PART IBOYS
THE VAGARIES OF TOD AND PETER
By the people who live in the same terrace they are known as “those dreadful twins.” By the more plain-spoken of the masters at the preparatory school which they attend they are distinguished by an adjective whose meaning is the reverse of “heavenly”; and their schoolfellows are filled with respectful admiration for the boys, the most resourcefully and superfluously naughty of their acquaintance, whose genius for making the most patient of masters lose his temper is unsurpassed.
The only person who takes them and their ways with calm philosophy is their mother. She, with that sense of proportion and balanced wisdom so frequently vouchsafed to mothers of large families, laughs and loves them, and believes in their ultimate regeneration. There is some ground for the faith that is in her; for when a woman has seen six sons fare forth into the world to cut no such indifferent figure in it, she is not apt to despair of the two youngest, roister they never so.
Moreover, she declares that most of their evil doings are “really Mr. Stevenson’s fault,” and there is truth in the charge, for from the moment that some thoughtless person, probably a godfather (I have known godfathers, living at a distance, who would present trumpets, nay, even concertinas! to the sons of men whom they have called by the name of friend), gave Peter a copy of “The Merry Men” and Tod “Treasure Island,” they have tried to fit their surroundings to the characters they are forever enacting; with the result that the plain workaday world, that knows not the “Master Mage” of Samoa, is always puzzled and generally wroth.
That genial “spirit of boyhood” had never so much as to beckon to them; he had but to hold out his friendly hands, and Tod and Peter, each clasping one in both their own, were his, body and soul, forevermore.
They are alike as the two Dromios, these twins; and the mistakes and complications arising from this likeness are a never-failing source of satisfaction to them. For instance, Peter will cheerfully undergo a caning intended for Tod that he may afterwards meekly demand of his chastener what he has done to deserve this discipline, gleefully watching the while the weary wonder on the master’s face grow to a disgusted certainty that he has, as usual, “punished the wrong one.”
The fact that they are rather noticeably comely boys—they came of a family where on both sides of the house good looks are the invariable rule—only serves to increase the confusion. Both aretall and straight, fair-haired, blue-eyed, ruddy, and of a uniformly cheerful countenance. But kind Nature has bestowed on Tod an accomplishment she has denied to Peter, to his lasting grief.
At certain seasons of the year Tod “moults” and can pull out quantities of his thick fair hair without the slightest inconvenience to himself. He generally chooses to perform this feat during the silent hours of “prep.” They have done their evening work at school ever since the night they were discovered grilling “Home Influence” and “A Mother’s Recompense” over the study fire, when they ought to have been wrestling with “Excerpta Facilia.” When the master in charge has walked down to the end of the long schoolroom where Tod “keeps,” and has turned to go back again, Tod is suddenly seized by a perfect paroxysm of despair, clutches at his hair with frantic though absolute noiseless gesticulations, and casts whole handfuls of fluffy curls on the floor about him.
Naturally his companions, including Peter, get lines for disturbing the placidity of “prep” with their unseemly giggles. And George, when he sweeps up the schoolroom next morning, may be heard to mutter:
“Wherever all this ’air do come from passes me!”
Tod’s real name is Percy—he is called after a wealthy and aristocratic relative—but he refuses point-blank to answer to it, for he fancies that it savours of those “eeny peeny” children in “Home Influence,” a work that earned their undying hatredwhen it was read aloud to them by a well-intentioned but mistaken aunt while they were recovering from measles.
On the occasion of its holocaust, before referred to, their mother, passing the study, and struck by the unwonted stillness reigning therein, opened the door softly and looked in. Both boys were stooping over the fireplace and prodding a solid yet feathery mass that glowed and gloomed in the heart of the embers.
“There goes Herbert, ‘the almost-angel boy,’ and ‘haughty Caroline,’ and ‘playful Emmiline,’” whispered Tod, poking viciously. While Peter, quoting from “Thrawn Janet,” added in an awful voice:
“Witch, beldame, devil! I charge you, by the power of God, begone—if you be dead, to the grave—if you be damned, to hell.”
I regret to say that their mother’s sense of humor is stronger than her dislike of strong language, and that she stole away to laugh, leaving the conspirators unrebuked for the moment. But they did their “prep.” at school henceforth.
Peter’s manner is singularly misleading in its frank sincerity, and he will on occasion answer a sudden question in a way which is, to say the least of it, bewildering to his interlocutor.
For instance, one day in the football-field a new master asked him the name of a small boy some distance off who was “slacking” abominably.
“Who’s that chap with the red hair by the goal posts?” he said to Peter, who had been somewhat officiously putting him right on several points.
“Dumpkins, sir,” that youth replied, demurely, and strolled off to a distant part of the playground.
“Dumpkins!” bawled the master. “Dumpkins, why aren’t you playing up?”
But Dumpkins heeded not the voice of authority and continued to loll and gaze heavenward in easy inactivity.
“Dumpkins! Dump-kins!” again he bellowed.
But Dumpkins only took an apple out of his pocket and began to eat it.
He is a hasty-tempered young man that master, and he strode toward the hapless Dumpkins and shook him angrily, exclaiming:
“Why don’t you answer when I call, you cheeky little beggar?”
“Please, sir, you never called me, sir,” expostulated the boy, wriggling in the master’s grip.
“Why, I’ve been shouting ‘Dumpkins’ all over the field for the last five minutes!”
“But, please sir, my name is Jones!”
“Why did you tell me Jones’s name was Dumpkins, you, Peter?” the master indignantly demanded of Tod some minutes later.
“I couldn’t have done that, sir,” said Tod, gravely, “for there’s nobody called Dumpkins in the school.”
It was this young master who rechristened the twins when Peter next day insisted that “a point has position but no gratitude.”
Strangely enough “The Merry Men” finds even greater favor with them than “Treasure Island,” and with the enigmatical decision of childhoodtheir favorite of all the stories is “Markheim,” not “Will o’ the Mill,” beloved of critics. It is doubtful if they understand much of it, but nevertheless they read it over and over again to each other aloud, or silently with their curly heads pressed together, till they knew it by heart. To be sure, “Thrawn Janet” has a dreadful fascination for them, and they acted one of the principal scenes with somewhat direful results.
Peter made Tod “tie him by the neck” to the bed with red worsted, while Tod, in his character of the minister, had to creep in, candle in hand, to discover the dread spectacle; and Peter’s representation of the fearsome Janet was so truthful and blood-curdling that Tod dropped the candle and fled downstairs howling at the top of his voice, and such was his haste that he fell and sprained his wrist. Meanwhile, the candle had set fire to the valance of the bed, and altogether there was a fine hullabaloo; there was also an end put to their dramatic efforts for a week or two.
Nothing daunted, however, about a month later, on a Sunday evening when the servants were all at church, and their mother writing for dear life the long weekly letters that have to be written when a woman has husband and four sons scattered about the globe, Tod and Peter sought the seclusion of the kitchen and determined to “act” “Markheim.”
