True Tilda by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (page 3)

“You never told ‘im?”

“I didn’ like to. To start with ‘e was always my fav’rite brother, an’ I couldn’ bear his startin’ in low sperits an’ South Africa such a distance off; beside which, I told mysel’, the girl must surely know ‘er own mind. So now you know,” concluded Sam, “what I means by the nex’ verse–“

“Stratford-on-Avon, Stratford-on-Avon– My true love she is false;
I ‘d rather not go to Stratford-on-Avon If I could go anywheres else.”

“But you promised to keep an eye on her.”

“‘Enery ‘ears from me regilar,” said Sam evasively.

“If you don’t pay ‘er no visits,” Tilda insisted, “the more you write the more you must be tellin’ lies; an’ that’s not fair to ‘Enery.”

Sam considered this for a while, and ended by drawing a folded scrap of paper from his trouser-pocket.

“I don’t tell no more than can’t be ‘elped, missie. You just list’n to this.”

He read:–

Dear Brother ‘Enery,–This comes opin’ to find you well as it leaves me at Stratford. M. sends her love, an’ you will be pleased to ‘ear she grows beautifuller every day an’ in character likewise. It do seem to me this world is a better place for containin’ of her; an’ a man ought to be ‘appy, dear ‘Enery, when you can call ‘er mine–“

“That don’t seem right to me some’ow,” commented Tilda.

Sam scratched his head.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“‘Pears to me it ought to be ‘yours’–‘When you can call her yours.'”

“I don’t like that neither, not altogether. S’pose we scratch it out an’ say, ‘A man ought to be ‘appy when ‘e can call ‘er ‘isn’? That what schoolmaster calls the third person.”

“There didn’ ought to be no third person about it,” said Tilda severely; “on’y ‘Enery an’ ‘er. Well, go on.”

“I can’t. That’s so far as I’ve written up to the present. It’s a rough copy, you understand; an’ at Stratford I allow to write it out fair an’ post it.”

Tilda took a turn at considering.

“The further I go on this v’yage,” she announced,–“w’ich, per’aps, ‘twould be truthfuller to say the longer it takes–the more I seems to get mixed up in other folks’ business. But you’ve done me a good turn, Sam Bossom; an’ you’ve been open with me; an’ I reckon I got to keep you straight in this ‘ere. There! put up yer verses while I sit an’ think it out.”

“You don’t like ’em?”

Sam was evidently dashed.

“If on’y I ‘ad Bill ‘ere–“

“Ha, yes: _’im!_ ‘_E_’d put a boiler inside ’em, no doubt; an’ a donkey-engin’, an’–“

“What’yer talkin’ about? . . . Oh, yer verses! Bless the man, I wasn’ thinkin’ of yer verses. I was wantin’ Bill ‘ere, to advise somethin’ practical. Lor’ sake! Look at Arthur Miles there, the way ‘e’s leanin’ overboard! The child’ll drown’ isself, nex’ news!” She rose up and ran to prevent the disaster. “‘Pears to me there’s a deal o’ motherin’ to be done aboard this boat. Trouble aft, an’ trouble forrard–“

She was hurrying aft when Mr. Mortimer intercepted her amidships. He held a book in one hand, and two slips of paper in the other.

“Child,” he asked, “could you learn a part?–a very small part?”

“‘Course I could,” answered Tilda promptly; “but I ain’t goin’ to play it, an’ don’t yer make any mistake. ‘Ere, let me get to Arthur Miles before ‘e tumbles overboard.”

She darted aft and dragged the boy back by his collar.

“What d’yer mean by it, givin’ folks a shock like that?” she demanded.

“I was looking at the pictures,” he explained, and showed her.

The _Success to Commerce_ bore on her stern panels two gaily painted landscapes, the one of Warwick Castle, the other of ruined Kenilworth. Tilda leaned over the side and saw them mirrored in the still water.

“And then,” the boy pursued, “down below the pictures I saw a great ship lying in the seaweed with guns and drowned men on the deck and the fishes swimming over them. Deep in the ship a bell was tolling–“

“Nonsense!” Tilda interrupted, and catching up a pole, thrust it down overside. “Four feet at the most,” she reported, as the pole found bottom. “You must be sickenin’ for somethin’. Put out your tongue.”

“A child of imagination,” observed Mr. Mortimer, who had followed her. “Full fathom five thy father lies–“

“‘Ush!” cried Tilda.

“–Of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes–“

The boy sat and looked up at the speaker, staring, shivering a little.

“You know? You know too?” he stammered.

“He knows nothin’ about it,” insisted Tilda. “Please go away, Mr. Mortimer?”

“A young Shakespearian? This is indeed delightful! You shall have a part, sir. Your delivery will be immature, doubtless; but with some tuition from me–“

“If you try it on, I’ll tell ‘Ucks,” the girl threatened, by this time desperate. “You’re like all the actors–leastways you’re like all that ever I met; an’, take it ‘ow you will, I got to say it. Once get started on yer own lay, an’ everything elst goes out o’ yer ‘eads. You don’t mean to ‘urt, but selfish you are and ‘eedless, an’ somebody ‘as al’ays the world’s trouble clearin’ up the mess. ‘Ere, ‘and me the part you was tellin’ about; an’ I’ll learn it an’ say it, though not within a ‘undred miles of Glasson–which,” she added, “I’ll be an old woman before that, at the rate we’re goin’. But you don’t drag Arthur Miles into it, an’ I give you fair warnin’. For, to start with, ‘e’s ‘idin’, an’ ’tis only to keep ‘im ‘id that I got ‘Ucks to let yer loose. An’ nex’ ‘e’s a gentleman, and why you should want to mix ‘im up with yer Shakespeares I can’t think.”

It is doubtful if Mr. Mortimer heard the conclusion of her outburst. At the mention of Mr. Hucks he pressed a palm dramatically to his forehead; and now, withdrawing it, he handed her the two slips of paper with great politeness.

“True, I had forgotten,” he murmured. “Take your time, child–you will take your time, I beg.”

He waved his hand, and withdrew to rejoin his wife on the cabin-top. Tilda studied the slips of paper, while Arthur Miles edged away again towards the gunwale for another look into the magic water.

“Stop that!” she commanded, glancing up and catching him in the act. “Stop that, and read these for me: I can’t manage handwriting.”

The boy took the first slip obediently and read aloud–

“_Madam, a horseman comes riding across the hill. The sun flashes full on his arms. By my halidame ’tis the Knight Hospitaller!_”

“That seems pretty fair rot,” criticised Tilda. “Let’s ‘ave the other.”

“_ Madam, he has reined up his steed. He stands without._”

Here Arthur Miles paused and drew breath.

“Without what?”

“It doesn’t say. _He stands without: he waves a hand. Shall I go ask his errand? _”

“Is that all? . . . And Mortimer reckons I’ll take from ‘ere to Stratford learnin’ that little lot! Why, I can do it in arf-a-minute, an’ on my ‘ead. You just listen. _Madam, a ‘orseman_–No, wait a moment. _Madam, a Norseman_–” Tilda hesitated and came to a halt. “Would you mind sayin’ it over again, Arthur Miles?” she asked politely.

“_Madam, a horseman comes riding_–“

“That’ll do. _Madam, a–H–h–horseman_–Is that better?”

“You needn’t strain at it so,” said the boy. “Why, you’re quite red in the face!”

“Oh, yes, I need,” said Tilda; “first-along, any’ow.” She fell silent for a space. “That Mortimer,” she conceded, “isn’ quite the ass that ‘e looks. This ‘as got to take time, after all.” She paused a moment in thought, and then broke out, “Oh, Arthur Miles, the trouble you’re layin’ on me–First, to be a mother–an’ that’s not ‘ard. But, on top o’ that, lady!”

“Why should you be a lady?” he asked.

“Why?” Tilda echoed almost bitterly. “Oh, you needn’ think I’ll want to marry yer when all’s done. Why? Oh, merely to ‘elp you, bein’ the sort you are. All you’ve got to do, bein’ the sort you are, is to sit quiet an’ teach me. But I got to be a lady, if it costs me my shift.”

CHAPTER XII.

PURSUED.

At ten o’clock Sam harnessed up again, and shortly before noon our travellers left the waterway by which they had travelled hitherto, and passed out to the right through a cut, less than a quarter of a mile long, where a rising lock took them into the Stratford-on-Avon Canal.

Said Sam as he worked the lock, the two children standing beside and watching–

“Now see here, when you meet your clever friend Bill, you put him two questions from me. First, why, when the boat’s through, am I goin’ to draw the water off an’ leave the lock empty?”

Before Tilda could answer, Arthur Miles exclaimed–

“I know! It’s because we ‘re going uphill, and at the other locks, when we were going downhill, the water emptied itself.”

“Right, so far as you go,” nodded Sam. “But why should a lock be left empty?”

The boy thought for a moment.

“Because you don’t want the water to waste, and top gates hold it better than lower ones.”

