“Too right! I don’t work till I get it.”

Bisker poured tea into two cups. The cook accepted hers without speaking, set it down on the stove and herself on a chair she drew near to the now-roaring fires. Bisker carried his cup in one hand and his pipe in the other to take a position before one of the fires from which he glared down at the cook.

“A manoughter -” he began, waving his pipe on a level with his moustache.

“Aw-shut up!” pleaded the cook. “Give me a light and be a gentleman.”

Bisker snorted yet again. He put his cup down on the stove, and from a fire withdrew a billet of kindling wood which he presented to the cook. She snatched it from him and lit the cigarette she had produced from her apron pocket.

Mrs. Parkes was only slightly under forty. She was large, very large. Her brown hair was drawn tightly against her head with masses of curling pins. Her large face was deathly white, and against the background of her face her little red nose appeared not unlike a tiddly-winks counter.

Bisker drank his tea without swallowing.

“ ’Aveanother?” he asked.

“Course. Fill it up. Thirty-seven to cook for, as well as the missus, three maids, a drink steward and you. What a life!”

Bisker took the cups over to the wall bench, filled them and brought them back to the now-warming stove.

“How’d you sleep?” he enquired, now a little more cheerful.

“Better than if I’d had you beside me,” replied the cook. “And yoube sure to shave early, or the missus will be roaring you up again. You’re a disgrace about the place. Thank ’eaventhe winter won’t last much longer. Must’ve been another frost by the feel of it.”

“She froze ’ardbut it isn’tso cold outside as I expected,” averred Bisker. “Windmusta shifted to the west just before I got up. Well, Is’pose I’d better get on with the blasted boots.”

“Yes, and you go quiet about it, too,” commanded Mrs. Parkes stubbing out her cigarette. “We don’t want the old cat in her tantrums three days running.”