All went well and quietly for a long time; the firelit kitchen with loud ticking clock answered admirably as the scene of the murder, the dialogue between Markheim and the mysterious strangerwent without a hitch, and Tod sallied forth into a “wonderful clear night of stars,” while Peter shut the back door softly after him. Peter, in his character of Markheim, was bent upon making the speech with which the story concludes, where the maidservant rings the door-bell and Markheim opens to her with the words: “You had better go for the police; I have killed your master!”
Poor Tod had to be the maidservant—he always had to follow where Peter led. He shivered as he ran up the area steps; it was a cold night, he had not troubled to provide himself with a coat, and his heart was heavy, for, to tell the truth, he has far more imagination than Peter, and sometimes their plays are to him one long agony of apprehension.
He positively dreaded ringing that area bell, and the sinister announcement that would follow on the act. No longer was he Tod, but a trembling servant lass who was forced by fate to ring a bell which sounded a tocsin of dreadful import.
He ran down to the end of the terrace and stood under a lamp that he might brace himself for the final effort.
Meanwhile, Peter, swollen with importance at the thought of the mighty sensation he would make in a minute or two, stood squeezed against the hinge of the door waiting for the fateful ring.
Then came a patter of light feet down the area steps and someone gave the bell a modest pull. Peter drew open the door with great suddenness upon himself, exclaiming in a deep and tragic voice, the result of long practice in solitary attics:
“You had better go for the police; I have killed your master!”
The visitor gave a piercing shriek and rushed up the steps again, calling breathlessly upon Heaven and the police. Peter, behind the door, wagged his head, exclaiming admiratively:
“How well that kid does act; I could almost declare I heard skirts rustling.”
Peter waited awhile for his brother to return and be congratulated, but Tod didn’t appear, so he concluded that he had gone round to the front door and come in that way; besides, the servants were just due from church, and cook would be cross if she found him in her domain. He ran upstairs and waited for his twin in the drawing-room. His mother looked up from her letters and smiled at the little figure tip-toeing on the hearth-rug to admire himself in the glass. Then scratch, scratch went her pen again.
Now, Ada, the housemaid, has a dear friend in service at the other end of the terrace, and she attends a church where the sermons are shorter than those at the one frequented by Peter’s household. On this particular Sunday she got out of church quite early and thought she would see whether Ada happened to be in. Thus, while Tod with lagging feet crept slowly down the terrace from one end, she was already fleeing affrightedly to the other in search of the nearest policeman.
She found him at the pillar-box, and fell into his stalwart arms, crying hysterically:
“Oh, come quick! There’s bin murder done at Number 9. Someone’s bin an’ killed the marster!”
P.C. Lee turned the light of his bull’s-eye upon Ada’s friend and found her fair to look upon. All the same, although he still supported her trembling frame, he shook his head slowly, saying:
“’E ain’t there for to be murdered; the Colonel’s bin in Hinjia this las’ ten weeks; the missis tol’ me so ’erself, when she ast me to keep a special heye to them premises.”
All the same, in spite of his incredulity, P.C. Lee was already on his way to Number 9, half leading, half carrying Ada’s friend with him.
“But I tell you,” persisted the girl, “when I ring that there bell, the door opened sudden-like as if someone was be’ind it, and a hawful voice says to me, ‘You’d better go for the perlice,’ it says, ‘I’ve killed your master,’ and I was that taken to, I did go for you, Mr. Lee, as fast as I could lay foot to the ground. It may be as one of the young gentlemen’s bin murdered, ’is pa bein’, so to speak, abroad. It give me such a turn——”
And Ada’s friend was forced to stop in the middle of the road, overcome by the horrid recollection.
“But didn’t you see no one?” asked P.C. Lee, in a judicial voice.
“No, trust me, I didn’t wait toseenothing; I’d ’eard enough without that. I’ll wait out ’ere,” she continued as they reached the scene of the tragedy, “on the top of the steps. I couldn’t abear to see no dead bodies;” and Ada’s friend disengaged herself from the policeman’s protecting clasp andclung to the area railings for support, exclaiming afresh: “I’d never get over it—never!”
“But you must come in and give evidence wot you did ’ear,” expostulated P.C. Lee. “I don’t believe myself as anything criminal ’as occurred; but I’ll just ring and ast.”
“I’d take my dyin’ oath them was the very words that murderer says to me,” cried Ada’s friend, jibbing on the top step as the minion of the law put forth a large hand to assist her down. “‘I’ve killed your master,’ says ’e, despairin’ like, as if it was no use to try an’ ’ide it.”
P.C. Lee proceeded to perform a solo on the bell very different to the two timid tintinnabulations that had preceded it during the last ten minutes; for while Ada’s friend sought the protection of the strong arm of the law, poor little Tod had screwed his courage to the sticking-point, gone back and rung the area bell, when, to his unspeakable relief, he was admitted by cook, just returned from church in so benign a humor that she forebore to scold him for being out at such untoward hours “without so much as a ’at,” and bestowed a piece of bread and dripping upon him “to stop ’is teeth a-chatterin’.”
Whereupon, comforted and refreshed, he departed to find Peter.
Meanwhile P.C. Lee insisted that he must see the missis, for Ada’s friend was unshaken in her evidence, question they never so, and the four maids at Number 9 declared that they could not sleep comfortably in their beds unless the search-light of his bull’s-eye was thrown on every duskycorner of the house by P.C. Lee himself before he took his departure.
Ada’s friend was seated weeping in the front hall surrounded by the others, when the mistress, fetched by Ada herself, and accompanied by Tod and Peter, descended to hold parley with P.C. Lee.
“I can’t understand it, ma’am,” concluded the policeman, after a long explanation, continually interrupted by Ada’s friend with such interpolations as: “Oh, a hawful voice, that mournful”—“Them was the very words,” etc.
During this recital Tod and Peter crept further and further into the background, nudging each other in the ecstasy occasioned by such an unexpected tribute to their histrionic powers.
But their mother knows her Stevenson—and the twins—so before the narrative was nearly finished she turned swiftly upon them, demanding sternly:
“Which of you was it?”
“Young varmints!” said P.C. Lee to Ada’s friend, as he escorted her home; “I might ’a’ knowed it was them. ’Tain’t the fust time I’ve come across ’em, neither....”
When the time came for those twins, Tod and Peter, to go to public school, their mother seriously considered the advisability of putting theminto different “houses.” At first she thought that, perhaps, it might make for righteousness to separate them. But on hearing the subject mooted, they so whole-heartedly fell in with her opinion, rapturously reviewing the possibility of “changing houses” whenever they felt so inclined, that she instantly dismissed the idea; rightly coming to the conclusion that if their extraordinary resemblance was a cause of general muddle and mystification while they were together, it would become confusion worse confounded were they separated. Moreover, she reflected that even schoolmasters are men of like passions with ourselves, and rightly refrained from adding to such a one’s already heavy burden by a separate superintendence of the twins.