“Why do the top gates hold it better?”

“Because they shut _with_ the water, and the water holds them fast; and because they are smaller than the bottom gates, and don’t leak so much.”

“That’s very cleverly noticed,” said Sam. “Now you keep your eyes alive while we work this one, an’ tell me what you see.”

They watched the operation carefully.

“Well?” he asked as, having passed the _Success to Commerce_ through, he went back to open the lower paddles–or slats, as he called them.

“I saw nothing,” the boy confessed disappointedly, “except that you seemed to use more water than at the others.”

“Well, and that’s just it. But why?”

“It has something to do, of course, with going up-hill instead of down . . . And–and I’ve got the reason somewhere inside my head, but I can’t catch hold of it.”

“I’ll put it another way. This boat’s mod’rate well laden, an’ she takes more water lockin’ up than if she was empty; but if she was empty, she’d take more water lockin’ down. That’s a fac’; an’ if you can give me a reason for it you’ll be doin’ me a kindness. For I never could find one, an’ I’ve lain awake at nights puzzlin’ it over.”

“I bet Bill would know,” said Tilda.

Sam eyed her.

“I’d give somethin'” he said, “to be sure this Bill, as you make such a gawd of, is a real person–or whether, bein’ born different to the rest of yer sex, you’ve ‘ad to invent ‘im.”

Many locks encumber the descending levels of the Stratford-on-Avon Canal, and they kept Sam busy. In the intervals the boat glided deeper and deeper into a green pastoral country, parcelled out with hedgerows and lines of elms, behind which here and there lay a village half hidden–a grey tower and a few red-tiled roofs visible between the trees. Cattle dotted the near pastures, till away behind the trees–for summer had passed into late September–the children heard now and again the guns of partridge shooters cracking from fields of stubble. But no human folk frequented the banks of the canal, which wound its way past scented meadows edged with willow-herb, late meadow-sweet, yellow tansy and purple loosestrife, this last showing a blood-red stalk as its bloom died away. Out beyond, green arrowheads floated on the water; the Success to Commerce ploughed through beds of them, and they rose from under her keel and spread themselves again in her wake. Very little traffic passed over these waters. In all the way to Preston Bagot our travellers met but three boats. One, at Lowsonford Lock, had a pair of donkeys (“animals” Sam called them) to haul it; the other two, they met, coming up light by Fiwood Green. “Hold in!” “Hold out!” called the steersmen as the boats met. Sam held wide, and by shouts instructed Mr. Mortimer how to cross the towropes; and Mr. Mortimer put on an extremely knowledgeable air, but obeyed him with so signal a clumsiness that the bargees desired to know where the _Success to Commerce_ had shipped her new mate.

The question, though put with good humour, appeared to disturb Sam, who for the rest of the way steered in silence. There are three locks at Preston Bagot, and at the first Mr. Mortimer took occasion to apologise for his performance, adding that practice made perfect.

“I wonder, now,” said Sam delicately, “if you could practise leavin’ off that fur collar? A little unhandiness’ll pass off, an’ no account taken; but with a furred overcoat ’tis different, an’ I ought to a-mentioned it before. We don’t want the children tracked, do we? An’ unfort’nitly you’re not one to pass in a crowd.”

“You pay me a compliment,” Mr. Mortimer answered. “Speaking, however, as man to man, let me say that I would gladly waive whatever show my overcoat may contribute to the–er–total effect to which you refer. But”–here he unbuttoned the front of his garment–“I leave it to you to judge if, without it, I shall attract less attention. _Laudatur_, my dear Smiles, _et alget. Paupertas, dura paupertas_–I might, perhaps, satisfy the curious gazer by producing the–er–pawntickets for the missing articles. But it would hardly–eh, I put it to you?”

“No, it wouldn’,” decided Sam. “But it’s unfort’nit all the same, an’ in more ways’n one. You see, there’s a nasty ‘abit folks ‘ave in these parts. Anywheres between Warwick an’ Birming’am a native can’t ‘ardly pass a canal-boat without wantin’ to arsk, ”Oo stole the rabbit-skin?’ I don’t know why they arsk it; but when it ‘appens, you’ve got to fight the man–or elst _I_ must.”

“I would suggest that, you being the younger man–“

“Well, I don’t mind,” said Sam. “On’y the p’int is I don’t scarcely never fight without attractin’ notice. The last time ’twas five shillin’ an’ costs or ten days. An’ there’s the children to be considered.”

During this debate Tilda and Arthur Miles had wandered ashore with ‘Dolph, and the dog, by habit inquisitive, had headed at once for a wooden storehouse that stood a little way back from the waterside– a large building of two storeys, with a beam and pulley projecting from the upper one, and heavy folding-doors below. One of these doors stood open, and ‘Dolph, dashing within, at once set up a frantic barking.

“Hullo!” Tilda stepped quickly in front of the boy to cover him. “There’s somebody inside.”

The barking continued for almost half a minute, and then Godolphus emerged, capering absurdly on his hind legs and revolving like a dervish, flung up his head, yapped thrice in a kind of ecstasy, and again plunged into the store.

“That’s funny, too,” mused Tilda. “I never knew ‘im be’ave like that ‘cept when he met with a friend. Arthur Miles, you stay where you are–” She tiptoed forward and peered within. “Lord sake, come an’ look ‘ere!” she called after a moment.

The boy followed, and stared past her shoulder into the gloom. There, in the centre of the earthen floor, wrapped around with straw bands, stood a wooden horse.

It was painted grey, with beautiful dapples, and nostrils of fierce scarlet. It had a tail of real horse-hair and a golden mane, and on its near shoulder a blue scroll with its name _Kitchener_ thereon in letters of gold. Its legs were extended at a gallop.

“Gavel’s!” said Tilda. “Gavel’s, at ten to one an’ no takers! . . . But why? ‘Ow?”

She turned on ‘Dolph, scolding, commanding him to be quiet; and ‘Dolph subsided on his haunches and watched her, his stump tail jerking to and fro beneath him like an unweighted pendulum. There was a label attached to the straw bands. She turned it over and read: _James Gavel, Proprietor, Imperial Steam Roundabouts, Henley-in-Arden. Deliver Immediately_ . . . “An’ me thinkin’ Bill ‘ad gone north to Wolver’ampton!” she breathed.

Before the boy could ask her meaning they heard the rumble of wheels outside; and Tilda, catching him by the arm, hurried him back to the doors just as a two-horse wagon rolled down to the wharf, in charge of an elderly driver–a sour-visaged man in a smock-frock, with a weather-stained top hat on the back of his head, and in his hand a whip adorned with rings of polished brass.

He pulled up, eyed the two children, and demanded to know what they meant by trespassing in the store.

“We were admirin’ the ‘orse,” answered Tilda.

“An’ likewise truantin’ from school,” the wagoner suggested. “But that’s the way of it in England nowadays; the likes o’ me payin’ rates to eddicate the likes o’ you. An’ that’s your Conservative Government . . . Eddication!” he went on after a pause. “What’s Eddication? Did either o’ you ever ‘ear tell of Joseph Arch?”

“Can’t say we ‘ave.”

“He was born no farther away than Barford–Barford-on-Avon. But I s’pose your schoolmaster’s too busy teachin’ you the pianner.”

Tilda digested the somewhat close reasoning for a moment, and answered–

“It’s fair sickenin’, the amount o’ time spent on the pianner. Between you an’ me, that’s partly why we cut an’ run. You mustn’ think we ‘ate school–if on’y they’d teach us what’s useful. ‘Oo’s Joseph Arch?”

“He was born at Barford,” said the wagoner; “an’ at Barford he lives.”

“‘E must be a remarkable man,” said Tilda, “an’ I’m sorry I don’t know more of ‘im. But I know Gavel.”

“Gavel?”

“‘Im as the ‘orse belongs to; an’ Bill. Gavel’s a remarkable man too in ‘is way; though not a patch on Bill. Bill tells me Gavel can get drunk twice any day; separate drunk, that is.”

“Liberal or Conservative?”

“Well,” hesitated Tilda, playing for safety, “I dunno as he ‘d tell, under a pint; but mos’ likely it depends on the time o’ day.”

“I arsked,” said the wagoner, “because he’s hired by the Primrose Feet; an’ if he’s the kind o’ man to sell ‘is princerples, I don’t so much mind ‘ow bad the news I breaks to him.”

“What news?”

The man searched in his pocket, and drew forth a greasy post card.

“He sent word to me there was six painted ‘osses comin’ by canal from Burning’am, to be delivered at the Wharf this mornin’; an’ would I fetch ’em along to the Feet Ground, Henley-in-Arden, without delay?”

“Henley-in-Arden!” exclaimed a voice behind the children; whereat Tilda turned about with a start. It was the voice of Mr. Mortimer, who had strolled across from the lock bank, and stood conning the wagon and team. “Henley-in-Arden? O Helicon! If you’ll excuse the remark, sir. OParnassus!”

