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

CHAPTER XXVI
AN IMPERIAL BIRTHDAY

THE next day was General Napoleon Smith's birthday. Outwardly it looked much like other days. There were not, as there ought to have been, great, golden imperial capital N's all over the sky. Nature indeed was more than usually calm; but, to strike a balance, there was excitement enough and to spare in and about the house of Windy Standard. Very early, when it was not yet properly light, but only sort of misty white along the wet grass and streaky combed-out grey up above in the sky, Prissy waked Sir Toady Lion, who promptly rolled over to the back of his cot, and stuck his funny head right down between the wall and the edge of the wire mattress, so that only his legs and square sturdy back could be seen.

Toady Lion always preferred to sleep in the most curious positions. In winter he usually turned right round in bed till his head was far under the bed-clothes, and his fat, twinkly, pink toes reposed peacefully on the pillow. Nothing ever mattered to Toady Lion. He could breathe through his feet just as well as through his mouth, and (as we have seen) much better than through his nose. The attention of professors of physiology is called to this fact, which can be established upon the amplest evidence and the most unimpeachable testimony. In summer he generally rolled out of bed during the first half hour, and slept comfortably all the rest of the night on the floor.

"Get up, Toady Lion," said his sister softly, so as not to waken Hugh John; "it is the birthday."

"Ow don' care!" grumbled Toady Lion, turning over and over three or four times very fast till he had all the bed-clothes wrapped about him like a cocoon; "don' care wat it is. I'se goin' to sleep some more. Don't go 'prog' me like that!"

"Come," said Prissy gently, to tempt him; "we are going to give Hugh John a surprise, and sing a lovely hymn at his door. You can have my ivory Prayer-book – "

"For keeps?" asked Toady Lion, opening his eyes with his first gleam of interest.

"Oh, no, you know that was mother's, and father gave it to me to take care of. But you shall have it to hold in your hand while we are singing."

"Well, then, can I have the picture of the anzel Michael castin' out the baddy-baddy anzels and hittin' the Bad Black Man O-such-a-whack on the head?"

Prissy considered. The print was particularly dear to her heart, and she had spent a happy wet Saturday colouring it. But she did want to make the birthday hymn a success, and Toady Lion had undeniably a fine voice when he liked to use it – which was not often.

"All right," she said, "you can have my 'Michael and the Bad Angels,' but you are not to spoil it."

"Shan't play then," grumbled Toady Lion, who knew well the strength of his position, and was as troublesome as a prima donna when she knows her manager cannot do without her – "shan't sing, not unless 'Michael and the Bad Angels' is mine to spoil if I like."

"But you won't – will you, dear Toady Lion?" pleaded Prissy. "You'll keep it so nice and careful, and then next Saturday, when I have my week's money and you are poor, I'll buy it off you again."

"Shan't promise," said the Obstinate Brat – as Janet, happily inspired, had once called him after being worsted in an argument, "p'rhaps yes, and p'rhaps no."

"Come on then, Toady Lion," whispered Prissy, giving him a hand and deciding to trust to luck for the preservation of her precious print. Toady Lion was often much better than his word, and she knew from experience that by Saturday his financial embarrassments would certainly be such that no reasonable offer was likely to be refused.

Toady Lion rose, and taking his sister's hand they went into her room, carefully shutting the door after them. Here Prissy proceeded to equip Toady Lion in one of her own "nighties," very much against that chorister's will.

"You see, pink flannel pyjams are not proper to sing in church in," she whispered: "now – you must hold your hymn-book so, and look up at the roof when you sing – like the 'Child Samuel' on the nursery wall."

"Mine eyes don't goggle like his," said Toady Lion, who felt that Nature had not designed him for the part, and who was sleepy and cross anyway. Birthdays were no good – except his own.

It happened that Janet Sheepshanks was going downstairs early to set the maids to their morning work, and this is what she saw. At the closed door of Hugh John's chamber stood two quaint little figures, clad in lawny white, one tall and slim, the other short and chubby as a painted cherub on a ceiling. They had each white hymn-books reverently placed between their hands. Their eyes were raised heavenwards and their lips were red and parted with excitement.

The stern Scotswoman felt something suddenly strike her heart.

"Eh, sir," she said, telling the tale afterwards, "the lassie Priscilla was sae like her mither, my puir bairn that is noo singing psalms wi' the angels o' God, that I declare, my verra heart stood still, for I thocht that she had come back for yin o' the bairns. And, oh! I couldna pairt wi' ony o' them noo. It wad fairly break my heart. And there the twa young things stood at the door, but when they began to sing, I declare I juist slippit awa' doon to the closet and grat on the tap o' a cask o' paraffeen!"