Tod and Peter, whose mental attitude was always that “all is for the best in the best possible of worlds,” decided that after all propinquity has its advantages, and rejoiced that family tradition sent them into a house whose head was proverbially the “slackest old slackster in the whole school.” A dreamy, mild-mannered, gentlemanly man that master, who left the management of the “house” entirely to an extremely energetic wife and a “young brusher” (“brusher” is the familiar term for master in that school), whose prowess in the playing-fields was only equalled by his extreme fussiness where rules of his own making were concerned.
“Not a bad chap,” the twins decided after their first week; “but a bit like the German Emperor,you know—wants things all his own way. Still, if you humor the youth, he’s all right.”
So successfully did they humor the “young brusher” in question that for the first month all went smoothly, and the house-master himself, a gentle optimist, ever ready to believe the best of boy-humanity, really thought that the “character” that had preceded them from preparatory school was perhaps over-emphasized.
Their late headmaster, while giving them full credit for general integrity and fair abilities, had, in mercy to his brethren of the craft, pointed out that they were ever “ready to join in frivolity and insubordination, when not under my own eye.” They had to work, for they were on the Modern Side, and destined for the army, and in that particular school, not the wiliest shirker in creation can escape the argus eye of the “head of the Modern,” or the retribution, swift, sharp, and sure, that follows any such line of conduct.
But, bless you! ordinary work and games, at which both were good, never found sufficient scope for the energies of Tod and Peter, and by the time the first month was up they began their tricks.
One Mr. Neatby, M.A., taught the twins chemistry. Not that they went to him together. They were in different, though, as far as work went, parallel forms, and finding that their systematic “changing” was never so much as suspected, and therefore carried with it no spice of danger or adventure, they gave it up, devoting their energies to the tormenting of Mr. Neatby, who had by his severity incurred their august displeasure.
Mr. Neatby was tall, severe, and dignified. He really liked his subject, but felt, as a rule, little affection for his pupils. Nevertheless, he was conscientious to the last degree in the discharge of his duties. His way of expressing himself was what Peter called “essayish”; he gave lines lavishly, and had but little mercy on the reckless breaker of test-tubes. He did not rant, or stamp, or call people by opprobrious names, as did many better loved masters. He was always cold, cutting, and superior. But the thing about him that most excited Peter’s animosity was his necktie.
“He wears revolting, jerry-built, Judas-like ties,” the indignant Peter proclaimed to an admiring audience of lower boys; “ties that slip down and show a beastly, brassy stud. His socks, too, leave much to be desired; in fact, his extremities altogether are such as betoken a bad, hard heart.”
“Let me see,” said Tod softly, looking up from a book he was reading; “do you think that asendingmight soften the man’s hard heart?”
At this particular stage of the twins’ career, Mr. Kipling was the God of their idolatry, and both of them had “gloated,” even in the manner of the immortal “Stalky” himself, over the vengeance of Ram Das.
“It might be managed,” Peter answered, thoughtfully scratching his smooth chin; “but then again, it may be close-time for kittens just at present; don’t they generally bloom in the spring?”
“There’s always plenty of kittens, you juggins,”ejaculated a prosaic friend. “Why, when I was down at the riding school this morning, there was a cat with six in an empty loose-box; they’ll have to drown five of ’em, they told me. D’your people want one or what?”
“Iwant one,” Peter rejoined excitedly; “not one, but five, to give to a dear friend.”
“Shouldn’t think he’d be your dear friend long.”
“Oh, yes, he will. He’s an S.P.C.K., or whatever it is. He’s awfully profane—humane, I mean.”
“Well,” said the other boy, still unconvinced; “you can ask about ’em when you go for your lesson to-morrow morning. They weren’t half bad little beasts, but I shouldn’t advise you to give your friend more than one at a time, anyhow.”
Both Tod and Peter went twice a week to the riding school in the town, as they were both destined for cavalry. Every underling about the place knew them well, and liked them. Their father had lived in the town during his last leave, jobbed his horses at the riding-master’s stables, and had himself assisted at the lessons of elder brothers of Tod and Peter.
Now there was at the school a certain Figgins, a generally handy man, or rather boy, who worshipped the ground the twins walked upon; and after their next lesson they and Figgins might have been seen holding long and earnest parley in the loose-box containing the cat and kittens.
The twins laughed uproariously all the way home, and just as they reached the house, Peterremarked: “I hate anything dead. Figgins has promised not one of ’em shall be drowned, and when they’re fit to be moved, he’ll tell old White he’s found good homes for the lot. And then—and then Tod, my boy! our dear teacher shall have ’em alive, ‘alive, all alive oh! alive, all alive oh!’” and Peter burst into song in the exuberance of his joy.
Mr. Neatby lived in lodgings within a convenient distance of the school. He was therefore spared any intercourse with the boys after school hours, and usually spent his evenings in correcting innumerable marble-boarded exercise books, containing chemistry notes. He was so engaged one evening about nine o’clock, when his landlady entered the room and laid a square parcel at his elbow.
He finished correcting the book he had in hand, and took another, when his attention was arrested by an indescribable sound.
Mr. Neatby lifted his head and gazed about the room. “Could it be a mouse under the skirting-board?” he wondered. Then half unconsciously his eyes fell on the parcel his landlady had brought into the room. It was an oblong cardboard box, about the size of an ordinary shoe-box. But, although tied up with string, it was not wrapped in paper, and on looking at it more closely, Mr. Neatby discovered that the top was riddled with small holes.
Had it been summer, he, being something of a naturalist, would have at once concluded thatsomeone had sent him some rare caterpillars, but what caterpillars are to be found in November?
He drew the parcel toward him, and there arose that curious sound again, louder and more insistent. He hastily cut the string and removed the lid of the box, and inside, reposing on a nest of hay, lay a very young and mewey kitten. A kitten who most evidently was homesick and aggrieved at being reft from the maternal bosom. A sprawly, squirmy, noisy kitten, that immediately proceeded to climb out of the box and crawl uncertainly to Mr. Neatby’s blotting-pad, where it collapsed into a dismal little heap, mewing louder than ever.
“There must be some mistake,” muttered Mr. Neatby, flushed and perturbed. “No one would sendmea kitten; that stupid woman must have made some muddle or other,” and he arose hastily and rang the bell.
He so rarely rang his bell after his modest supper had been cleared away that Mrs. Vyner, his landlady, had given up expecting him to do so, and had on this occasion “just stepped out,” as she would have put it, to see a neighbor.
Mr. Neatby rang, and rang in vain, finally so far departing from his decorously distant demeanor as to go to the top of the kitchen stairs and shout. But the faint mewing of the kitten was the only answer to his outcries, and baffled and annoyed he returned to his sitting-room to find that the kitten had upset the red ink over Tod’s chemistry notes, which, in company with many others, lay open on the table, and was feebly attempting to lap it up.