“Maybe I might,” said the wagoner guardedly, “if I understood its bearin’s.”

“Name redolent of Shakespeare! Of Rosalind and Touchstone, Jaques and Amiens, sheepcrooks and venison feasts, and ballads pinned to oaks! What shall he have who killed the deer, Mr.–?”

“‘Olly,” said the wagoner.

“I beg your pardon?”

“‘Olly–James ‘Olly and Son, Carters an’ ‘Auliers.”

“Is it possible? . . . better and better! Sing heigho! the Holly, this life is most jolly. I trust you find it so, Mr. Holly?”

“If you want to know,” Mr. Holly answered sourly, “I don’t.”

“You pain and astonish me, Mr. Holly. The penalty of Adam, the season’s difference”–Mr. Mortimer turned up his furred collar–“surely, sir, you will allow no worse to afflict you? You, a dweller on the confines of Henley-in-Arden, within measurable distance, as I gathered?”

“Mile an’ a ‘arf.”

“No more? O Phoebus and the Nine!”

“There _was_,” said Mr. Holly, “to ‘a been six. An’ by consequence here I be with a pair of ‘osses an’ the big wagon. Best go home-along, I reckon, an’ fetch out the cart,” he grumbled, with a jerk of his thumb indicating a red-tiled building on the hillside, half a mile away.

“Not so.” Mr. Mortimer tapped his brow. “An idea occurs to me–if you will spare me a moment to consult with my–er–partner. A Primrose Fete, you said? I am no politician, Mr. Holly, but I understand the Primrose League exists–primarily–or ultimately–to save our world-wide empire. And how shall an empire stand without its Shakespeare? Our tent and appliances will just load your wagon. As the younger Dumas observed, ‘Give me two boards, two trestles, three actors’–but the great Aeschylus did with two–‘two actors,’ let us say–‘and a passion’–provided your terms are not prohibitive . . . Hi, Smiles! Approach, Smiles, and be introduced to Thespis. His charge is three shillings. At the price of three shillings behold, Smiles, the golden age returned! Comedy carted home through leafy ways shall trill her woodnotes–her native woodnotes wild–in Henley-in-Arden!”

The wagon had been packed and had departed, Mrs. Mortimer perched high on a pile of tent cloths, and Mr. Mortimer waving farewells from the tail-board.

The two children, left with instructions to keep near the boat and in hiding, had made a nest for themselves among the stalks of loosestrife, and sat watching the canal for sign of a moorhen or a water-rat. The afternoon was bright and very still, with a dazzle on the water and a faint touch of autumn in the air–the afterglow of summer soon to pass into grey chills and gusts of rain. For many minutes neither had spoken.

“Look!” said Tilda, pointing to a distant ripple drawn straight across the surface. “There goes a rat, and I’ve won!”

The boy said–

“A boat takes up room in the water, doesn’t it?”

“0′ course it does. But what’s that got to do with rats?”

“Nothing. I was thinking of Sam’s puzzle, and I’ve guessed it. A boat going downwards through a lock would want a lock full, all but the water it pushes out from the room it takes up. Wouldn’t it?”

“I s’pose so,” said Tilda doubtfully.

“But a boat going up will want a lock full, and that water too. And that’s why an empty boat going downhill takes more water than a loaded one, and less going up.”

To Tilda the puzzle remained a puzzle. “It _sounds_ all right,” she allowed. “But what makes you so clever about boats?”

“I’ve _got_ to know about them. Else how shall we ever find the Island?”

She thought for half a minute.

“You’re sure about that Island?” she asked, a trifle anxiously.

Arthur Miles turned to her with a confident smile.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Well, we’ll arsk about it when we get to Stratford-on-Avon.”

She was about to say more, but checked herself at sight of a barge coming down the canal–slowly, and as yet so far away that the tramp of the tow-horse’s hoofs on the path was scarcely audible. She laid a hand on ‘Dolph’s collar and pressed him down in the long grass, commanding him to be quiet, whilst she and the boy wriggled away towards an alder bush that stood a furlong back from the bank.

Stretched at length behind the bush, she had, between the fork of its stem, a clear view of the approaching boat. Its well coverings were loose, and by the upper lock gate the steersman laid it close along shore and put out a gang-plank. His mate, after fitting a nosebag on the horse, came at a call to assist him, and together they lifted out a painted wooden steed wrapped in straw, and carried it to the store.

Having deposited it there, they returned and unloaded another. Five horses they disembarked and housed thus; and then, like men relieved of a job, spat on their hands and turned to work their boat down through the locks. For twenty minutes the children lay prone and watched them, Tilda still keeping a hand on the scruff of ‘Dolph’s neck. Then, as the boat, having gained a clear reach of water, faded down in the gathering dusk, she arose and stretched herself.

“For anyone but Bill I wouldn’ risk it,” she said. “But maybe his credit depends on gettin’ them ‘osses delivered to-night.”

She took Arthur Miles by the hand, found the road, and dragged him uphill at a trot towards the group of red brick buildings that showed between the trees.

The buildings consisted of a cottage and a long stable or coach-house contiguous. This presented a blank white-washed wall to the road, but a Gloire de Dijon rose spread itself over the cottage front, almost smothering a board with the inscription: _S. Holly and Son, Carters and Hauliers_.

Tilda knocked, and her knock was answered by a sour-visaged woman.

“Well, an’ what can I do for you?” asked the woman, staring down from her doorstep on the children.

“If you please, ma’am, is Mr. ‘Olly at ‘ome?”

“No, he ain’t.”

“I knew it,” said Tilda tranquilly. “But by all accounts ‘e’s got a son.”

“Eh?”

The woman still stared, divided between surprise and mistrust.

“You’re mistakin’,” Tilda pursued. “I ain’t come with any scandal about the fam’ly. A grown-up son, I mean–with a ‘orse an’ cart. Because, if so, there’s five gallopin’ ‘orses down at the wharf waitin’ to be taken over to Henley-in-Arden.”

“Oh?” said the woman. “My ‘usband left word Gustavus was to fetch ’em along if they arrived. But who sent you with the message?”

“I’ve a friend in Gavel’s business,” Tilda answered with dignity. “‘E’s what you might call Gavel’s right ‘and man–an’ ‘e’s ‘andy with ‘is right, too, when ‘e’s put out. If ‘e should ‘ear–I’m advisin’ for yer _good_, mind–if ‘e should ‘ear as five ‘orses was ‘ung up on the wharf ‘ere through S. ‘Olly an’ Son’s neglect, you may look out for ructions. An’ that’s all I promise.”

She turned back towards the wharf, and even as Arthur Miles turned to follow they could hear the woman calling loudly, summoning her son from his tea in the kitchen.

“I reckon,” commented Tilda, “I put the fear o’ Bill into that woman. You may ‘a noticed I didn’ like her looks.”

She led the way back to the wharf in some elation. Twilight was gathering there and over the canal. She had rounded the corner of the store, when, happening to glance towards the _Success to Commerce_, moored under the bank a bare twenty yards away, she halted, and with a gasp shrank close into the shadow.

“Collar ‘Dolph! Grip old on ‘im for the Lord’s sake!” she whispered, and clutched Arthur Miles by the arm.

On the bank beside the boat stood a man.

“But what’s the matter?” the boy demanded.

“‘Ush! Oh, ‘ush an’ lie close! It’s Glasson!”

CHAPTER XIII.

ADVENTURE OF THE FURRED COLLAR.

“‘_Do you know me, my lord?’
‘Excellent well; you are a fishmonger._'”–HAMLET.

He stood on the edge of the wharf–a black figure in an Inverness cape– with his back towards the angle of the store where the children hid. There was no mistaking him. For two nights he had haunted Tilda’s dreams; and she could have picked him out, even in the twilight, from among a thousand.

She gave another gasp, and with that her presence of mind returned. He had not seen them; he was watching the barge. The angle of the store would still hide them if they tip-toed to the wharf gate. But they must be noiseless as mice; they must reach the road, and then–

She caught up ‘Dolph by the scruff of his neck, tucked him under her arm, and whispered to Arthur Miles to steal after her. But before she had taken three paces another fright brought her heart into her mouth.

Footsteps were coming down the road. They could not belong to the wagoner’s son. He would be bringing his horse and cart. The footsteps were light, too–light and hurried, and not to be associated with hobnailed boots.

Almost desperate at this cutting off of retreat, Tilda pulled Arthur Miles towards a wooden stairway, unrailed, painted over with Stockholm tar, built against the outside of the store, and leading to its upper chamber.

“Up! and quick!” she commanded, pushing him before her. She followed panting, leaning against the wall for support, for ‘Dolph was no light burden, and his weight taxed her hurt leg painfully.

The door of the loft stood ajar. She staggered in after the boy, dropped the dog, and closed all but a chink, at which she posted herself, drawing quick breaths.

