The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith

"One lump or two?" queried Prissy again, graciously transferring her attentions to Joe Craig.

"Eh, what?" ejaculated that warrior. Prissy repeated her question.

"As many as I can get!" cried the boy.

So one by one the brigands were served, and the subdued look which rests upon a Sunday-school picnic at the hour of refreshment settled down upon them. The Smoutchy boy is bad and bold, but he does not like you to see him in the act of eating. His instinct is to get behind a wall, or into the thick of a copse and do it there. A similar feeling sends the sparrow with a larger crumb than the others into the seclusion of his nest among the ivy.

Nevertheless the bread and jam, the raisins, and the sheep's-head-pie disappeared 'like snow off a dyke.' The wonder of the thimbleful cups, continually replenished, grew more and more surprising; and, winking slyly at each other the Smoutchies passed them in with a touch of their caps to be filled and refilled again and again. Prissy kept the kettle beside her, out of which she poured the water brought by Timothy Tracy as she wanted it. The golden colour of the tea degenerated, but so long as a few drops of milk remained to mask the fraud from their eyes, the Smoutchies drank the warm water with equal relish.

"Besides it's so much better for your nerves, you know!" said Prissy, putting her action upon a hygienic basis.

At first the boys had been inclined to snatch the viands from the table-cloth, and there was one footprint on the further edge. But the iron hand of Nipper Donnan knocked two or three intruders sprawling, and after that the eatables were distributed as patiently and exactly as at a Lord Mayor's banquet.

"Please will you let that boy get up? – I think he must have been sat upon quite long enough now," said Prissy, who could not bear to listen to the uneasy groaning of the oppressed prisoner.

The chief granted the boon. The sitter and his victim came in and were regaled amicably from one plate. "Pieces" and full cups of tea were despatched to the distant sentinels, and finally the whole company was in the midst of washing up, when Prissy, who had been kneeling on the grass wiping saucers one by one, suddenly rose to her feet with a little cry.

"Oh, it is so dreadful – I quite forgot!"

The Smoutchies stood open-mouthed, some holding dishes, some with belated pieces of pie, some only with their hands in their pockets, but all waiting eagerly for the revelation of the dreadful thing which their hostess had forgotten.

"Why, we forgot to say grace!" she cried – "well, anyway I am glad I remembered in time. We can say it now. Who is the youngest?"

The boys all looked guiltily at each other. Prissy picked out a small boy of stunted aspect, but whose face was old and wizened. He had just put a piece of tobacco into his mouth to take away the taste of the tea.

"You say it, little boy," she said pointedly, and shut her eyes for him to begin.

The boy gasped, glanced once at his chief, and made a bolt for the door, through which he had fled before the sentinels had time to stop him. At the clatter Prissy opened her eyes.

"What is the matter with that boy? Couldn't he say grace? Didn't he remember the beginning? Well, you say it then – "

Nipper Donnan shook his head. He had a fine natural contempt for all religious services in the abstract, but when one was brought before him as a ceremony, his sense of discipline told him that it must somehow be valuable.

"Better say it yourself," he suggested.

Whereat Prissy devoutly clasped her hands and shut her eyes.

There was a smart smack and something fell over. Prissy opened her eyes, and saw a boy sprawling on the grass.

"Right," said Nipper Donnan cheerfully, "go ahead – Joe Craig laughed. I'll teach him to laugh except when I tell him to."

So Prissy again proceeded with a grace of her own composition:

 
"God bless our table,
Bless our food;
And make us stable,
Brave and good."
 

After all was over Prissy left the Castle of Windy Standard, without indeed obtaining any pledge from the chief of the army of occupation, but not without having done some good. And she went forth with dignity too. For not only did the robber chieftain provide her with an escort, but he ordered the ramparts to be manned, and a general salute to be fired in her honour.

Prissy waved her hand vigorously, and had already proceeded a little way towards the stepping-stones, when she stopped, laid down her basket, and ran back to the postern gate. She took her little tortoise-shell card-case out of her pocket.

"Oh, I was nearly forgetting – how dreadfully rude of me!" she said, and forthwith pulled out a card on which she had previously written very neatly:

Miss Priscilla Smith

At Home Every Day

She laid it on the stones, and tripped away. "I'm sorry I have not my brother's card to leave also," she said, looking up at the brigand chief, who had been watching her curiously from a window.