“Poor little thing; it’s hungry,” he thought tohimself. And being, indeed, as Peter said, a very humane man, he lifted it from the table, and went to his sideboard to see if he could find any milk. He did find some in the cupboard underneath where it had no business to be, and pouring some into a saucer, laid it on the floor beside the kitten, who proceeded to refresh itself with commendable promptitude.
Then, as his landlady still made no appearance, Mr. Neatby bethought him of looking at the parcel to see whether the kitten had been left at the wrong house. But no; attached to the string was a label, clearly addressed in a flowing, clerkly hand, “S. S. Neatby, Esq., M.A.,” followed by his address, accurate as to number, street, and even town.
Once more he sat down in his chair, and leant his head on his hand to think, when he perceived, tucked into the hay at one side of the box, a card, and drew it forth hastily; a plain glazed visiting card on which was inscribed the words, “From a grateful friend,” in the same excellent handwriting as the label.
Mr. Neatby blushed, and looked guiltily at the happily supping kitten. In addition to being humane, Mr. Neatby was also charitable, and there were many poor who had reason to be grateful to him. But as he always gave alms through a third person, and was one of those modest people who take care that their left hand knows not what the right hand doeth, he felt quite upset.
Presently he heard his landlady and her niece come in, and rang again.
“Who brought this box, Mrs. Vyner?” he asked, holding it up toward her.
“I can’t say, sir, I’m sure. It was dark when I answered the door, and a young man—leastways, I think ’e was young—simply give it into my ’ands and ran down the steps again. I ’eld it under the gas in the ’all, sir, and read the label, as it was for you right enough, so I brings it in and lays it down without never interruptin’ you, sir, like you said.”
“There was a kitten in that box,” Mr. Neatby said solemnly, in such a tone as might have announced some national calamity.
“Sakes alive! you don’t say so, sir,” cried Mrs. Vyner in great excitement; “shall you keep it, sir?”
“I don’t know yet,” Mr. Neatby said gravely; “it must stay here for to-night anyway.”
“It’s a pretty little thing, sir,” said the landlady, stooping down to look at it where it lay basking in the heat of the fire. “’Twould be company for you, wouldn’t it, sir?”
“Hadn’t it better go with you to the kitchen for to-night, Mrs. Vyner?” Mr. Neatby asked persuasively, and Mrs. Vyner, with many protestations of wonder, gathered up the kitten into her apron and departed to the lower regions, where she informed the niece who lived with her that their lodger “’adn’t spoken so many words to ’er never before, no, not in a month of Sundays.”
Mr. Neatby threw the box into his capacious waste-paper basket, but he put the card and labelcarefully away in one of the pigeon-holes of his desk.
Next day, on his return from morning school, he found a white cardboard hat-box, big enough to contain the most umbrageous matinée hat ever worn, set right in the middle of his table, and he felt distinctly annoyed. His landlady followed him into the sitting-room to lay lunch, and he, pointing to the offending box, said coldly: “I must ask you not to leave your parcels in my room, Mrs. Vyner.”
Mrs. Vyner bridled, and seizing the box, held it out toward him, remarking aggrievedly: “If so be as you refers to this ’ere, sir, I must ast you to look ’oo it’s addressed to. It’s put plain enough for you, sir.”
“But I assure you,” Mr. Neatby cried, recoiling from the proffered hat-box, “that I haven’t ordered a hat of any kind.”
“Any’ow,” said Mrs. Vyner scornfully, “I don’t suppose, sir, as you’d order your ’ats from Madame Looeese, if you ’ad. I thought per’aps you’d bought a present for your young lady.”
“Mrs. Vyner,” replied Mr. Neatby, in a voice glacial as liquid air itself, “you forget yourself.”
Mrs. Vyner set down the box with an angry thump, and proceeded to lay the cloth in injured silence.
When she had gone, Mr. Neatby approached the mysterious package delicately, much as though it had been an infernal machine of some sort, and regarded it searchingly on all sides. It most certainly emanated from the millinery establishmentof “Madame Louise,” but was none the less certainly addressed in sprawly, feminine handwriting to “S. S. Neatby, Esq., M.A.”
Just then Mrs. Vyner opened the door, saying waspishly, “’Ere’s your kitting, sir; it keeps getting under my feet while I’m dishin’ up.”
It seemed to have gained considerable vigor during the night, for it rushed across the room and up the curtain.
But Mr. Neatby had screwed his courage to the sticking-place, and even the tempestuous entry of the kitten could not turn him from his purpose. Penknife in hand, he cut the string of the bonnet-box, and lifted the lid timidly, prepared no doubt for some tissue-paper protected “confection” within. When, lo! even as that of the shoe-box on the previous night was this interior; hay, dry and fragrant of stable, met his astonished gaze, while seated in its midst was a tabby kitten, who gathered herself together for a spring the instant the lid was lifted, and sprang with such good-will as to turn the box over on its side, when she immediately dashed under the table.
Mr. Neatby gazed, as if hypnotized, at the tumbled box, till the rattling of dishes outside warned him of the near approach of his landlady with lunch, and roused him from his trance.
He stooped hastily, thrust the scattered hay into the band-box, clapped on the lid, and placed it under the knee-hole of his writing-table.
The door was opened rather suddenly to admit Mrs. Vyner; kitten number one descended from the curtain, and Mr. Neatby found himself almostpraying that kitten number two would stay under the table while his landlady was in the room. Mrs. Vyner glanced disdainfully in the direction of the band-box, noted that the string had been cut, set the dishes on the table with somewhat unnecessary violence, and departed without having opened her lips, just as the two kittens frisked out from beneath the table.
Mr. Neatby, harrassed and flushed “all over his eminent forehead,” did not begin his lunch. He went back to the band-box again, studied the label anew, and finally rummaged in the hay inside.
His search was rewarded by the discovery of a rather dirty piece of paper, on which was written “A Present from Framilode,” Framilode being a village in the neighborhood, celebrated for the manufacture of a certain kind of mug which always bore that legend. He put it carefully beside the other card and label in his desk, and returned to his lunch with but small appetite, and a frown of perplexity upon his brow. The kittens set up a perfect chorus of mewing; Mr. Neatby braced himself to explain the new arrival to Mrs. Vyner, and rang for the pudding.
“It’s my belief, sir,” said Mrs. Vyner that evening, “that somebody’s a puttin’ a ’oaf upon you. I sent my niece to that there Madame Looeese’s with the box lid, an’ she see madame ’erself, andshesays as it’s a hold box, an’ that they certainly never sent you no box, nor wouldn’t think of such a liberty, and you one of the school gentlemen and all. But my niece, she said as madame did laughwhen she ’eard about the kitten, and ’er young ladies, too.”
Mr. Neatby writhed.
