightened at her predicament—or else she was a superb little actress. Well, he’d soon find out. And if she was scared, she had only herself to thank for that!

“Get up,” he ordered harshly.

Obediently she turned back the cover and swung her legs on to the floor, scuffling her feet into the shabby sandals that he hadn’t noticed until then.

She stood up—a tall girl and slim to the point of thinness. Her clothes, a creased and shapeless cotton dress topped by a woollen cardigan, were old and as shabby as the sandals. But she had recovered her poise by now. The green eyes met his unwaveringly.

“This way,” he said curtly, and led the way to the day cabin. She followed meekly enough, but he took the precaution of placing himself between her and the door to the deck. “Sit down.” And when she had done so, he sat down opposite her. “Now, if you’ll be so good, may I have an explanation?”

“I truly didn’t mean to go to sleep,” she told him earnestly. “Only, when I’d made the bed, it looked so comfortable, and I was so tired—” her voice trailed away as if, even after her stolen rest, it was still almost too much effort to talk.

John’s hands moved impatiently.

“Not just that. The whole business. Why did you come on board at all? And why did you steal my food?”

“Because I was hungry as well as tired,” she explained, answering the second question first. She paused and then in a flurry of words: “I wouldn’t have done it—honestly I wouldn’t—but I was
desperate.
You see, I had to stop—oh, hours ago—for petrol—”

“Oh, so you’ve got a car!” he interrupted. “Where is it?”

“In that field the other side of the hedge just by the old barn.”

“Well, go on!”

“Well, when I decided to stop to have something to eat I couldn’t find my purse. It wasn’t in my handbag and it wasn’t anywhere in the car. I suppose I must have dropped it at the garage.”

There was a decided tremor in her voice, but John hardened his heart.

“Do you really expect me to believe that tarradiddle?” he asked sceptically.

“Why not?” Her head came up defiantly and John found her defiance far more attractive than her earlier pathos. “It was careless of me, I know, but things like that do happen if one has—has other things on one’s mind—”

He looked at her sharply. She couldn’t possibly know of his own carelessness in leaving his wallet on Mrs. Watchett’s counter, but unknowingly she had got under his guard and much as he resented it, he had the honesty to admit to himself that he was hardly in a position to take her to task for a similar fault.

“So you came straight down here and helped yourself?” he suggested.

“Oh
no
! ” she denied. “It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t even know that there was a canal here, let alone boats. No, I simply turned down the lane because it looked quiet and I wanted to park somewhere and try to think what I could possibly do. You see, I started before breakfast—and I hadn’t slept much and I knew it just wasn’t safe for me to go on driving. So I drove into that field and hunted through everything I’d got with me to see if there was anything I could sell—and there wasn’t. Then I saw the boats. I wondered if perhaps there might be someone who—who would help me, but there was no one about—” again that quaver in her voice. “So then—I—I took the law into my own hands. Oh, I know I shouldn’t have done it, but truly, I was at the end of my tether and—and I did wash up and make the bed as a sort of payment—”

“H’m!” John considered. Yes, there was something, though not much, in that. “All right, we’ll call it quits up to that point. But only on condition that you tell me the whole story. For instance, who are you? What’s your name?”

She hesitated momentarily. Then—

“Rosamund Hastings.”

He shook his head unbelievingly.

“Oh no—your real name, please!”

“But that is my real name,” she insisted.

“I don’t think so. You hesitated before you told me,” he pointed out.

“I know I did. I was wondering if it would be a good idea if I made up a name. Then I decided that it might be inconvenient and too difficult to remember, anyway,” she explained ingenuously. “So I told you my true one. Really I did.”

Well, true or not, she’d stick to it, of course! He let it
go
.

“And where do you live?” he asked instead.

For answer she pressed her lips firmly together and shook her head vigorously.

“No? In other words, you’re a runaway. Borstal?”

“Certainly not! ” she denied indignantly.

John shrugged his shoulders.

“Sorry—but how could I know? After all, you
are
light-fingered, aren’t you?”

“I don’t suppose you’ll believe it, but I’ve never done anything like that in my life before today,” she told him earnestly.

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” he retorted ironically. “All right, not Borstal. Then where? From school?”

To his surprise, a change came over the serious little face. The lips curved in a provocative smile, the green eyes sparkled with amusement.

“How old do you -think I am?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Fifteen—sixteen, perhaps.”

“I’m twenty-three.”

“I don’t believe it,” he retorted flatly.

The smile vanished and she sighed deeply.

“You haven’t told me what your name is, but I know what it ought to be—Thomas! You seem utterly incapable of believing anything! ”

“Now look here, young woman—” he stood up, towering over her. “I’ve had enough of your impudence! What’s more, I don’t care whether you’re telling me the truth or not. But one thing is very certain. Whether you’re fifteen or twenty-three, you can’t stay here! Is that clear?”

“But what shall I do?” she asked, her face starkly white. “Where shall I go?”

“That’s for you to decide,” he told her inexorably, “since you insist that you’re of an age to run your own life!”

“But—” she began.

John interrupted her ruthlessly.

“Now listen, Rosamund Hastings, you’re not getting easy money out of me! Understand? But what I will do is this—'I’ll pay the cost of a telephone call to anyone, a relative or friend, whom you believe will help you out of this jam—provided that I see and hear you make the call. Well?”

Again that stubborn look marred what was, he had to admit, quite an attractive face—if you happened to like a pink and white complexion, golden hair—and green eyes. For his part, he didn’t.

“No,” she said unequivocally.

“No?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Just as you like! But if that’s your line, then off you go—at once!”