"Oh," said Nipper Donnan, "we shall be pleased to see him if he drops in on Saturday – or any other time."

Then he waited till the trim white figure was some distance from the gateway before he took his cap from his head and waved it in the air.

"Three proper cheers for the little lady!" he cried.

And the grim old walls of the Castle of Windy Standard never echoed to a heartier shout than that with which the Smoutchy boys sped Miss Priscilla Smith, the daughter of their arch enemy, upon her homeward way.

Prissy poised herself on tiptoe at the entrance of the copse, and blew them a dainty collective kiss from her fingers.

"Thank you so much," she cried, "you are very kind. Come and see me soon – and be sure you stop to tea."

And with that she tripped swiftly away homeward with an empty basket and a happy heart.

That night in her little room before she went to sleep she read over her favourite text, "Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God."

"Oh dear," she said, "I should so like to be one some day."

CHAPTER XXXII
PLAN OF CAMPAIGN

SATURDAY morning dawned calm and clear after heavy rain on the hills, with a Sabbath-like peace in the air. The smoke of Edam rose straight up into the firmament from a hundred chimneys, and the Lias Coal Mine contributed a yet taller pillar to the skies, which bushed out at the top till it resembled an umbrella with a thick handle. Hugh John had been very early astir, and one of his first visits had been to the gipsy camp, where he found Billy Blythe with several others all clad in their tumbling tights, practising their great Bounding Brothers' act.

"Hello," cried Hugh John jovially, "at it already?"

"The mornin's the best time for suppling the jints!" answered Billy sententiously; "ask Lepronia Lovell, there. She should know with all them tin pans going clitter-clatter on her back."

"I'll be thankin' ye, Billy Blythe, to kape a tight holt on the slack o' that whopper jaw of yours. It will be better for you at supper-time than jeerin' at a stranger girl, that is arnin' her bite o' bread daycent. And that's a deal more than ye can do, aye, or anny wan like ye!"

And with these brave words, Lepronia Lovell went jingling away.

The Bounding Brothers threw themselves into knots, spun themselves into parti-coloured tops, turned double and treble somersaults, built human pyramids, and generally behaved as if they had no bones in any permanent positions throughout their entire bodies. Hugh John stood by in wonder and admiration.

"Are you afraid?" cried Billy from where he stood, arching his shoulders and swaying a little, as one of the supporters of the pyramid. "No? – then take off your boots." Hugh John instantly stood in his stocking soles.

"Up with him!" And before he knew it, he was far aloft, with his feet on the shoulders of the highest pair, who supported him with their right and left hands respectively. From his elevated perch he could see the enemy's flag flaunting defiance from the topmost battlements of the castle.

As soon as he reached the ground he mentioned what he had seen to Billy Blythe.

"We'll have it low and mean enough this night as ever was, before the edge o' dark!" said Billy, with a grim nod of his head.

The rains of the night had swelled the ford so that the stepping-stones were almost impracticable – indeed, entirely so for the short brown legs of Sir Toady Lion. This circumstance added greatly to the strength of the enemy's position, and gave the Smoutchies a decided advantage.

"They can't be at the castle all the time," said Billy; "why not let my mates and me go in before they get there? Then we could easily keep every one of them out."

This suggestion much distressed General Smith, who endeavoured to explain the terms of his contract to the gipsy lad. He showed him that it would not be fair to attack the Smoutchies except on Saturday, because at any other time they could not have all their forces in the field.

Billy thought with some reason that this was simple folly. But in time he was convinced of the wisdom of not "making two blazes of the same wasps' byke," as he expressed it.

"Do for them once out and out, and be done with it!" was his final advice.

Hugh John could not keep from thinking how stale and unprofitable it would be when all the Smoutchies had been finally "done for," and when he did not waken to new problems of warfare every morning.

According to the final arrangements the main attack was to be developed from the broadest part of the castle island below the stepping-stones. There were two boats belonging to the house of Windy Standard, lying in a boat-house by the little pier on the way to Oaklands. For security these were attached by a couple of padlocks to a strong double staple, which had been driven right through the solid floor of the landing-stage.

The padlocks were new, and the whole appeared impregnable to the simple minds of the children, and even to Mike and Peter Greg. But Billy smiled as he looked at them.

"Why, opening them's as easy as falling off a stool when you're asleep. Gimme a hairpin."