In the darkness behind her Arthur Miles listened. The footsteps drew nearer, paused, and after a moment were audible again in the yard below.

“Good Lord–it’s Gavel!”

“Eh?” The boy drew closer to her shoulder.

“It’s Gavel, come in a sweat for ‘is ‘orses. I didn’ reckernise ‘im for the moment–dressed out in a fur coat an’ Trilby ‘at. But it’s Gavel, an’ ‘e’s walkin’ straight into Glasson’s arms. Stand by to do a bolt soon as ‘e turns the corner.”

“But I don’t see what he has to do with–with–” Arthur Miles hesitated before the terrible name.

“Glasson? Oh, nothin’; on’y ten to one Gavel’s met with the Mortimers, an’, Glasson bein’ on the track already–W’y, what elst is the man ‘ere for?”

“He shan’t take me,” said the boy after a pause, and in a strained low voice which, nevertheless, had no tremor in it. “Not if I throw myself off the ladder.”

“You stop that talk, please,” threatened Tilda. “It’s wicked; an’ besides, they ‘aven’t caught us yet. Do what I tell yer, an’ stand by to bolt.”

She crept to the other door, which commanded the canal front, unbarred it softly, and opened the upper hatch a few inches. Through this aperture, by standing on tip-toe, she could watch the meeting of the two men.

“When I call, run for yer life.”

But a minute–two minutes–passed, and the command did not come. Arthur Miles, posted by the bolt-hole, held his breath at the sound of voices without, by the waterside. The tones of one he recognised with a shiver. They were raised, and although he could not catch the words, apparently in altercation. Forgetting orders, he tip-toed across to Tilda’s elbow.

Mr. James Gavel, proprietor of Imperial Steam Roundabouts–as well as of half a dozen side-shows, including a Fat Lady and a Try-your-Strength machine–was a small man with a purplish nose and a temper kept irritable by alcohol; and to-day the Fates had conspired to rub that temper on the raw. He swore aloud, and partly believed, that ever since coming to Henley-in-Arden he was bewitched.

He had come at the instance, and upon the guarantee, of Sir Elphinstone Breward, Baronet, C.B., K.C.V.O., a local landowner, who, happening to visit Warwick on County Council business, which in its turn happened to coincide with a fair day, had been greatly struck by the title “Imperial” painted over Mr. Gavel’s show, and with soldierly promptness had engaged the whole outfit–Roundabouts, Fat Lady and all–for his forthcoming Primrose Fete.

If beside his addiction to alcohol Mr. Gavel had a weakness, it was the equally British one of worshipping a title. Flattered by the honest baronet’s invitation, he had met it almost more than half-way; and had dispatched six of his shabbiest horses to Birmingham to be repainted for the fete, and labelled “Kitchener,” “Bobs,” “Cecil Rhodes,” “Doctor Jim,” “Our Joe,” and “Strathcona”–names (as he observed) altogether more up to date than the “Black Prince,” “Brown Bess,” “Saladin,” and others they superseded.

Respect for his patron had further prompted Mr. Gavel, on the morning of the fete, to don a furred overcoat, and to swear off drink for the day. This abstinence, laudable in itself, disastrously affected his temper, and brought him before noon into wordy conflict with his engineer. The quarrel, suppressed for the time, flamed out afresh in the afternoon, and, unfortunately, at a moment when Sir Elphinstone, as chairman, was introducing the star orator from London. Opprobrious words had reached the ears of the company gathered on the platform, and Sir Elphinstone had interrupted his remarks about Bucking Up and Thinking Imperially to send a policeman through the crowd with instructions to stop that damned brawling.

If the great Napoleon may be forgiven for losing his temper when at five in the afternoon from the slope of La Belle Alliance he watched the Prussians breaking through the opposite woods, while Grouchy yet tarried, let it be pleaded in excuse for Mr. Gavel that ever since eleven a.m. he had been awaiting the arrival of his six newly-painted horses. The Birmingham decorator had pledged himself to deliver them early at Preston Bagot, and Mr. Gavel knew him for a man of his word. He had made arrangements for their prompt conveyance to the field. He did not doubt, but he was undeniably anxious.

Imagine, then, his feelings when at four o’clock or a little later a wagon–the wagon of his hiring–rolled into the enclosure bringing one horse only, and in place of the others a pile of tent-cloths and theatrical boxes, on which sat and smiled Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer, his professional rivals.

He had been drinking ginger-ale all day, and in copious draughts. It must be confessed that he lost his temper woefully, and so vociferously that Sir Elphinstone this time descended from the platform, and strode across the meadow to demand what the devil he meant by it. Nor was even this the last drop in the cup of Mr. Gavel’s bitterness; for the baronet, struck by Mr. Mortimer’s appearance and genteel address, at once invited him to set up his tent and save the situation so desperately compromised.

Sam Bossom, perceiving that the wagon stood on ground well adapted for pitching a tent, cheerfully proceeded to unload. Mr. Gavel watched in speechless rage. Old Holly, the carrier, suggested that there was no need to give up hope of the horses. They might turn up yet before dark. Boats came down the canal at all hours of the day.

“Then why couldn’t you have waited and given ’em a chance?” foamed the proprietor; and commanding Holly to turn the empty wagon and follow, he strode off in the direction of the Wharf. The afternoon was hot. His furred coat oppressed him; his shoes–of patent leather, bought ready-made–pinched his feet. On the road he came to a public-house, entered, and gulped down two “goes” of whisky. Still the wagon lagged behind. Re-emerging, he took the road again, his whole man hot within his furred coat as a teapot within a cosy.

In this temper, then, Mr. Gavel came to the wharf at Preston Bagot locks, and finding the _Success to Commerce_ moored there with a tall man apparently in charge, demanded if he came from Birmingham.

“Or thereabouts,” answered the tall man, eyeing him. “From there or thereabouts. And, if I mistake not, you are the–er–person of whom I came in search.”

The man’s voice took Mr. Gavel somewhat aback. It did not resemble an ordinary bargee’s. But at the moment he could no more check the explosion of his wrath than you can hold back a cork in the act of popping from a bottle of soda-water.

“Curse your laziness!” exploded Mr. Gavel; “and this is your notion of searching for me, is it?”

“It appears to be a pretty successful one,” said Dr. Glasson. “I’ve discovered you, anyhow; and now I suggest to you that swearing won’t help the reckoning between us.”

“Oh, stow your fine talk! I’ve heard of sea-lawyers, and I suppose you’re a canal specimen. Carriage was paid at the other end, and you know it. I catch you here loafing, and I’m going to dispute the bill– which means that you’ll get the sack, my friend, whether I recover the money or no. Pounds out of pocket I am by this, not to speak of reputation. Where are they? Where have you put ’em?”

“That’s what I’ll trouble _you_ to answer, sir.”

“My hosses! . . . You don’t mean to tell me–” Mr. Gavel smote his brow. “But you said just now you were looking for me!” he cried.

“You act well, sir,” said Dr. Glasson sternly. “It is your profession. But, as it happens, I have made inquiries along the canal, and am proof against your bluster. A boat, the _Success to Commerce_–a bargeman in a furred overcoat–the combination is unusual, and not (I put it to you) likely to be repeated on this short stretch of waterway. Confess, Mr.– confess, sir, your game is up. Kidnapping is an ugly offence in this country, and, in short, I advise you without more ado to hand over the two children.”

Mr. Gavel leaned back against a crane for support.

“Children? What children?” he repeated, staring.

Clearly here was some hideous blunder, and he perceived at length that the person addressing him in no way resembled a bargee.

“But–but my hosses?” he gasped.

Just then the sound of wheels fell on his ears, and both men faced about. Mr. Gavel made sure that this must be old Holly with his wagon. But no; there came around the corner a cart with a single horse, driven by a lad; and the lad, pulling up before the store, went in, and in less than a minute reappeared staggering under a heavy burden.

“But, Hallo!” cried Mr. Gavel, pulling himself together, and striding towards the cart. “It _is_–” he began incredulously; but after a second look raised his voice in triumphant recognition and demand. “My hosses! What are you doing with my hosses?”

“Yours, be they?” the lad answered. “Well, I’m takin’ ’em to Henley, as you sent word.”

“_I_ sent word?” echoed Mr. Gavel.

“_Somebody_ sent word,” the lad persisted. “An’ in the devil of a ‘urry, ‘cordin’ to the child what brought it. But, as I said to mother, where’s the sense in sendin’ messages by children?”

“Children?”

“There was two on ’em–a boy an’ a girl–“

“Ah!” interrupted Dr. Glasson. “Describe them, please.”

The lad scratched his head.

“Mother took the message. I was indoors, havin’ tea, an’ didn’ see more ‘n a glimpse. But here comes father,” he added briskly, as again wheels were heard on the road, and old Holly drove into the yard with his belated wagon.

“You must admit, sir,” said Dr. Glasson, addressing Mr. Gavel, “that circumstances are beginning to look too strong for you.”