And this is what Janet Sheepshanks heard them sing. It was not perhaps very appropriate, but it was one of the only two hymns of which Toady Lion knew the words; and I think even Mr. Charles Wesley, who wrote it, would not have objected if he had seen the angelic devotion on Prissy's face or the fraudulent cherub innocence shining from that of Sir Toady Lion.

"Now, mind, your eyes on the crack of the door above," whispered Prissy; "and when I count three under my breath – sing out for your very life."

Toady Lion nodded.

"One – two – three!" counted Prissy.

 
"Hark! the herald angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King,
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled."
 

"What is 'weconciled'?" asked Toady Lion, who must always ask something on principle.

"Oh, never mind now," whispered Prissy hastily; "keep your eyes on the top crack of the door and open your mouth wide."

"Don't know no more!" said Toady Lion obstinately.

"Oh yes, you do," said Prissy, almost in tears; "go on. Sing La-La, if you don't, and we'll soon be at the chorus, and you know that anyway!"

Then the voice of Prissy escaped, soaring aloft in the early gloom, and if any human music can, reaching the Seventh Sphere itself, where, amid the harmonies of the universe, the Eternal Ear hearkens for the note of sinful human praise.

The sweet shrill pipe of Toady Lion accompanied her like a heavenly lute of infinite sweetness. It was at this point that Janet made off in the direction of the paraffin barrel.

 
"Joyful all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies:
Universal nature, say,
'Christ the Lord is risen to-day!'"
 

The door opened, and the head of Hugh John appeared, his hair all on end and his pyjama jacket open at the neck. He was hitching up the other division of the suit with one hand.

"'Tain't Christmas, what's the horrid row? Shut it!" growled he sleepily. Prissy made him the impatient sign of silence so well understood of children, and which means that the proceedings are not to be interrupted.

"Your birthday, silly!" she said; "chorus now!" And Hugh John himself, who knew the value of discipline, lined up and opened his mouth in the loud rejoicing refrain: —

 
"Hark! the herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King!"
 

A slight noise behind made them turn round, and there the children beheld with indignation the whole body of the servants grouped together on the landing, most of them with their handkerchiefs to their eyes; while Jane Housemaid who had none, was sobbing undisguisedly with the tears rolling down her cheeks, and vainly endeavouring to express her opinion that "it was just beautiful – they was for all the world like little angels a-praisin' God, and —a-hoo! I can't help it, no more I can't! And their mother never to see them growed up – her bein' in her grave, the blessed lamb!"

"I don't see nuffin to kye for," said Toady Lion unsympathetically, trying to find pockets in Prissy's night-gown; "it was a nice sing-song!"

At this moment Janet Sheepshanks came on the scene. She had been crying more than anybody, but you would never have guessed it. And now, perhaps ashamed of her own emotion, she pretended great scandal and indignation at the unseemly and irregular spectacle, and drove the servants below to their morning tasks, being specially severe with Jane Housemaid, who, for some occult reason, found it as difficult to stop crying as it had been easy to begin – so that, as Hugh John said, "it was as good as a watering-can, and useful too, for it laid the dust on Jane's carpets ready for sweeping, ever so much better than tea-leaves."

CHAPTER XXVII
THE BANTAM CHICKENS

WHEN Hugh John met Cissy Carter the first time after the incident of the stile, it was in the presence of the young lady's father and mother. Cissy smiled and shook hands with the most serene and chilling dignity; but Hugh John blushed, and wore on his countenance an expression of such deep and ingrained guilt and confusion, that, upon catching sight of him, Mr. Davenant Carter called out, in his jolly stand-before-the-fire-with-his-hands-in-his-pockets' manner, "Hillo, boy! what have you been up to – stealing apples, eh? Come! What is it? Out with it!"

Which, when you think of it, was not exactly fitted to make our hero any more self-possessed. Mr. Davenant Carter always considered children as a rather superior kind of puppy dogs, which were specially created to be condescended to and teased, in order to see what they would say and do. They might also be taught tricks – like monkeys and parrots, only not so clever.

"Oh, Davenant," said his wife, "do let the boy alone. Don't you see he is bashful before so many people?"