But neither Prissy nor Cissy Carter had yet attained to the dignity of having their hair done up, so neither carried such a thing about with them. Business was thus at a standstill, when Hugh John called to Prissy, "Go and ask Jane Housemaid to give us one."

"A good thick 'un!" called Billy Blythe after her.

The swift-footed Dian of Windy Standard had only been away a minute or two before she came flying back like the wind.

"She-won't-give-us-any-unless-we-tell-her-what-it-is-for!" she panted, all in one long word.

"Rats!" said Hugh John contemptuously, "ask her where she was last Friday week at eleven o'clock at night!"

The Divine Huntress flitted away again on winged feet, and in a trice was back with three hairpins, still glossy from their recent task of supporting the well-oiled hair of Jane Housemaid.

With quick supple hand Billy twisted the wire this way and that, tried the padlock once, and then deftly bent the ductile metal again with a pair of small pincers. The wards clicked promptly back, and lo! the padlock was hanging by its curved tongue. The other was stiffer with rust, but was opened in the same way. The besiegers were thus in possession of two fine transports in which to convey their army to the scene of conflict.

It was the plan of the General that the men under Billy Blythe should fill the larger of the two boats, and drop secretly down the left channel till they were close under the walls of the castle. The enemy, being previously alarmed by the beating of drums and the musketry fire on the land side, would never expect to be taken in the rear, and probably would not have a single soldier stationed there.

Indeed, towards the Edam Water, the walls of the keep rose thirty or forty feet into the air without an aperture wide enough to thrust an arm through. So that the need of defence on that side was not very apparent to the most careful captain. But at the south-west corner, one of the flanking turrets had been overthrown, though there still remained several steps of a descent into the water. But so high was the river on this occasion, that it lapped against the masonry of the outer defences. To this point then, apparently impregnable, the formidable division under Billy Blythe was to make its way.

There was nothing very martial about the appearance of these sons of the tent and caravan. The Bounding Brothers wore their trick dresses, and as for the rest, they were simply and comprehensively arrayed in shirt and trousers. Not a weapon, not a sash, not a stick, sword, nor gun broke the harmonious simplicity of the gipsy army.

Yet it was evident that they knew something which gave them secret confidence, for all the time they were in a state of high glee, only partially suppressed by the authority of their leader, and by the necessity for care in manning the boat with so large a crew. There were fourteen who were to adventure forth under Billy's pennon.

To the former assailants of the Black Sheds there had been added a stout and willing soldier from the gardens of Windy Standard, – a boy named Gregory (or more popularly Gregory's Mixture), together with a forester lad, who was called Craw-bogle Tam from his former occupation of scaring the crows out of the corn. Sammy Carter had been cashiered some time ago by the Commander-in-chief, but nevertheless he appeared with three cousins all armed with dog-whips, which Sammy assured Hugh John were the deadliest of weapons at close quarters. Altogether it was a formidable array.

The boat for the attack on the land side was so full that there remained no room for Toady Lion. That young gentleman promptly sat down on the landing-stage, and sent up a howl which in a few moments would certainly have brought down Janet Sheepshanks and all the curbing powers from the house, had he not been committed to the care of Prissy, with public instructions to get him some toffy and a private order to take him into the town, and keep him there till the struggle was over.

Prissy went off with Sir Toady Lion, both in high glee.

"I'se going round by the white bwidge – so long, everybody! I'll be at the castle as soon as you!" he cried as he departed.

Hugh John sighed a sigh of relief when he saw them safely off the muster-ground. Cissy, however, was coming on board as soon as ever the boat was ready to start. She had been posted to watch the movements of the household of Windy Standard, and would report at the last moment.

"All right," she cried from her watch-tower among the whins, "Prissy and Toady Lion are round the corner, and Janet Sheepshanks has just gone into the high garden to get parsley."

"Up anchors," cried Hugh John solemnly, "the hour has come!"

Mike and Billy tossed the padlock chains into the bottom of the boats and pushed off. There were no anchors, but the mistake was permissible to a simple soldier like General Napoleon Smith.

CHAPTER XXXIII
TOADY LION'S SECOND LONE HAND

EDAM Water ran swiftly, surging and pushing southward on its way to the sea. It was brown and drumly with a wrack of twigs and leaves, snatched from the low branches of the hazels and alders which fringed its banks. It fretted and elbowed, frothing like yeast about the landing-place from which the two boat-loads were to set out for the attack.

