Read The Diddakoi for Free Online Page A

trying with those children. They’re here today and gone tomorrow,’
but it seemed Kizzy was not gone. Soon the wildest rumours were in the school and village: the wicked travellers had set the Lovell caravan on fire, stolen everything in it: Admiral Twiss had
chased the travellers out of the orchard and burned the wagon himself. Then, Kizzy Lovell was at the House with Admiral Twiss. The boys and girls looked at one another. With Admiral Twiss!
‘Impossible,’ said the village, but it was not impossible. Mrs Cuthbert had it from the butcher’s boy – he had delivered beef for making beef tea. Kizzy was ill. She had
been burnt in the fire. Nat had been seen in Rye buying things at the chemist: a child’s hot-water bottle: cough syrup: prescriptions. Kizzy had not been burnt. She had pneumonia.
    ‘Pneumonia!’ Mrs Blount felt guilty. ‘I knew she had no coat,’ she told Miss Brooke. ‘I knew and did nothing about it.’
    ‘Dear Mildred, that wouldn’t have given her pneumonia,’ said Miss Brooke.
    For a while Kizzy did not know where she was, at Amberhurst House or anywhere else; she was too ill. There were days of pain and struggling for breath; Peters sponged her burning forehead and
wrists with cool water, gave her sips of water or ice cream, but to her he was only a face that loomed near and went away. There were nights when she cried out or screamed in terror about Joe and
the knacker . . . the wagon and flames . . . Boyo . . . Mrs Doe’s slap . . . and about school. The Admiral, who sat up with her, learned a great deal about school in those nights.
‘Diddakoi,’ cried Kizzy. ‘Gypsy gypsy joker, get a red hot poker . . . When’s your birthday? . . . bump bump . . . Don’t pull my hair – don’t,
don’t!’ It rose to a shriek and the Admiral had to quiet her. He, Peters and Nat took it in turns to stay with Kizzy and it was amazing how gentle and thorough were those male hands
that lifted her, changed her, tended her, but Kizzy did not know anything about it until she woke one morning when outside the sun was shining from a sky as blue as the quilt that covered her, and
she found herself in a small room, sparsely furnished as old-fashioned rooms for children often were, a little shabby but with a fire burning that sent firelight up the walls. The wallpaper had a
pattern of apple blossom, faded now so that it was only a suggestion but, in her haziness, it made Kizzy feel she was back in the orchard. Yet when she looked at herself, was it herself? Were these
her own hands and arms and, as she looked under the bedclothes, her own legs? She was wearing a striped jacket and trousers and, I’m clean, thought Kizzy. She had a moment of panic, then Nat
was there with his comforting horse smell. ‘’S’all right, you’re at the House,’ said Nat.
    ‘Joe?’ croaked Kizzy.
    ‘Safe and well and waiting for the buttercups. Now drink this,’ said Nat.
    ‘Who is going to look after her?’ asked Mrs Blount.
    ‘They are,’ said Miss Brooke.
    ‘Those three men!’
    ‘But how can they?’ and that was what the village asked. ‘How can they? Poor mite, in that great house,’ and, ‘Men can’t look after a sick child.’ Mrs
Cuthbert said it positively, but the Admiral, Peters and Nat looked after Kizzy so well that Doctor Harwell had to agree she did not need a nurse. It was Peters who washed her and gave her a
blanket bath every day, washing her with warm water and soap as gently as any woman, an arm or leg at a time, the rest folded in warm blankets; it was Peters who sent Nat into Rye to buy bath
powder, a brush and comb and pyjamas. Nat bought boys’ pyjamas – he would not go into a woman’s or girl’s shop, but as Kizzy had never had any she did not know the
difference. ‘I slept in my vest,’ she told Nat. Peters made her meals, bringing her soup or milk and honey in little cups, or a spoonful or two of jelly and, when her throat was sore,
ice cream.
    Kizzy was far