Now this was the last thing which ordinarily could be laid with justice to the charge of our hero; yet now he only mumbled and avoided everybody's eye, particularly Cissy's. But apparently that young lady had forgotten all about the ivy bush at the back of the stable, for she said quite loud out, so that all the room could hear her, "What a long time it is since we saw you at Oaklands, Hugh John – isn't it?" This sally added still more to Hugh John's confusion, and he could only fall back upon his favourite axiom (which he was to prove the truth of every day of his life as he grew older), that "girls are funny things."

Presently Cissy said, "Have you seen Sammy, mother; I wonder if he has fallen into the mill-dam. He went over there more than an hour ago to sail his new boat." Mild Mrs. Carter started up so violently that she upset all her sewing cotton and spools on the floor, to the delight of her wicked little pug, which instantly began pulling them about, shaking them, growling at them, and pretending they were rats that had been given him to worry.

"Oh, do you think so? – Run Cissy, run Hugh, and find him!" Whereat Cissy and Hugh John removed themselves. As soon as they were outside our hero found his tongue.

"How could you tell such a whopper? Of course he would not fall into the water like a baby!"

"Goos-ee gander," said Cissy briskly; "of course not! I knew that very well. But if I had not said something we should have had to stay there moping among all those Grown-Ups, and doing nothing but talking proper for hours and hours."

"But I thought you liked it, Cissy," said Hugh John, who did not know everything.

"Like it!" echoed Cissy; "I've got to do it. And if they dreamed I didn't like it, they'd think I hadn't proper manners, and make me stop just twice as long. Mother wants me to acquire a good society something-or-other, so that's why I've to stop and make tea, and pretend to like to talk to Mr. Burnham."

"Oh – him," said Hugh John; "he isn't half bad. And he's a ripping good wicket-keep!"

"I dare say," retorted Cissy, "that's all very well for you. He talks to you about cricket and W. G.'s scores – I've heard him. But he speaks to me in that peeky far-away voice from the back of his throat, like he does in the service when he comes to the bit about 'young children' – and what do you think the Creature says?"

"I dunno," said Hugh John, with a world-weary air, as if the eccentricities of clergymen in silk waistcoats were among the things that no fellow could possibly find out.

"Well, he said that he hoped the time would soon come when a young lady of so much decision of character (that's me!) would be able to assist him in his district visiting."

"What's 'decision of character' when he's at home?" asked Hugh John flippantly.

"Oh, nothing – only one of the things parsons say. It doesn't mean anything – not in particular!" replied the widely informed Cissy. "But did you ever hear such rot?"

And for the first time her eyes met his with a quaintly questioning look, which somehow carried in it a reminiscence of the stile and the ivy bush. Cissy's eyes were never quite (Hugh John has admitted as much to me in a moment of confidence) – never quite the same after the incident of the orchard. On this occasion Hugh John instantly averted his own, and looked stolidly at the ground.

"Perhaps Mr. Burnham has heard that you went with medicine and stuff to the gipsy camp," he said after a pause, trying to find an explanation of the apparently indefensible folly of his cricketing hero. Cissy had not thought of this before.

"Well, perhaps he had," she said, "but that was quite different."

"How different?" queried Hugh John.

"Well, that was only dogs and Billy Blythe," said Cissy, somewhat shamefacedly; "that doesn't count, and besides I like it. Doing good has got to be something you don't like – teaching little brats their duty to their godfathers and godmothers, or distributing tracts which only make people stamp and swear and carry on."

"Isn't there something somewhere about helping the fatherless and the widow?" faltered Hugh John. He hated "talking good," but somehow he felt that Cissy was doing herself less than justice.

"Well, I don't suppose that the fox-terrier's pa does much for him," she said gaily; "but come along and I'll 'interjuce' you to your ally Billy Blythe."

So they walked along towards the camp in silence. It was a still, Sunday-like evening, and the bell of Edam town steeple was tolling for the six o'clock stay of work, as it had done every night at the same hour for over five hundred years. The reek of the burgesses' supper-fires was going up in a hundred pillar-like "pews" of tall blue smoke. Homeward bound humble bees bumbled and blundered along, drunk and drowsy with the heady nectar they had taken on board – strayed revellers from the summer-day's Feast of Flowers. Delicate little blue butterflies rose flurriedly from the short grass, flirted with each other a while, and then mounted into a yet bluer sky in airy wheels and irresponsible balancings.

"This is my birthday!" suddenly burst out Hugh John.

Cissy stopped short and caught her breath.

"Oh no – it can't be;" she said, "I thought it was next week, and they aren't nearly ready."

Whereat Cissy Cartar began most incontinently and unexpectedly to cry. Hugh John had never seen her do this before, though he was familiar enough with Prissy's more easy tears.