General Napoleon Smith, equipped with sword and sash, sat in the stern of the first, in order to steer, while Prince Michael O'Donowitch stood on the jetty and held the boat's head. The others sat still in their places till the General gave the word. The eager soldiery vented their feelings in a great shout. Cissy Carter took her place with a flying leap just as the rope was cast off, and the fateful voyage began.

At first there was little to be done save in the way of keeping the vessel's head straight, for the Edam Water, swirling and brown with the mountain rains, hurried her towards the island with almost too great speed. With a rush they passed the wide gap between the unsubmerged stones of the causeway, at which point the boldest held his breath. The beach of pebbles was immediately beyond. But they were not to be allowed to land without a struggle; for there, directly on their front, appeared the massed forces of the enemy, occupying the high bluff behind, and prepared to prevent the disembarkation by a desperate fusillade of stones and turf.

It was in this hour of peril that the soldierly qualities of the leader again came out most strongly.

He kept the boat's head straight for the shore, as if he had been going to beach her, till she was within a dozen yards; then with a quick stroke of his steering oar he turned her right for the willow copses which fringed the island on the eastern side. The water had risen, so that these were sunk to half their height in the quick-running flood, and their leaves sucked under with the force of the current. But behind there was a quiet backwater into which Hugh John ran his vessel head on till she slanted with a gentle heave up on the green turf.

"Overboard every man!" he cried, and showed the example himself by dashing into the water up to the knees, carrying the blue ensign of his cause. The enemy had not expected this rapid flank movement, and waited only till the invaders had formed in battle array to retreat upon the castle, fearful perhaps of being cut off from their stronghold.

General-Field-Marshal Smith addressed his army.

"Soldiers," he said, "we've got to fight, and it's dead earnest this time, mind you. We're going to lick the Smoutchies, so that they will stay licked a long time. Now, come on!"

This brief address was considered on all hands to be a model effort, and worthy of the imitation of all generals in the face of the enemy. The most vulnerable part of the castle from the landward side was undoubtedly the great doorway – an open arch of some six feet wide, which, however, had to be approached under a galling cross fire from the ports at either side and from the lintel above.

"It's no use wasting time," cried the General; "follow me to the door."

And with his sword in his hand he darted valiantly up the steep incline which led to the castle. Cissy Carter charged at his left shoulder also sword in hand, while Mike and Peter, with Gregory's Mixture and the Craw Bogle, were scarcely a step behind.

Stones and mortar hailed down upon the devoted band; sticks and clods of turf struck them on their shoulders and arms. But with their teeth clenched and their heads bent low, the storming party rushed undauntedly upon their foes.

The Smoutchies had built a breast-work of driftwood in front of the great entrance, but it was so flimsy that Mike and his companions kicked it away in a moment – yet not before General Smith, light as a young goat, had overleaped it and launched himself solitary on the foe. Then, with the way clear, it was cut and thrust from start to finish.

First among the assailants General Smith crossed swords with the great Nipper Donnan himself. But his reserves had not yet come up, and so he was beaten down by three cracks on the head received from different quarters at the same time. But like Witherington in the ballad, he still fought upon his knees; and while Prince Michael and Gregory's Mixture held the enemy at bay with their stout sticks, the stricken Hugh John kept well down among their legs, and used his sword from underneath with damaging effect.

"Give them the point – cold steel!" he cried.

"Cowld steel it is!" shouted Prince Michael, as he brought down his blackthorn upon the right ear of Nipper Donnan.

"Cauld steel – tak' you that!" cried Peter Greg the Scot as he let out with his left, and knocked Nosey Cuthbert over backwarks into the hall of the castle.

Thus raged in front the heady fight; and thus with their faces to the foe and their weapons in their hands, we leave the vanguard of the army of Windy Standard, in order that for a little we may follow the fortunes of the other divisions.

Yes, divisions is the word, that is to say Billy Blythe's gipsy division and – Sir Toady Lion.

For once more Toady Lion was playing a lone hand.

So soon as Prissy and he had been left behind, we regret to be obliged to report that the behaviour of the distinguished knight left much to be desired.

"Don't be bad, Toady Lion," said his sister, gently taking him by the hand; "come and look at nice picture-books."

"Will be bad," growled Toady Lion, stamping his little foot in impotent wrath; "doan want t' look at pitchur-books – want to go and fight! And I will go too, so there!"