To a man of his reserved and sensitive temperament, the reflection that his name could by any possibility be bandied about by a milliner and her assistants was little short of maddening. If he could then and there have ordered Mrs. Vyner “to take five hundred lines,” it might have given him some relief. But in all things he was a just man, and he knew that his landlady had at all events meant kindly in trying to discover the perpetrator of the outrage; for the fact remained that somebody had most assuredly “put a ’oax” on him in the shape of the liveliest of tabby kittens.
It never occurred to him to suspect any of the boys. For how could one of them come by either band-box or kittens? To be sure there were some day boys, but it happened that these were nearly all “on the Classical,” and Mr. Neatby had but little to do with them.
Of course he reckoned without the ubiquitous Figgins, who, unlike Mr. Neatby,hada young lady, who was employed by Madame Louise, and for whom it was an easy matter both to procure a disused band-box and a new label.
“You’re certain he got them all right?” whispered Peter to Figgins at his next lesson, as that worthy rushed forward officiously to settle the sack on the horse’s back. “He gave me back my notes simply smothered in red ink, and I thought I saw a mark like a kitten’s paw, but I couldn’t be sure.”
“Law bless you! yes, sir,’egot ’em right enough. I took ’em myself, and wot’s more, both of ’em’s there still, for I passed by this mornin’ and ’appened to look down the airey, and there they both was as peart as print. I s’pose we’d better wait a day or so for the next ’un, ’adn’t us?”
“Yes, Figgins, wait two days till you see me again,” and Peter dug his knees into his horse and rode at the first jump.
“It’s rather decent of him tokeepthem,” thought Peter to himself, who was tender-hearted where animals were concerned. “Perhaps, if he doesn’t clap on any more lines for a bit, I’ll let him off with two.”
But, alas for good intentions. When Peter got back to the house, he found Tod bursting with indignation. For at “Practical Chemistry,” that very morning, Tod, who was supposed to be engaged in the manufacture of hydrogen, used so many conflicting ingredients as to cause an explosion and dense smoke, and a smell so appalling that it drove the whole class into the corridor, and caused several testy masters to send indignant messages demanding where the infernal smell came from.
Mr. Neatby, exasperated to the last degree, not only told Tod to take five hundred lines, but bade him return the very next half-holiday and spend the afternoon in doing similar experiments under his master’s supervision.
Tod confided his grievance to Peter at great length, and concluded his recital with the injunction,“Let him have all three, thebeast! I wish they were young gorillas.”
Mr. Neatby was very busy. He was taking extra duty for a master who was ill, and for three or four days after the arrival of the second kitten really had not a moment to call his own, so, as Mrs. Vyner seemed to take quite kindly to the new arrivals—only taking care to charge her lodger an extra quart of milk daily for their maintenance—he almost forgot their existence.
By Saturday evening he had accumulated a mass of mid-term examination work to correct, and directly after supper set himself down to it, with four clear hours before him, for he often worked till after midnight.
His lamp was trimmed, his fire burned brightly, and one kitten, the first, sat purring on the hearth. That, and the scratching of Mr. Neatby’s pen as he corrected the generally mistaken views of boys as to the nature of an element, were the only sounds till there came a thunderous rap outside, and the door-bell pealed loudly.
Mr. Neatby frowned, but never looked up from his corrections. He had not been long at the school, and was not upon intimate terms with any of the masters, so that it was hardly likely to be a caller for him. He heard somebody open the front door, then some vehicle drive away. A moment later there was a knock at his door, and Jemima, Mrs. Vyner’s niece, came in, bearing a hamper.
“Please, sir, this ’ave just come by rail; there wasn’t nothing to pay.”
“Very well,” Mr. Neatby answered without looking up; “put it down, please; I can’t attend to it just now.”
Jemima did as she was told, and once more silence settled upon the room.
But not for long. Kitten number one got restless; it walked round and round the hamper, and sniffed and mewed, and mewed and sniffed, with irritating persistency. Moreover, a curious muffled echo seemed to accompany its mewing. Mr. Neatby bore it for five minutes, then pushed back his chair, caught the disturbing kitten by the scruff of its neck, and bore it to the top of the kitchen stairs, calling to Jemima to take it down. That young lady obeyed his summons, taking the kitten tenderly into her arms with many endearments; but all the same she remarked to her aunt, “Well, I do think as ’e might manage to look afteroneon ’em ’isself, that I do.”
Mr. Neatby went back to his papers and corrected with more vigor than before; but, in spite of his haste, in spite of his absorption, the muffled mewing continued.
At last he laid down his pen and listened. “Surely,” he thought, “it can’t sound like that from downstairs. I must have got the sound on my nerves; it’s really most annoying.” Itwasannoying; it grew louder and louder till it seemed at his very side.
Mr. Neatby was endowed with great powers, both of self-control and concentration. Having decided that the sound was in his imagination, andnot actual, he went on with the paper that he was correcting, but as he placed it on the top of the growing pile he chanced to notice the hamper which was placed on the hearth-rug close beside him. “Apples, I suppose, from home,” he thought to himself; “but all the same, I’d better see.” He lifted it on to his knee. “Too light for apples,” he thought again. “What can they have sent?”
The lid was not very tightly fastened, and a slash or two of the penknife at the string restraining it brought it away.
Hay, and again hay, in this case forming the cosy nest oftwokittens, one tortoiseshell and one black. Both lively and vociferous beyond either of their predecessors. Mr. Neatby ejaculated just one word, and sat perfectly still with the open hamper on his knee. The kittens climbed out and made hay among his papers, but he took no notice. “An angry man was he,” and when a man of his temperament is angry, he usually sits tight. The kittens got tired of the table, and jumped lightly to the floor, carrying a few dozen papers with them in their flight, but still Mr. Neatby sat on staring into space.
When at last he roused himself, he once more sought some solution of the mystery in the address label, but the yellow railway label on the back had been torn away, and only “ton” remained. The address itself was printed very neatly by hand.
Inside the hamper he found a little pink envelope with nicked edges such as servants love. Heopened it, and printed by the same hand, on a piece of paper to match, was the following verse:
The kitten’s a persistent beast,It comes when you expect it least,It comes in ones, it comes in twos—And when it comes it always mews.
The kitten’s a persistent beast,It comes when you expect it least,It comes in ones, it comes in twos—And when it comes it always mews.
The kitten’s a persistent beast,
It comes when you expect it least,
It comes in ones, it comes in twos—
And when it comes it always mews.
“Ah!” Mr. Neatby said softly to himself, “some boy is at the bottom of this.”
The clock struck twelve, and he remembered with a start that both his landlady and Jemima would certainly be in bed.
What was to be done with the kittens?
He was far too kind-hearted to turn them out of doors on a cold November night. They were really uncommonly pretty little beasts, and as he watched their gambles he found himself quoting:
Alas! regardless of their doom,The little victims play,
Alas! regardless of their doom,The little victims play,
Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play,
and then realized that they had no business to be playing at all at that time of night, and that he certainly wanted to go to bed.