"Now don't you, Ciss," he said; "I don't want anything – presents and things, I mean. Just let's be jolly."

"Hu-uh-uh!" sobbed Cissy; "and Janet Sheepshanks told me it was next week. I'm sure she did; and I set them so nicely to be ready in time – more than two months ago, and now they aren't ready after all."

"What aren't ready?" said Hugh John.

"The bantam chickens," sobbed Cissy; "and they are lovely as lovely. And peck – you should just see them peck."

"I'd just as soon have them next week, or the next after that – rather indeed. Shut up now, Ciss. Stop crying, I tell you. Do you hear?" He was instinctively adopting that gruff masculine sternness which men consider to be on the whole the most generally effective method of dealing with the incomprehensible tears of their women-kind. "I don't care if you cry pints, but I'll hit you if you won't stop! So there!"

Cissy stopped like magic, and assumed a distant and haughty expression with her nose in the air, the surprising dignity of which was marred only by the recurring spasmodic sniff necessary to keep back the moisture which was still inclined to leak from the corners of her eyes.

"I would indeed," said Hugh John, like all good men quickly remorseful after severity had achieved its end. "I'd ever so much rather have the nicest presents a week after; for on a regular birthday you get so many things. But by next week, when you've got tired of them all, and don't have anything new – that's the proper time to get a present."

"Oh, you are nice," said Cissy impulsively, coming over to Hugh John and clasping his arm with both her hands. He did not encourage this, for he did not know where it might end, and the open moor was not by any means the ivy-grown corner of the stable. Cissy went on.

"Yes, you are the nicest thing. Only don't tell any body – "

"I won't!" said Hugh John, with deepest conviction.

"And I'll give you the mother too," continued Cissy; "she is a perfect darling, and won a prize at the last Edam show. It was only a second, but everybody said that she ought by rights to have had the first. Yes, and she would have got it too – only that the other old hen was a cousin of the judge's. That wasn't fair, was it?"

"Certainly not!" said Hugh John, with instant emphasis.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE GIPSY CAMP

AT this point a peculiar fragrance was borne to them upon the light wind, the far-blowing smell of a wood-fire, together with the odour of boiling and fragrant stew – a compound and delicious wild-wood scent, which almost created the taste by which it was to be enjoyed, as they say all good literature must. There was also another smell, less idyllic but equally characteristic – the odour of drying paint. All these came from the camp of the gipsies set up on the corner of the common lands of Windy Standard.

The gipsies' wood was a barren acre of tall, ill-nurtured Scotch firs, with nothing to break their sturdy monotony of trunk right up to the spreading crown of twisted red branches and dark green spines. Beneath, the earth was covered with a carpet of dry and brown pine-needles, several inches thick, soft and silent under the feet as velvet pile. Ditches wet and dry closed in the place of sanctuary for the wandering tribes of Egypt on all sides, save only towards the high road, where a joggly, much-rutted cart track led deviously in between high banks, through which the protruding roots of the Scotch firs, knotted and scarred, were seen twisting and grappling each other like a nest of snakes. Suddenly, between the ridges of pine-trees, the pair came in sight of the camp.

"I declare," cried Hugh John, "they are painting the waggons. I wish they would let me help. I can slick it on like a daisy. Now I'm telling you. Andrew Penman at the coach-works in Church Street showed me how. He says I can 'line' as well as any workman in the place. I'm going to be a coach-painter. They get bully wages, I tell you."

"I thought you were going to be a soldier," commented Cissy, with the cool and inviting criticism of the model domestic lady, who is always on hand with a bucket of cold water for the enthusiasms of her men-folk.

Hugh John remembered, saw his mistake, and shifted his ground all in the twinkling of an eye; for of course a man of spirit ought never to own himself in the wrong – at least to a girl. It is a bad precedent, occasionally even fatal.

"Oh yes, of course I am going to be a soldier," he said with the hesitation of one who stops to think what he is going to say; "but I'm to be a coach-painter in my odd time and on holidays. Besides, officers get so little pay now-a-days, it's shameful – I heard my father say. So one must do something."

"Oh, here's the terrier – pretty thing, I declare he quite knows me – see, Hugh John," cried Cissy, kneeling with delight in her eye, and taking hold of the little dog, which came bounding forward to meet her – stopping midway, however, to paw at its neck, to which the Chianti wicker-work still clung tightly round the edge of the bandage.