And in his fiery indignation he even kicked at his sister Prissy, and threw stones after the boat in which the expedition had sailed. The gipsy division, which was to wait till they heard the noise of battle roll up from the castle island before cutting loose, took pity on Sir Toady Lion, and but for the special nature of the service required of them, they would, I think, have taken him with them.

"That's a rare well-plucked little 'un!" cried Joe Baillie. "See how he shuts his fists, and cuts up rough!"

"A little man!" said the leader encouragingly; "walks into his sister's shins, don't he, the little codger!"

"Let me go wif you, please," pleaded Toady Lion; "I'll kill you unless! – Kill you every one!" And his voice was full of bloodshed.

"Last time 'twas me that d'livered Donald, when they all runned away or got took prisoner; and now they won't even take me wif them!"

Billy regretfully shook his head. It would not do to be cumbered with small boys in the desperate mission on which they were going. The hope was forlorn enough as it was.

"Wait till we come back, little 'un," he said kindly; "run away and play with your sister."

Toady Lion stamped on the ground more fiercely than ever.

"Shan't stop and play wif a girl. If you don't let me come, I shall kill you."

And with sentiments even more discreditable, he pursued their boat as long as he could reach it with volleys of stones, to the great delight of the gipsy boys, who stimulated him to yet more desperate exertions with cries of "Well fielded!" "Chuck her in hard!" "Hit him with a big one!" While some of those in the stern pretended to stand shaking in deadly fear, and implored Toady Lion to spare them because they were orphans.

"Shan't spare none – shall kill 'oo every one!" cried the angry Toady Lion, lugging at a bigger stone than all, which he could not lift above three inches from the ground.

"Will smass 'oo with this, Billy Blythe – bad Billy!" he exclaimed, as he wrestled with the boulder.

"Oh, spare me – think of my family, Toady Lion, my pore wife and childer," pleaded Billy hypocritically.

"'Oo should have finked of 'oo fambly sooner!" cried Toady Lion, staggering to the water's edge with the great stone.

But at this moment the noise of the crying of those warring for the mastery came faintly up from the castle island. The rope that had been passed through the ring on the landing-stage and held ready in the hand of Billy Blythe, was loosened, and the second part of the besieging expedition went down with the rushing spate which reddened Edam Water. And as they fell away Billy stood up and called for three cheers for "little Toady Lion, the best man of the lot."

But Toady Lion stood on the shore and fairly bellowed with impotent rage, and the sound of his crying, "I'll kill 'oo! I'll kill 'oo dead!" roused Janet Sheepshanks, who was taking advantage of her master's absence to carry out a complete house-cleaning. She left the blanket-washing to see what was the matter. But Toady Lion, angry as he was, had sense enough to know that if Janet got him, he would be superintended all the morning. So with real alacrity he slipped aside into the "scrubbery," and there lay hidden till Janet, anxious that her maids should not scamp their house-work, was compelled to hurry back to the laundry to see that the blankets were properly washed.

After this there was but one thing to do, and so the second division, under Sir Toady Lion, did it. He resolved to turn the enemy's flank, and attack him with reinforcements from an entirely unexpected quarter. So, leaving Prissy to her own devices, he took to his heels, and his fat legs carried him rapidly in the direction of the town of Edam. Difficulties there were of course, such as the barrier of the white lodge gate, where old Betty lay in wait for him.

But Toady Lion circumnavigated Betty by going to the lodge-door and shouting with all his might, "Betty, come quick, p'raps they's some soldiers comin' down the road – maybe Tom's comin', 'oo come and look."

"Sodjers – where? – what?" cried old Betty, waking up hastily from her doze, and fumbling in her pocket for the gate-key.

Toady Lion was at her elbow when she undid the latch. Toady Lion charged past her with a yell. Toady Lion it was who from the safe middle of the highway made the preposterous explanation, "Oh no, they isn't no soldiers. 'Tis only a silly old fish-man wif a tin trumpet."

"Come back, sir, or I'll tell your father! Come back at once!" cried old Betty.

But she might shake her head and nod with her nut-cracker chin till the black beads on her lace "kep" tinkled. All was in vain. Toady Lion was out of reach far down the dusty main road along which the Scots Greys had come the day that Hugh John became a soldier. Toady Lion was a born pioneer, and usually got what he wanted, first of all by dint of knowing exactly what he did want, and then "fighting it out on that line if it took all summer" – or even winter too.