“Oh, to–with circumstances!” retorted Mr. Gavel. “Mortimer’s in this, for a fiver. I don’t see how–I don’t make head or tail of it; but the tail you’ve got hold of belongs to the wrong dog. Kidnapping, is it? A couple of children you want? Suspect me, do you? Well, suspect away. _I_ don’t mind. I’ve got my hosses; and when we’re loaded up you can climb on board the wagon, if you like, and we’ll pay a call on Mortimer. I bet he’s your man; and the harder you pinch Mortimer to make him squeal, the better you’ll please me.”

“Arthur Miles,” demanded Tilda in a harsh whisper, “what’re yer doin’ ‘ere?”

“Listening,” answered the boy simply.

“I ‘opes yer likes it! . . . We’re in a tight corner, Arthur Miles, an’ nothing for it but bolt while they’re talkin’.”

“We might hide here in the dark–but, of course, you know best.”

“O’ course I do,” Tilda agreed. “‘Ide ‘ere? An’ who’s to warn the Mortimers?”

She stooped and again caught ‘Dolph under her arm. Then she straightened herself up and stood listening to the voices, clearly audible from the entrance of the store below.

“Tip-toe, mind! There’s on’y a board between us–and quiet, for your life!”

They stole to the steps and paused for a moment, peering into the gloom. Here too their enemies’ voices were audible, but around the corner of the store, the coast was clear. They crept down the steps and gained the road. In the highway Tilda drew breath.

“Things look pretty bad,” she said; “but things ain’t altogether so bad as they look. Where we’re goin’ we’ll find Bill; an’ Bill’s a tower o’ strength.”

“But we don’t even know the way,” objected Arthur Miles.

“No, but ‘Dolph does. ‘Ere, ‘Dolph”–she set down the dog–“you got to lead us where the others went; an’ at the end of it there’s a little surprise for yer. ‘Ear?”

‘Dolph heard, shook himself, wagged his tail, and padded forward into the gathering darkness; ran a little way and halted, until they overtook him. He understood.

“If they catch up with us we must nip into a gateway,” panted Tilda.

But as yet there was no sound of wheels on the road behind. They passed the Hollys’ cottage and stable, and braved the undiscovered country. The road twisted between tall hedgerows, black in the shadow of elms. No rain had fallen for many days, and the powdered dust lay so thick underfoot, that twice or thrice Tilda halted–still holding the boy’s hand–in doubt if they had wandered off upon turf. But always, as they hesitated thus, ‘Dolph came trotting back to reassure them.

In this manner, trotting and pausing, they had covered a bare three-quarters of a mile when there smote on their ears a throbbing of the air–a thud-thud which Arthur Miles took for the beat of a factory engine, so like it was to the echoes that had floated daily, and all day long, across the Orphanage wall; but Tilda, after hearkening a moment, announced it to be the bass of Gavel’s steam organ. The hoot of a whistle presently confirmed her guess.

‘Dolph was steering them steadily towards the sound; and a glow in the sky, right ahead and easily discernible, would have guided them even without his help. Tilda recognised that glow also.

“And the best is, it means Bill,” she promised.

But they did not catch the tune itself until they were close upon the meadow. At the top of a rise in the road it broke on them, the scene almost simultaneously with its music; and a strange scene it was, and curiously beautiful–a slope, and below the slope a grassy meadow set with elms; a blaze of light, here and there in the open spaces; in one space a steam roundabout revolving with mirrors, in another the soft glow of naphtha-lamps through tent cloth; glints of light on the boughs, dark shadows of foliage, a moving crowd, its murmur so silenced by music and the beat of a drum that it seemed to sway to and fro without sound, now pressing forward into the glare, now dissolving into the penumbra.

Arthur Miles paused, trembling. He had never seen the like. But Tilda had recovered all her courage.

“This,” she assured him, “is a little bit of all right,” and taking his hand, led him down the slope and posted him in the shadow of a thorn-bush.

“Wait here,” she enjoined; and he waited, while she descended cautiously towards the roundabout with its revolving mirrors.

He lost sight of her. He lay still where she had commanded him to lie, watching the many twinkling lights, watching the roundabout turn and flash and come to a stop, watching the horseplay of boys and maidens as one set clambered off laughing and another pressed forward into their places. The tune droned in his ears, came to an end, went on again. He drowsed to its recurrent beat. From his couch in the wet shadow he gazed up at the stars riding overhead, above the elms.

At the end of twenty minutes Tilda stole back to him; and, softly though she came, her footfall woke him out of his dreams with a start. Yet, and though he could barely discern her from the shadow of the thorn-bush, he knew on the instant that she brought disappointment.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Everything’s the matter. Bill’s gone!”

CHAPTER XIV.

ADVENTURE OF THE PRIMROSE FETE.

“_Confusion and Exeunt._”–OLD STAGE DIRECTION.

“Gone?” echoed the boy blankly.

“‘Ad a row with Gavel this very aft’rnoon. Got the sack, with a week’s pay, an’ packed up his kit after tea an’ ‘ooked it. Bess Burton told me all about it, knowin’ me an’ Bill to be friends–she’s the woman sits at the pay-table an’ gives the change. ‘E wouldn’ tell nobody where ‘e was goin’. Ain’t cryin’ about it, are yer?”

“No,” he answered, as she peered close to him in the darkness. “Only we’d built everything on Bill, hadn’t we?”

Tilda did not answer this question.

“That’s the way with Bill,” she said loyally. “Folks never know ‘is worth till they miss ‘im. Bess allowed to me that before the evenin’s out Gavel will be offerin’ ‘is shirt to ‘ave ‘im back–an’ Bess don’t know the worst neither. They’ve put on a boy to work the engine, an’ Bill ‘as told me things about that boiler o’ Gavel’s . . . I couldn’ get near enough to read the pressure, but by the way ‘e was pilin’ in coal–“

She broke off and gazed down the slope. Even as once the poet Gray looked down from the Windsor’s heights up the distant prospect of Eton College, so did she regard the cluster of naphtha lights around the galloping horses on which, unconscious of their doom, the little victims played.

“But there’s no call to give up an’ cry about it,” she resumed bravely. “We’re in a tight place, but it’s our turn to play. (That’s another sayin’ o’ Bill’s. Oh, dear, I wish you’d known ‘im!) You see, we know where Glasson is an’ what ‘e’s up to, an’ can look out accordin’. That’s one card to us. An’ the next is, I’ve seen Sam Bossom an’ warned ‘im. ‘E was standin’ outside ‘is show, an’ not darin’ to go in; the reason bein’ Mortimer ‘ad picked up a girl from the shootin’ gallery, that used to belong to ‘is company, and ‘e an’ she an’ Mrs. Mortimer are doing the last act of _Othello_ life size an’ tuppence coloured, an’ Sam says ‘e can’t look on an’ command ‘is feelin’s. ‘E was considerable surprised to see me, an’ started scoldin’; but I left ‘im promisin’ that ‘e’d put a stop to Glasson some’ow, if it had to be on the point o’ the jaw; an’ we’re to nip across and ‘ide under the Grand Stand until he comes for us or sends word. See it?”

She pointed across to a crowded platform on the farther slope–a structure of timber draped with scarlet cloth, and adorned with palms and fairy lamps. It stood on the rise a little above and to the left of the roundabout, the flares of which lit up the faces and gay dresses of Sir Elphinstone’s guests gathered there to watch the show.

The two children made down the slope towards it, very cautiously, fetching a circuit of the crowd. But as they reached the bottom of the dip, on a sudden the crowd spread itself in lines right across their path. Along these lines three or four men ran shouting, with ropes and lanterns in their hands; and for one horrible moment it flashed on Tilda that all this agitation must be the hue-and-cry.

“Clear the course! Course, course! Just startin’–the great Ladies’ Race! Clear the course!”

So it was only a race, after all! Tilda gripped the boy’s hand tightly, and held him at stand-still some paces in rear of the crowd. But of this caution there was little need. All the faces were turned the other way; all the crowd pressed forwards against the ropes which the lantern-bearers drew taut to fence off the course. A pistol-shot cracked out. Someone cried, “They’re off!” and a murmur grew and rolled nearer–rising, as it approached, from a murmur into great waves–waves of Homeric laughter.

The race went by, and a stranger race Tilda had never beheld. The competitors were all women, of all ages–village girls, buxom matrons, withered crones–and each woman held a ladle before her in which an egg lay balanced. Some were in sun-bonnets, others in their best Sunday headdress. Some had kilted their skirts high. Others were all dishevelled with the ardour of the race. The leader–a gaunt figure with spoon held rigidly before her, with white stockinged legs, and a truly magnificent stride–had come and passed before Tilda could believe her eyes. After a long interval three others tottered by in a cluster. The fifth dropped her egg and collapsed beside it, to be hauled to her feet and revived by the stewards amid inextinguishable laughter from the crowd. In all, fourteen competitors rolled in, some with empty ladles, some laughing and protesting that not a step farther could they stir. But, long before the crowd closed in, Tilda saw the winner breast a glimmering line of tape stretched at the end of the course, and heard the shouts saluting her victory.