Billy Blythe came towards them, touching his cap as he did so in a half-military manner; for had he not a brother in the county militia, who was the best fighter (with his fists) in the regiment, the pest of his colonel, but in private the particular pet of all the other officers, who were always ready to put their money on Gipsy Blythe to any amount.

"Yes, miss," he said; "I done it. He's better a'ready, and as lively as a green grass-chirper. Never seed the like o' that ointment. 'Tis worth its weight in gold when ye have dogs."

A tall girl came up at this moment, dusky and lithe, her face and neck tanned to a fine healthy brown almost as dark as saddle-leather, but with a rolling black eye so full and piercing that even her complexion seemed light by comparison. She carried a back load of tinware of all sorts, and by her wearied air appeared to be returning to the encampment after a day's tramp.

"Ah, young lady and gentleman, sure I can see by your eyes that you are going to buy something from a poor girl – ribbons for the hair, or for the house some nice collanders, saucepans, fish-pans, stew-pans, patty-pans, jelly-pans – "

"Go 'way, Lepronia Lovell," growled Billy; "don't you see that this is the young lady that cured my dog?"

"And who may the young gentleman be?" said the girl. "Certain I am I've seen him before somewhere at the back o' beyant."

"Belike aye, Lepronia, tha art a clever wench, and hast got eyes in the back o' thee yead," said Billy, in a tone of irony. "Do you not know the son of Master Smith o' t' Windy Standard – him as lets us bide on his land, when all the neighbours were on for nothing else but turning us off with never a rest for the soles of our feet?"

"And what is his name?" said the girl.

"Why, the same as his father of course, lass – what else?" cried Billy; "young Master Smith as ever was. Did you think it was Blythe?"

"'Faith then, God forbid!" said Lepronia, "ye have lashin's of that name in them parts already. Sure it is lonesome for a poor orphan like me among so many Blythes; and good-looking young chaps some o' them too, and never a wan o' ye man enough to ask me to change my name, and go to church and be thransmogrified into a Blythe like the rest of yez!"

Some of the gipsies standing round laughed at the boldness of the girl, and Billy reddened. "I'm not by way of takin' up with no Paddy," he said, and turned on his heel.

"Paddy is ut," cried the girl indignantly after him, "'faith now, and it wad be tellin' ye if ye could get a daycent single woman only half as good lookin' as me, to take as much notice av the likes o' ye as to kick ye out of her road!"

She turned away, calling over her shoulder to Cissy, "Can I tell your fortune, pretty lady?"

Quick as a flash, Cissy's answer came back.

"No, but I can tell yours!"

The girl stopped, surprised that a maid of the Gentiles should tell fortunes without glass balls, cards, or even looking at the lines of the hand.

"Tell it then," she said defiantly.

"You will live to marry Billy!" she said.

Then Lepronia Lovell laughed a short laugh, and said, "Never while there's a daycent scarecrow in the world will I set up a tent-stick along with the likes of Billy Blythe!"

But all the same she walked away very thoughtful, her basketful of tinware clattering at her back.

After the fox-terrier had been examined, commented upon, and duly dressed, Billy Blythe walked with them part of the way homeward, and Hugh John opened out to him his troubles. He told him of the feud against the town boys, and related all the manifold misdeeds of the Smoutchies. All the while Billy said nothing, but the twitching of his hands and a peculiarly covert look about his dusky face told that he was listening intently. Scarcely had Hugh John come to the end of his tale when, with the blood mounting darkly to his cheeks, Billy turned about to see if he were observed. There was no one near.

"We are the lads to help ye to turn out Nipper Donnan and all his crew," he said. "Him and his would soon make short work of us gipsies if they had the rights of castle and common. Why, Nipper's father is what they call a bailie of their burgh court, and he fined my father for leaving his horses out on the roadside, while he went for a doctor when my mother was took ill a year past last November."

Hugh John had found his ally.

"There's a round dozen and more of us lads," continued Billy, "that 'ud make small potatoes and mince meat of every one of them, if they was all Nipper Donnans – which they ain't, not by a long sight. I know them. A fig for them and their flag! We'll take their castle, and we'll take it too in a way they won't forget till their dying day."

The gipsy lad was so earnest that Hugh John, though as much as ever bent upon conquering the enemy, began to be a little alarmed.

"Of course it's part pretending," he said, "for my father could put them out if we were to tell on them. But then we won't tell, and we want just to drive them out ourselves, and thrash them for stealing our pet lamb as well!"

"Right!" said Billy, "don't be afraid; we won't do more than just give them a blazing good hiding. Tell 'ee what, they'll be main sore from top to toe before we get through with 'em!"