The road to the town of Edam wound underneath trees great and tall, which hummed with bees and gnats that day as Toady Lion sped along, his bare feet "plapping" pleasantly in the white hot dust. He was furtively crying all the time – not from sorrow but with sheer indignation. He hated all his kind. He was going to desert to the Smoutchies. He would be a Comanche Cowboy if they would have him, since his brother and Cissy Carter had turned against him. Nobody loved him, and he was glad of it. Prissy – oh! yes, but Prissy did not count. She loved everybody and everything, even stitching and dollies, and putting on white thread gloves when you went into town. So he ran on, evading the hay waggons and red farm-carts without looking at them, till in a trice he had crossed Edam Bridge and entered the town – in the glaring streets and upon the hot pavement of which the sunshine was sleeping, and which on Saturday forenoon had more than its usual aspect of enjoying a perpetual siesta.

The leading chemist was standing at his door, wondering if the rustic who passed in such a hurry could actually be on the point of entering the shop of his hated rival. The linen-draper at the corner under the town clock was divided between keeping an eye on his apprentices to see that they did not spar with yard sticks, and mentally criticising the ludicrous and meretricious window-dressing of his next-door neighbour. None of them cared at all for the small dusty boy with the tear-furrowed countenance who kept on trotting so steadily through the town, turned confidently up the High Street, and finally dodged into the path which led past the Black Sheds to the wooden bridge which joined the castle island to the butcher's parks. As he crossed the grass Toady Lion heard a wrathful voice from somewhere calling loudly, "Nipper! Nipper-r-r-r! Oh, wait till I catch you!"

For it chanced that this day the leading butcher in Edam was without the services of both his younger assistants – his son Nipper and his message boy, Tommy Pratt. Mr. Donnan had a new cane in his hand, and he was making it whistle through the air in a most unpleasant and suggestive manner.

"Get away out of my field, little boy – where are you going? What are you doing there?"

The question was put at short range now, for all unwittingly Sir Toady Lion had almost run into butcher Donnan's arms.

"Please I finks I'se going to Mist'r Burnham's house," explained Toady Lion readily but somewhat unaccurately; "I'se keepin' off the grass – and I didn't know it was your grass anyway, please, sir."

At the same time Toady Lion saluted because he also was a soldier, and Mr. Donnan, who in his untempered youth had passed several years in the ranks of Her Majesty's line, mechanically returned the courtesy.

"Why, little shaver," he said not unkindly, "this isn't the way to Mr. Burnham's house. There it is over among the trees. But, hello, talk of the – ahem – why, here comes Mr. Burnham himself."

Toady Lion clapped his hands and ran as fast as he could in the direction of the clergyman. Mr. Burnham was very tall, very soldierly, very stiff, and his well-fitting black coat and corded silk waistcoat were the admiration of the ladies of the neighbourhood. He was never seen out of doors without the glossiest of tall hats, and it was whispered that he had his trousers made tight about the calves on purpose to look like a dean. It was also understood in well-informed circles that he was writing a book on the eastward position – after which there would be no such thing as the Low Church. Nevertheless an upright, good, and, above all, kindly heart beat under the immaculate silk M. B. waistcoat; also strong capable arms were attached to the armholes of the coat which fitted its owner without a wrinkle. Indeed, Mr. Burnham had a blue jacket of a dark shade in which he had once upon a time rowed a famous race. It hung now in a glass cabinet, and was to the clergyman what Sambo Soulis was to General-Field-Marshal Smith.

But as we know, the fear of man dwelt not in Sir Toady Lion, and certainly not fear of his clergyman. He trotted up to him and said, "I wants to go to the castle. You come."

Now hitherto Mr. Burnham had always seen Sir Toady Lion as he came, with shining face and liberally plastered hair, from under the tender mercies of Janet Sheepshanks – with her parting monition to behave (and perhaps something else) still ringing in his ear.

So that it is no wonder that he did not for the moment recognise in the tear-stained, dust-caked face of the barefooted imp who addressed him so unceremoniously, the features of the son of his most prominent parishioner. He gazed down in mildly bewildered surprise, whereupon Toady Lion took him familiarly by the hand and reiterated his request, with an aplomb which had all the finality of a royal invitation.