“But who is it?”

“Miss Sally!”

“Miss Sally, if ever you heard the like! . . . But there! blood will tell.”

“It’s years since I seen her,” said a woman.

“You don’t say! Never feared man nor devil, my mother used to tell. An’ to run in a race along with the likes of Jane Pratt! But you never can reckon wi’ the gentry–what they’ll do, or what they won’t.”

“With half the county, too, lookin’ on from the Grand Stand! I bet Sir Elphinstone’s cussin’.”

“And I’ll bet Miss Sally don’t care how hard he cusses. She could do a bit o’ that too in her time, by all accounts.”

“Ay, a monstrous free-spoken lady always. Swearin’ don’t sit well upon womankind, I allow–not as a rule. But when there’s blood, a damn up or down–what is it? For my part I never knew a real gentleman–or lady for that matter–let out a downright thumper but I want to cry ‘Old England for ever!'”

Finding it hopeless to skirt the crowd, the children made a plunge through it, with ‘Dolph at their heels. But as the crush abated and they breasted the farther slope, Tilda made two discoveries; the first, that whereas a few minutes since the platform had held a company of people among its palms and fairy-lamps, it was now deserted; the second, that the mob at the winning-post had actually shouldered Miss Sally, and was carrying her in triumph towards the platform, with a brass band bobbing ahead and blaring _See, the Conquering Hero comes!_

This second discovery was serious, for the procession’s line of march threatened to intercept them. But luckily the bandsmen, who set the pace, moved slowly, and by taking hands and running the children reached the platform in time, skirted its darker side, and dived under its scarlet draperies into the cavernous darkness beneath the boards.

Here they drew breath, and Tilda again clutched the dog. They were in time, but with a very little to spare. In less than a minute the mob surged all around the platform, shouting, hooraying.

“Three cheers for Miss Sally! The Ham–where’s the Ham? Give Miss Sally the Ham! Silence, there–silence for Sir Elphinstone! Speech from Sir Elphinstone! Speech!”

By and by the hubbub died down a little, but still there were cries of “Sir Elphinstone for ever!” “Miss Sally for ever!” and “Your sister’s won the Ham, sir!” A high-pitched voice on the outskirts of the throng began to chant–

“For really it was a remarkable ‘am!”

But got no further, being drowned first by sporadic, uneasy laughter, and then by a storm of hisses. A tremendous roar of laughter followed, and this (although Tilda could not guess it) was evoked by Miss Sally’s finding the ham where it stood derelict on a table among the greenhouse plants, lifting it off its plate and brandishing it before the eyes of her admirers.

Tilda could see nothing of this. But she was listening with all her might, and as the uproar died down again she caught the accents of a man’s voice attempting a speech.

“My friends,” it was saying, still lifting itself higher against the good-humoured interruptions, “my very good friends–impossible not to be gratified–expression of good will–venture to say, on the whole– thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. My sister”–(interruptions and cheers for Miss Sally)–“my sister begs me to say–highly gratified–spirit of the thing–but, if I may plead, some degree of fatigue only natural– won’t misunderstand if I ask–disperse–quietly as possible–eh? Oh, yes, ‘God save the King,’ by all means–much obliged, reminder– thank you–yes, certainly.”

Thereupon the band played the National Anthem, and the throng, after yet another outbreak of cheering, dispersed. Followed a silence in the darkness under the platform, broken only by the distant thudding bass of the roundabout’s steam organ; and then between the boards there sounded a liquid chuckle, much like a blackbird’s, and a woman’s voice said–

“Come, my dear brother, say it out! The Countess has gone; everybody has gone–she must have stampeded ’em, by the way–and as the Jew said, when a thunderstorm broke on the picnic, ‘Here’s a fuss over a little bit of ham!’ Well, my dear, there has always been this about Sally– a man can swear before her _sans gene_. So, to give you a start, how did they take it?”

“If after these years I didn’t know you to be incorrigible–” growled the voice of Sir Elphinstone.

“‘For ladies of all ages,’ the bills said.”

“‘Ladies!'”

“I am quoting your own bill–I’ll bet a fiver, too, that you drafted it. Anyway, I’m rising forty–though I’d defy ’em to tell it by my teeth. And since they passed me for a lady–oh, Elphinstone, it _was_ a lark! And I never thought I had the wind for it. You remember Kipling–you are always quoting that young man–“

‘The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe.’

“Well, that’s how it was: ‘Like a barren doe,’ I give you my word.”

“My dear Sally!”

“Shameless, was it? My dear Elphinstone, you’ve only to bill it, and I’ll do Lady Godiva for ’em next year–at _my_ time of life. But if you don’t like Kipling, what do you say to this?”

‘For really this was a remarkable Ham, A twenty-pound solid Imperial Ham,
And old Mrs. Liddicott
Tucked up her petticoat–‘

“Which reminds me that the crowd specially cheered my white Balbriggans. They are out of date, but I could never fancy my legs in anything but white.”

“What on earth are you reading?”

“The local paper–Opposition. Haven’t you seen it? There’s a whole column in verse about you, Elphinstone; hits you off to a hair, and none so badly written. I’d a mind to show it to the Countess and Lady Mary, but slipped it under the table cloth and at the last moment forgot it in your eloquence. You really must listen–“

‘Sir Elphinstone Breward
He rang for his steward,
And “Damme,” said he, looking up from his letters, This side of the county
That feeds on my bounty
‘s forgotten all proper respect of its betters.’

“The devil!” interrupted Sir Elphinstone. “It’s that dirty little Radical, Wrightson.”

“You recognise the style? It gets neater, to my thinking, as it goes on–“

‘Agitators and pillagers
Stir up my villagers–
Worst of those fellows, so easily led! Some haven’t food enough,
Else it ain’t good enough,
Others object to sleep three in a bed.’

‘Deuce take their gratitude!
“Life”–that’s the attitude–
“Dullish and hard, on the parish half-crown!” Dull? Give ’em circuses!
Hard? Ain’t there work’uses?
What _can_ they see to attract ’em to town?’

“–Neat, in its way,” commented Miss Sally, pausing.

“Neat? _I_ call it subversive and damnable!”

“Listen! The next is a stinger–“

‘Something quite recent, now:
“Drainage ain’t decent,” now:
Damme, when _was_ it? I’ve known, if you please, Old tenants, better ones,
Crimean veterans–
Never heard _they_ required w.c.’s–‘

“My _dear_ Sally!”

“I read you the thing as it’s printed,” said Miss Sally, with another liquid chuckle.

[“Ain’t it just ‘eavingly?” whispered Tilda below, clutching the boy’s arm while she listened.

“What?”

“The voice of ‘er. If I could on’y speak words that way!”]

“He goes on,” pursued Miss Sally, “to tell how you and Saunders–that’s your new bailiff’s name, is it not?–cooked up this woman’s race between you as a step towards saving the Empire. The language is ribald in places, I allow; but I shouldn’t greatly wonder if that, more or less, is how it happened. And any way I’ve come to the rescue, and kept the Imperial Ham in the family.”

“I have sometimes thought, Sally–if you will forgive my putting it brutally–that you are half a Radical yourself.”

Thereat, after a moment’s pause, the lady laughed musically. Almost in the darkness you could see her throwing back her head and laughing. She had a noble contralto voice, with a rich mannish purr in it.

“You are mistaken, Elphinstone. But even so, my excellent brother, you might understand it–if your estate lay in the west and ran with Miles Chandon’s.”

Tilda’s small body stiffened with a gasp, ‘Miles Chandon’–the name had sounded on her hearing distinct as the note of a bell. There was no mistake: it hummed in her ears yet. Or was it the blood rushing to her ears as she sat bolt upright in the darkness, listening, breathing hard?

Sir Elphinstone, for some reason, had not answered his sister. When at length he spoke, it was in a changed tone, at once careless and more affectionate.

“See anything of Chandon in these days?”

“Nothing at all; or–to put the same thing differently–just so much of him as his tenants see. We were talking of tenantry. Miles Chandon leaves everything to his steward. Now, between ourselves, all stewards, land agents, bailiffs–whatever you choose to call ’em–are the curse of our system, and Miles Chandon’s happens to be the worst specimen.”

“H’m,” said Sir Elphinstone reflectively. “Poor devil!” he added, a few moments later, and then–Miss Sally giving him no encouragement to pursue the subject–“Ten minutes past seven–the car will be waiting. What do you say to getting home for dinner?”

“If I may bring the Ham.” Miss Sally laughed and pushed back her chair. “Wait a minute–we will wrap it up in the poem. ‘Exit Atalanta, carrying her Ham in a newspaper’–how deliciously vulgar! Elphinstone, you have always been the best of brothers; you are behaving beautifully–and–and I never could resist shocking you; but we’re pretty fond of one another, eh?”