He really was a much tried man that night. First, he had to catch the kittens and put them in the hamper, and as fast as he put one in, the other jumped out. This took some time. Then he carried the hamper up to bed with him, the kittens making frantic efforts to escape the while. And when at last he did get to bed, he had to get up again to let them out of the hamper, for they made such a frightful din no mortal could sleep.They finally elected to settle down on Mr. Neatby’s bed, and in the morning one of them ungratefully scratched his nose because he happened to move when the kitten in question chose to walk over his face.
When at last he arose from very broken slumbers, the black kitten upset the shaving water and scalded its foot, and made a dreadful uproar, and the tortoiseshell, while investigating the mantelpiece, upset and threw into the grate a blue vase belonging to Mrs. Vyner.
In chapel on Sunday morning, Tod and Peter noted gleefully the long scratch on “old Stinks’” nose (“Stinks” being, I regret to say, the name by which Mr. Neatby was known among his pupils). And curiosity as to how he was getting on with his rapidly increasing family of cats consumed them. In the afternoon they walked up and down the road outside his lodgings for nearly an hour, but nothing did they discover; for Mrs. Vyner’s windows were shrouded by white curtains, no one went in or out of the house, and all their loitering was not rewarded by so much as hearing a distant mew.
The fact was that Mr. Neatby had gone for a long walk to try and work off his irritation. That morning, while he was still at breakfast, Mrs. Vyner had appeared in his sitting-room, and somewhat stormily informed him that her “’ouse was not a ’ome for lost cats, nor never ’ad been.” And she concluded her harangue as follows:
“I’ve ’ad gentlemen, masters at the school, for twelve year come Michaelmas, and some ’ave bintrouble enough, the Lard knows. With their football and ’ockey, and ’ot baths in the middle of the afternoon, and the mud on their flannings something hawful; but a gentleman as surrounded ’imself with cats in sech numbers I never ’ave ’ad nor never won’t again, I ’opes and prays. And although it do go again my conscience to do it of a Sunday, Imustast you, sir, to take a week’s notice from yesterday. For start a fresh week with sech goin’s on, and cats a comin’ by every post as it were, I can’t; no, not if the king ’imself was to ast me on ’is bended knees.”
In vain poor Mr. Neatby pointed out that, far from “surrounding himself” with kittens, they were thrust upon him he knew not by whom or from whence. That he had no intention of keeping any of them if Mrs. Vyner objected, and that it would really be extremely inconvenient for him to have to seek new rooms in the middle of the term.
Mrs. Vyner was implacable. “I’m very upset about it, too, sir,” she answered, more in sorrow than in anger; “for I did think as ’ow I’d got a nice quiet gentleman, you not bein’ given to them ’orrid games as is so dirty, nor wantin’ an over amount of cookin’. But a gentleman as ’eaven appears to rain cats on like it do on you is not for the likes of me nor shan’t be. And though I’m truly sorry as you should be so afflicted, I must ast you to leave my ’ouse, sir, next Saturday as ever is, and that’s my last word.”
It wasn’t, not by a long way; for although Mr. Neatby reasoned, nay, even almost implored Mrs.Vyner to reconsider her decision, she would hardly let him get a word in edgeways, and remained unshaken in her desire that he should vacate her rooms. “’Ow do I know, sir,” she asked again and again, “wot hanimals may be sent you next? My ’eart would be in my mouth every time the door-bell rang.”
Truly, Tod and Peter had planned a fearful vengeance had they only known it. But they did not know it, and their unsatisfied curiosity was their undoing. On Monday morning at the riding school they arranged with Figgins that he was to leave the fifth kitten at Mr. Neatby’s rooms that afternoon, just before afternoon school finished. The despatch of the hamper had been managed by a railway man, a friend of Figgins, whose cart started from a parcel-receiving office close to the riding school, and he delivered the hamper on his evening round.
Directly school came out, the twins decided to rush down to Mr. Neatby’s rooms before lock-up, to ask some frivolous question about a paper he had set, and perhaps by great good luck be present at the unveiling of the end of the sending. All fell out exactly as they had arranged. Figgins took the parcel. Mrs. Vyner received it, addressed as before to “S. S. Neatby, Esq., M.A.” (his real name was “Stuart,” not “Stinks”), carried it grimly into his sitting-room, and laid it on the table. She removed all her own ornaments from the chimneypiece and sideboard, and then went downstairs and brought up all four kittens (poor Mr. Neatby had not yet had time to arrangefor their painless destruction), and shut them up in the room to await their owner’s return.
At ten minutes past five he hastened in, trod on one of the kittens as he entered the room, and struck a match to light his lamp. The kitten noisily proclaimed its injury, and the other three expressed their sympathy in similar terms. When he caught sight of the brown-paper parcel on the table he turned pale. The very feel of it was enough, and even before he had torn off the cover he was sure of its contents. Yes, in a common little bird cage was a fat, white kitten, and an uncommonly tight fit she was.
He did not attempt to let her out, though her position was plainly one of extreme discomfort, but stood with the cage in his hands, and the four mewing kittens about his feet, in so universally distrustful a frame of mind that he began to think that Mrs. Vyner herself was in the plot to victimize him.
The door was opened, and his landlady’s voice announced: “Two young gentlemen to see you, sir.”
Fresh colored and handsome, ruddy from their run in the cold evening air, square-shouldered and upstanding, Tod and Peter allowed their two pairs of candid blue eyes to travel from their master’s angry face to his hands, from his hands holding the caged kitten to his feet, where congregated the rest of the sending, and then exclaimed in a chorus of genial astonishment: “Why, sir, what a lot of kittens you keep!”
Now, although he had been at the school threeterms, no boy had ever ventured to call upon Mr. Neatby before. Other masters might occasionally ask boys to tea or permit an occasional call out of school hours to arrange about house matches, etc. But he had ever discouraged any familiarity whatsoever, and that Tod and Peter should dare to intrude upon him at such a moment seemed to him, as indeed it was, a piece of unparalleled impertinence.
“What do you want here?” he asked angrily. “It’s after lock-up.”
“Mr. Ord gave us leave to come,” Peter said eagerly. “We don’t understand this question, sir. Could you explain? What a noise those kittens do make, don’t they?”
Now if Tod could only have refrained from looking at Peter, Mr. Neatby might have remained forever in the dark as to the mystery of the kittens. But, even as Peter spoke, Tod, unaware that the light from the master’s lamp shone full on his face, winked delightedly at his brother, and in a flash Mr. Neatby connected their unexpected and unnecessary visit with those equally unwelcome visitants whose advent during the past week had entailed so much annoyance upon him.
Taking no notice of the paper Peter held out toward him, he laid the little cage on the table, and said very quietly:
“Now that you are here, you will perhaps kindly explain what you mean by sending all these animals to me.”