“I’ve consistently spoilt you, if that’s what you mean,” he grumbled.

They were leaving the platform. Tilda whispered to the boy to take hold of ‘Dolph.

“And I’m goin’ to leave yer for a bit.” She edged past him on hands and knees towards the vallance draperies. “You ‘eard what she said? Well, keep quiet ‘ere an’ don’t be frightened. If Sam comes, tell ‘im I’ll be back in five minutes.”

She dived out beneath the vallance, caught a glimpse of Miss Sally and Sir Elphinstone making their way at a brisk pace through the crowd, and hurried up the slope in pursuit. It was difficult to keep them in sight, for everyone made way upon recognising them, but showed less consideration for a small panting child; and the head of the field, by the exit gate, was packed by a most exasperating throng pressing to admire a giant motor-car that waited in the roadway with lamps blazing and a couple of men in chauffeurs’ dress keeping guard in attitudes of sublime _hauteur_. Sir Elphinstone, with Miss Sally on his arm, reached the car while yet Tilda struggled in the gateway. A policeman roughly ordered her back. She feigned to obey, and dropping out of sight, crawled forth past the policeman’s boots, with her head almost butting the calves of a slow-moving yeoman farmer. Before she could straighten herself up Sir Elphinstone had climbed into the car after his sister, and the pair were settling down in their rugs. One of the chauffeurs was already seated, the other, having set the machine throbbing, was already clambering to his seat. The crowd set up three parting cheers, and Miss Sally, remembering her Ham, held it aloft in farewell.

But while Miss Sally waved and laughed, of a sudden, amid the laughter and cheers and throbbing of the motor, a small child sprang out of the darkness and clung upon the step.

“Lady! Lady!”

Miss Sally stared down upon the upturned face.

“Miles Chandon, lady?–where does ‘e live?–For the Lord’s sake–“

But already Sir Elphinstone had called the order. The car shot away smoothly.

“Elphinstone–a moment, please! Stop! The child–“

“Eh? . . . Stop the car! . . . Anything wrong?”

Miss Sally peered back into the darkness.

“There was a child . . . We have hurt her, I fear. Tell George to jump down and inquire.”

But Tilda was not hurt. On the contrary, she was running and dodging the crowd at that moment as fast as her hurt leg permitted. For in the press of it, not three yards away, by the light of the side lamp, she had caught sight of Dr. Glasson and Gavel.

They were on foot, and Gavel had seen her, she could make no doubt. He was bearing down straight upon her.

Not until she had run fifty yards did she pluck up courage to look back. Gavel was nowhere in sight. The car had come to a standstill, and the people were yelling. Was it after her? Was _this_ the hue-and-cry?

They were certainly yelling–and behaving too, in the strangest fashion. They seemed by one impulse to be running from the car and crowding back towards the gate. They were fighting–positively fighting–their way into the field. The police could not stop them, but were driven in with a rush; and in the centre of this rush Tilda caught sight of Gavel again. His back was turned to her. He was struggling for admission, and like a maniac. Glasson she could not see.

Sir Elphinstone had climbed out of the car, and came striding back demanding to know what was the matter. It stuck in his head that a child had been hurt, perhaps killed.

A dozen voices answered–

“The roundabouts!” “Explosion at the roundabouts!” “Engine blown up– twenty killed an’ injured, they say!”

“Explosion? . . . Nonsense!”

Tilda saw him thrust his way into the gateway, his tall figure towering above the pack there as he halted and gazed down the hill. In the darkness and confusion it was easy enough for her to scramble upon the hedge unobserved, and at the cost of a few scratches only. From the top of the hedge she too gazed.

The roundabout had come to a standstill. Around it, at a decent distance, stood a dark circle of folk. But its lights still blazed, its mirrors still twinkled. She could detect nothing amiss.

What had happened? Tilda had forgotten Miss Sally, and was anxious now but for Arthur Miles. A dozen fears suggested themselves. She ought never to have left him. . . .

She dropped from the hedge into the field, and ran downhill to the platform. It stood deserted, the last few fairy-lamps dying down amid the palms and greenery. In the darkness at its rear there was no need of caution, and she plunged under the vallance boldly.

“Arthur! Arthur Miles! Are you all right? . . . Where are you?”

A thin squeal answered her, and she drew back, her skin contracting in a shudder, even to the roots of her hair. For, putting out her hand, she had touched flesh–naked, human flesh.

“Wh–who are you?” she stammered, drawing back her fingers.

“I’m the Fat Lady,” quavered a voice. “Oh, help me! I’m wedged here and can’t move!”

CHAPTER XV.

ADVENTURE OF THE FAT LADY.

“_Gin a body meet a body._”–BURNS.

“But what’s ‘appened?” demanded Tilda, recovering herself a little. “And ow? And oh! what’s become of the boy, Arthur Miles?”

“There _is_ a boy, somewhere at the back of me,” the Fat Lady answered; “and a dog too. You can talk to them across me; but I couldn’t move, not if I was crushin’ them ever so.”

Tilda called softly to the prisoners, and to her relief Arthur Miles answered out of the darkness, assuring her, albeit in a muffled voice, that they were both safe.

“But what’s the _meanin’_ of it?” Tilda demanded again.

“The igsplosion’s the meanin’ of it.”

“But there ain’t _been_ no explosh’n. And anyway,” said Tilda, “you ain’t tellin’ me you been _blown_ ‘ere?”

“Igsplosion or no igsplosion,” replied the Fat Lady incontestably, “‘ere I h’am.”

“_Sure_ yer can’t move?” Tilda coaxed.

At this the Fat Lady showed some irritation.

“I ought to know what I’m capable of by this time. . . . If you could run along and fetch somebody with a tackle and pulley now–“

“I got a friend comin’ presently. ‘E’s quite a ‘andy young feller, _an’_ tender-‘earted: ‘e won’t leave yer like this, no fear. . . . But, o’ course, it’ll be a shock to ‘im, ‘appenin’ in upon us an’ findin’– well, so much _more_’n ‘e expected. I’m thinkin’ ‘ow to break it to ‘im gently, ‘ere in the dark.” Tilda considered for a while. “It might ‘elp if I knew yer name. ‘Twouldn’ be fair–would it?–to start off that we’d got a surprise for ‘im, an’ would ‘e guess?”

“He’ll find out, fast enough, when he strikes a light,” said the Fat Lady between resigned despair and professional pride. “But my name’s Mrs. Lobb, when you introjuice him.”

“Widow?”

“I don’t know why you should suppose it.”

“No,” said Tilda after musing a moment; “there ain’t no real reason, o’ course. On’y I thought–An’ you not mentionin’ a nusband, under the circumstances.”

To her astonishment, Mrs. Lobb gave way and shook with mountainous sobs.

“I’m a maiden lady,” she confessed, “and I’ll conceal it no longer, when, God knows, I may be lyin’ here punished for my vanity. . . . But ’twasn’t all vanity, neither: it sounded more comfortable. If it had been vanity, I’d ha’ chosen Montmorency or St. Clair–not Lobb. Wouldn’t I now? . . . Of course, you won’t understand, at your age; but there’s a sort of _sheltered_ feelin’. An’ I’m a bundle of nerves. You should see me,” wound up Mrs. Lobb enigmatically, “with a mouse.”

But at this moment Tilda whispered “‘Ush!” Someone was stealthily lifting the vallance. “Is that you, Sam?” she challenged.

“Aye, aye, missie. All safe?”

“_And_ snug. . . . Can yer risk striking a match? Fact is, we got a lady friend ‘ere, an’ she wants yer ‘elp badly.”

Sam struck a sulphur match.

“Good Lord!” he breathed, staring across the blue flame, and still as he stared his eyes grew larger and rounder.

“‘Er name’s Lobb,” explained Tilda. “I oughter a-told yer.”

“‘Ow did it ‘appen?” asked Sam in an awed voice.

“Igsplosion,” said the Fat Lady.

“Is–is there _goin’_ to be one?”

The match burned low in Sam’s trembling fingers, and he dropped it with an exclamation of pain.

“There _was_ one,” said the Fat Lady. “At Gavel’s roundabouts. Leastways, the folks came chargin’ into my tent, which is next door, cryin’ out that the boiler was blowin’ up. I travel with Gavel, sir–as his Fat Lady–“

“Oh!” Sam drew a long breath.

“Which, when I heard it, sir, and the outcries, I burst out through the back of the tent–bein’ a timorous woman–and ran for shelter. My fright, sir, I’ll leave you to imagine. And then, as I crawled under the boards here, a dog flew at me–and bein’ taken unawares–on all fours, too–I rolled over with my legs twisted–and here I am stuck. There’s one joist pinnin’ my left shoulder, and my leg’s jammed under another; and stir I cannot.”

Sam lit another match.