“Us, sir!” the twins exclaimed breathlessly, and as usual in chorus—“Us!”
“Did you or did you not cause these five kittens to be sent to me?” Mr. Neatby asked again.
Dead silence.
As Tod said afterward, “It was one of those beastly yes or no questions that there’s no getting out of.”
“Did you or did you not?” Mr. Neatby asked again, a little louder than before, though even the kittens had ceased mewing and seemed to be listening. “But I know you did, and I wish to know further what you mean by a piece of such intolerable impertinence, and such wanton defiance of school rules.”
“There’s no rule about sending kittens, sir,” murmured Peter, with the least suspicion of a giggle in his voice.
That giggle broke down the last barrier of Mr. Neatby’s self-control. For full five minutes he permitted himself to thunder at those boys, finally bidding them take all five kittens away with them there and then.
“But we can’t, sir; wecan’ttake them back to the house,” pleaded Tod. “Whatever would Mrs. Ord say?”
“Well, you must take them away from here, anyway, and what’s more, you must give up the names of your confederates, that I may take proceedings against them for their unwarrantable interference with my privacy. Who were they, now? At once!”
“It’s absolutely impossible for us to do that, sir,” Peter said firmly, and Tod might have beenheard to murmur something about “can’t and won’t.”
“Then,” said Mr. Neatby, “you will both come with me to the principal now at once.”
The principal of that school is one of the youngest headmasters in England, and he would not be the success he is did he not possess a sense of humor. He partially pacified Mr. Neatby; he vigorously “tanned” Tod and Peter there and then, and during the remainder of the evening he laughed to himself more than once.
For the remainder of the term Tod and Peter found their comings and goings so perpetually watched and suspected by the “young brusher” aforesaid, that even the rapturous recollection of the success of their sending was somewhat dimmed. But it was not they who suffered most; to this day Mr. Neatby suspects of sinister intention anyone who so much as mentions kittens in his presence, and new boys always wonder why their schoolfellows are so anxious that they should mew in the chemistry lectures. They only do it once.
During the first part of the next, the Easter, term the twins were so closely watched that their genius for mischief had small scope. Whereupon the authorities, finding them apparently absorbed in games and the general routine, relaxed their vigilance.
At the beginning of February the weather was mild and pleasant, with just enough rain to keep the footer ground in good order. But at the end of that fickle month there came a frost, the aggravating sort of frost that makes a field too hard for football and yet leads to no skating.
The never long dormant spirit of mischief in the twins awoke.
As usual, it was Peter who began it, though Tod was the innocent first cause.
Just after first lesson, as Tod was hurrying from one classroom to another, he met the principal in the corridor, who bade him ask his form-master to come and speak to him at a quarter past ten. Further down the corridor Tod met his twin, who instantly demanded what the “Pot” wanted, and on being informed, went upon his way.
Peter might have been seen to stop more than one schoolfellow as he went—the corridor was full of boys changing classrooms—and when he reached his own he delivered a message to the effect that the Head would like to see his form-master at ten-fifteen.
Peter’s form-master, familiarly known as “Pig-Face,” from a fancied resemblance to that animal in the matter of nose, is a testy man, much given to abusing his form and to the use of opprobrious epithets seriously reflecting upon the veracity of boys in general; so, on receipt of the Head’s message, he knuckled Peter’s head, called him a “shuffling little beast,” set a complicated sum in discount for his form to wrestle with during his absence, and hurried away, fuming inwardly at theunreason of such a summons in the middle of morning school. When he arrived at the principal’s room he found six other masters also in waiting, but the principal himself was not there.
It happened that that gentleman had met Tod’s form-master three minutes after he had seen Tod, he said what he had to say there and then in the corridor, and dismissed the matter from his mind.
The seven masters waited in a grumpy group for ten good minutes, when, just as they had decided upon immediate departure, the principal himself rushed in and gazed in somewhat indignant astonishment at the assembled multitude.
It took nearly five minutes more to explain the situation, and the only boy whose conduct in delivering the various messages seemed not wholly inexplicable appeared to be Peter. For the principal good-naturedly came to the conclusion that it must have been Peter that he met, not Tod, and that Peter had misunderstood him.
Such a charitable view of Peter’s conduct, however, could not last long, seeing that six angry masters rushed back to their respective forms to inflict lines upon six perfectly innocent boys, who were not slow to protest that the message was entrusted to them by another.
During the morning three young gentlemen from the Modern and four from the Classical received a summons “to the principal at twelve,” and of course Tod and Peter were of the number, both looking so seraphically innocent that the principal was perfectly sure that it was “a put-up thing.” In this instance the innocent sufferedwith the guilty, for Tod got five hundred lines as well as Peter. But they both agreed that to have so scored off seven “brushers” at one time was well worth the lines.
Three days afterward Tod’s nose bled toward the end of morning school and he was dismissed to his house to clean up. As he raced along the corridor he noticed that the door of the little room into which the rope of the school bell descended was left open, and, peeping in, he discovered that Hooper, the trusty porter, was not within.
In far less time than it takes to write the words, Tod had rushed in, and the great school bell that dismisses morning school rang loud and clear over the peaceful playing-fields surrounding the school buildings, still humming with the busy life within.
Every boy and every master stopped short in what he was doing and looked at the clock. Those possessed of watches consulted them, shook them, listened to them, dubiously pressing them to unbelieving ears. And as the clocks in that school are by no means beyond reproach, being worked by a system of electricity that is, to say the least of it, capricious in its conduct, all came, not unwillingly, to the conclusion that morning work had indeed ended. Only the Head of the Modern, that man of iron endurance, whose whole scheme of creation seemed bounded by the exigencies of the Civil Service Commissioners, refused to believe that his watch was wrong, and continued to discuss the “directrix and eccentric” of a certain angle until it was really twelve o’clock; while one of the French masters, hailing from Geneva, proclaimedthe unreliability of English clocks in general.
Meanwhile Hooper, who had gone down to the lodge to speak to his wife, could hardly believe his ears when his own sacred bell clanged, somewhat irresponsibly and gaily it is true, without his agency.
He rushed up the drive to discover the perpetrator of this extraordinary outrage, only to meet a throng of masters and boys streaming out into the playground full twenty minutes before the appointed hour.
Tod was nearly at his house by this time, and when he did arrive, hastened to the matron to descant upon the terrific hemorrhage that had occurred in his nose.
But Nemesis was never very leaden-footed where the twins were concerned.
“Other chaps,” Tod remarked mournfully, “can break all sorts of rules and do no end of mischief and never get found out, but if we do the least little thing someone’s certain to be down on us like a hundred of bricks, or else we’re obliged to own up to save somebody else.”
In this case it was the latter course that Tod had to pursue. The principal was exceedingly angry at such a wanton curtailment of the last hour of morning school, and gave it out in the afternoon that if the amateur bellringer did not disclose himself that very day, the whole school should stay in on the next half-holiday; and the frost had broken and football was in full swing once more.
Of course Tod sought the principal at the earliest opportunity and owned up.
When he appeared in the principal’s room after afternoon school he made, it is true, a valiant effort to present himself with due solemnity, but his round face was absurdly chubby and cheerful, and when the principal looked up from the letter he was writing to see who the intruder was, he sighed deeply.
“You again, Beaton!” he exclaimed wearily. “So it wasyou, was it, who rang that bell? What on earth did you do it for?”
“My nose bled, sir....” Tod began eagerly.
“What had your nose to do with it?”
“Everything, sir. I was sent out of class....”
“Sent out of class?” the principal repeated sternly.
“Because I made such a mess,” Tod hastened to add; “and the little door was open—and so I rang the bell.”
“Beaton, when will you cease to play these senseless and annoying tricks? Your folly caused six hundred boys, to say nothing of the masters, to lose twenty precious minutes. If I punished you as you deserve, you ought to stay in for twenty minutes each day for six hundred days....”
Tod gasped.
“But I won’t do that. Instead, you must do a thousand lines, to be given up by the end of this week. I shall not cane you, as I have no doubt you would infinitely prefer it.”
A good many boys assisted to write those lines, and the impost was given up at its appointed time.
Hockey leagues were on and Peter was playing in his house team. On the morning of the last practice before an important match, he acknowledged so barely bowing an acquaintance with certain French idioms beloved of the French master—for was he not their author?—that Peter was told to stay in after morning school and learn them.
Peter did nothing of the kind; on the contrary, he went out at the usual hour and played hockey with his accustomed vigor, with the result that the French master sent for him that afternoon to know why he had not done as he was told.
Peter pleaded “a very important engagement,” and, on being pressed to disclose the nature of that same, as usual answered quite truthfully. The French master, not unnaturally exasperated, forthwith reported him to the Head of the Modern, with the result that Peter was hauled up and bidden to stay in on the next half-holiday; the very half-holiday on which his house was to play its bitterest rival.
During the remainder of that term he got into several rows with his form-master, and Tod was equally unlucky, so that by the time the Easter holidays arrived both boys were quite ready for them and left school vowing vengeance on their persecutors.
Their parents were in India, so they went to spend the holidays with a jolly young bachelor uncle, who was an ardent fisherman and carried both the boys off with him for three weeks’ peel-fishing in a remote village in North Wales. Hewas also of a literary turn, that uncle, and took with him a box of books to enliven their evenings: lots of Kipling and Stevenson, and amongst the latter the “Life and Letters.” He read aloud the “Thomas Libby” incident, where Stevenson and certain kindred spirits roused a whole neighborhood to excitement by constant inquiries as to the whereabouts of one “Thomas Libby,” who existed only in his creator’s vivid imagination. That of the twins was immediately fired by an ambition to go and do likewise.
The incident, or rather series of incidents, to which the non-appearance of Mr. Libby led up, enchanted them. They chuckled over the mysterious Thomas for a whole day, but it was not till evening, at bedtime, that Tod whispered to Peter how, like “Sentimental Tommy,” he had “found a way.”
Sitting on the side of his bed, he announced gleefully: “Tell you what it is, Peter, we’ll be a parent! A parent with a delicate kid! And we’ll write long-winded letters in scratchy, small handwriting, you know, like the masters write....”
“But,” Peter interrupted excitedly, “how are we to get the answers? It wouldn’t be any fun if we didn’t.”
“The answers,” Tod replied calmly, “will come to the post office here, where we’re living, you juggins! You bet there’ll be answers. They’re awfully keen after the oof at the good old school. Why, they scent a new boy a mile off. He shall go into old Pig-Face’s house, just to pay him out for all his beastliness to you, and I’ll pester the Headabout him and his delicate chest, and all that sort of rot that parentsdowrite, don’t you know.”
Peter gasped. “But how can he ‘go’ into anybody’s house if there isn’t a him to go?”
“What an ass you are, Peter!Wasthere a Thomas Libby? And how many people’s houses was he going to, pray?”
“Go on,” said Peter humbly, “go on.”
“The parent’s name,” Tod announced proudly, “is Theopompus Buggins.”
“Theopompus!” Peter echoed dubiously. “It doesn’t sound very real somehow—and is the kid to be young Theopompus?”
“No,” said Tod firmly, “hisname is Archibald, and Mr. Buggins is his uncle.”
“I thought he was to be a parent,” Peter objected in a dissatisfied voice.
“Well, an uncle is a sort of parent; probably the kid’s an orphan.”
There was silence for a minute while Peter digested this view of the matter. But still he was not quite satisfied, for presently he said: “Tod, wouldyoubelieve in anyone called ‘Theopompus Buggins’?”
“Well, no, I’m not sure that I would,” Tod admitted. “Why?”
“D’you believe the Head will?”
“I never thought of that.”
“I think,” Peter suggested beguilingly, “that we had better have a commoner name, don’t you?”
“P’r’aps we had,” Tod sighed. “Let’s have Jones—Theopompus Jones, now.”
“Jones is all right,” Peter allowed graciously,“but I don’t fancy Theopompus much, it’s such a peculiar name.”
“It’s a splendid name,” Tod exclaimed huffily, “but of course if you think it’s too uncommon he can be ‘T. Jones, Esq.,’ or ‘John Jones’ if you insist upon it. How would you like ‘Peter Jones’?”
“T. Jones will do spiffingly,” Peter answered with some haste. “We’llknow his name is Theopompus right enough, and it don’t matter a hang to them whether he’s Theobald or Theophilus or anything; but I say, Tod, must he be an uncle?”
“Yes,” Tod replied firmly, “he jolly well must, and, what’s more, he’s got to be going to Injia just as term begins. We’ll look out the sailings in uncle’s paper and choose his ship. He’ll just get there in the hot weather, but that can’t be helped.”
The twins were well acquainted with the whereabouts of “sailings” in the papers, as most Anglo-Indian children are.
“Why, you’ve planned it all, Tod,” Peter said admiringly. “How’ll you do about the writing?”
“I shall write as like old Stinks as possible, that niggly, scrabbly sort of writing,youknow.”
“By Jove! So you can—that’ll be all right. Parents and people call that sort of writing ‘scholarly,’ but if we did it they’d say we were beastly illiterate or something.”
“What I like about a scholarly handwriting,” said Tod thoughtfully, “is that no mortal can tell whether the spelling’s right or not. When I’m once through the Shop I shall always write ascholarly hand and not bother about spelling and that any more.”
“Boys,” a voice called from the next room, “you get to bed and don’t keep jawing all night.”
It would not be fair to disclose the exact spot in Wales from which that anxious relative, Mr. T. Jones, indited his first letter to the headmaster of the Public School which reckoned Tod and Peter among its pupils.