“I was fearin’–” he began, but broke off. “If you could manage, ma’am, to draw up your knee an inch or so–or if you wouldn’ mind my takin’ a pull–“

“Not at all,” said Mrs. Lobb. “I’m used to bein’ pinched.”

Sam gripped the knee-pan firmly, and hauled.

“O-ow!” cried Mrs. Lobb. But the wrench had set her free to uncross her legs, and she did so, murmuring her gratitude.

There had been (Sam now explained) a false alarm. In the midst of the merry-making, and while the roundabouts were crowded and going at full speed, the boy in charge of the engine had taken occasion to announce to the lady at the pay-table that his pressure was a hundred-and-forty-seven, and what had taken the safety valve he couldn’t think. Whereupon the lady at the pay-table had started up, scattering her coins, and shrieked; and this had started the stampede. “Which,” added Sam in a whisper to Tilda, “was lucky for us in a way; becos Glasson, after tacklin’ Mortimer be’ind the scenes an’ threatenin’ to have his blood in a bottle, had started off with Gavel to fetch the perlice. An’ the question is if they won’t be watchin’ the gates by this time.”

“In _my_ young days,” announced the Fat Lady, with disconcerting suddenness, “it was thought rude to whisper.”

Tilda took a swift resolution.

“The truth is, ma’am, we’re in trouble, an’ ‘idin’ ‘ere. I wouldn’ dare to tell yer, on’y they say that people o’ your–I mean, in your–“

“Profession,” suggested the Fat Lady.

“–Are kind-‘earted by nature. I belongs, ma’am–leastways, I _did_,– to Maggs’s Circus–if you know it–“

“I’ve heard Maggs’s troupe very well spoken of. But, as you’ll understand, I do very little visitin’.”

“I was ‘appy enough with Maggs’s, ma’am. But first of all a pony laid me up with a kick, an’ then I stole Arthur Miles ‘ere out of the ‘Oly Innercents–“

Tilda broke down for a moment, recovered herself, and with sobs told her story.

For a while, after she had ended it, the Fat Lady kept silence. Sam, breathing hard, still doubtful of the child’s bold policy, feared what this silence might portend.

“Give me your hand, young man,” said the Fat Lady at length.

Sam reached out in the darkness, and grasped hers fervently.

“I didn’t ask you to shake it. I want to be helped out to the fresh air, and then these children’ll march straight home with me to my caravan.”

“But,” stammered Sam, not yet clear that he had found an ally, “–but that’s leadin’ ’em straight into Gavel’s arms!”

“Young man,” replied the lady austerely, “it leads into no man’s arms.” But a moment later she dropped her voice, and added with a touch of pathos, “I’m the loneliest woman in the world, outside of show hours; and if you thought a little you might know it.”

“I see,” said Sam contritely.

“And, what’s more, inside my own caravan I’ve my wits about me. Outside and among folks–well, maybe you’ve seen an owl in the daylight with the small birds mobbin’ him. . . . Now about yourself and the Mortimers–from this child’s story there’s no evidence yet to connect her or the boy with either of you. The man Hucks knows, and that carrier fellow at the wharf saw them for a minute, with Mortimer standin’ by. But that’s no evidence for the police; and, anyway, this Glasson can’t touch you until he gets hold of the children. If you’ll leave it to me, he shan’t do that for twenty-four hours. And now–isn’t it time you were packing up your show? You’ll be gettin’ back to the boat to-night, I suppose? What about the Mortimers?” Sam explained that he would be driving back with the tent, and intended to sleep on board. The Mortimers would repose themselves at a small public-house, “The Vine Leaf.” In the morning they would join forces again and proceed to Stratford. Address there: “The Red Cow.”

He delivered this explanation jerkily, in the intervals of lugging the lady forth from her durance. Tilda, scrambling forth ahead of her, noted with inexpressible relief that the aspect of the field was entirely changed. The crowd had melted away, the flares of the roundabout were extinguished, and a faint glow of lamplight through canvas told where the Mortimer’s tent, far to the left, awaited dismemberment. Five or six lanterns dotted the lower slopes, where the smaller shows–the Aunt Sally, the coconut shies and the swing-boats– were being hastily packed. Overhead, in a clean heaven, rode the stars, and by their glimmer the children saw their new protectress draw herself up in all her Amazonian amplitude. She wore a low bodice of pink, with spangles, and a spangled skirt descended to her knees. Beneath them her columnar calves were bare as an infant’s. She extended an arm, and pointed towards her caravan.

“Bear around to the right,” she commanded. “Keep a look-out on me when I get to the van, and creep up as quietly as you can when I reach the step and bend to pull up my socks. Good night, young man–one good turn deserves another: and now be off, you two . . . Yes, you may bring the dog. Only I hope he doesn’t suffer from fleas, for a flea with me is a serious matter.”

They ran around, gained the steps in safety, and were admitted to the Fat Lady’s virgin bower. It lay in darkness, and enjoining them to stand still and keep silence, she drew the blinds discreetly before lighting her lamp. She did this (Tilda noted) with extreme deftness, reaching out a hand to a dark shelf and picking up the match-box as accurately as though she saw it. At once, too, Tilda noted that in the lamp’s rays the whole interior of the caravan shone like a new pin. A stove stood at the end facing the doorway, and beside the stove a closed washstand of polished teak. A dressing-table, a wardrobe, and a dresser-sideboard fitted with lockers occupied one side; along the other ran a couch with a padded back, which, let down, became a mattress and converted the couch into a bed. All the lockers gleamed with brasswork; all the draperies were of muslin or dimity, immaculately white; and looking-glass panelled the doors of every cupboard. These many mirrors caused the interior to appear even fuller of the Fat Lady than it actually was. They reflected her from every angle, and multiplied her into a crowd.

“Dear me!” she said, glancing around on these reflections, “I’ll have to turn you out again while I undress. But that won’t take long, and you’ll be safe enough beneath the van.”

So after providing them with a hunk of cake apiece from one of the sideboard lockers, and peeping forth to make sure the coast was clear, she dismissed them with instructions to creep into the darkness under the steps, and there lie quiet until she summoned them.

Ten minutes later she leaned forth again and called “Coo-ee!” very softly, and they returned to find her in the white bed, recumbent in a coquettish nightgown. She had folded and stowed her day garments away– Tilda could not imagine where–and a mattress and rugs lay on the floor, ready spread for the children. Nor was this all. On the sideboard stood a plateful of biscuits, and on the stove a spirit-lamp, with a kettle already beginning to sing, and a teapot and three cups and saucers.

With a turn of the hand, scarcely stirring from her recumbent posture, the Fat Lady closed the door and shot its small brass bolt. Then with a quick series of movements, reaching forward as soon as the kettle boiled, she filled the teapot, emptied the rest of the boiling water into the flashing nickel basin of the washstand, set down the kettle, turned and shut a cold-water tap, and invited the children to wash before supping.

The aroma of the tea–real China tea it was–and the fragrance of scented soap–genuine Old Brown Windsor–went straight through their senses to the children’s hearts. In all their lives they had known no experience so delicious.

Mrs. Lobb noted with approval that the boy drew aside and yielded Tilda the first turn at the basin. When his came she watched him, and by and by observed, “He washes like a gentleman, too.”

“Not,” she explained as the children drank their tea–“not that I have ever seen a gentleman wash. But women know what’s dainty.” Here she fell into a muse. “I’ve often pictered Mr. Lobb washing. These little things make so much difference.” She sighed. “Well now, if you’ve finished your supper, we’ll say our prayers and get to sleep.”

“Prayers?” queried Tilda.

As a rule, when anything happened outside her experience she sat quiet and let it happen, reserving criticism. But, chancing to look up, she had seen the boy wince at the word.

Mrs. Lobb, less observant, had taken down a Bible from the shelf above her. She opened it and read–

‘And they departed from Kibroth-hattaavah, and encamped at Hazeroth. And they departed from Hazeroth, and pitched in Rithmah. And they departed from Rithmah, and pitched at Rimmoth-parez–‘

“It don’t always apply,” she explained, breaking off, “but takin’ it straight through, you’d be surprised how often it sends you to sleep with a bit of comfort.”

She read half a dozen verses, closed the book, and recited the Lord’s Prayer–

“‘ . . . For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.’ Now we’ll go to sleep, and don’t be frightened when they harness up in an hour or two. We’ll be in Stratford before daybreak. Good night, my dears–you may reach up and give me a kiss apiece if you ‘re so minded; and I hope to goodness you don’t snore!”

When they awoke, sure enough Mrs. Lobb announced that they had reached Stratford. In their dreams they had felt the van moving; but now it had come to a standstill, and, peeping forth, they saw that it stood in a broad green meadow and but a little way from a river. There were swans on the river, paddling about or slowly drifting in the pale light; and across the river they saw many clustered roofs, with a church spire to the left set among noble elms.

“That’s where Shakespeare’s buried,” said the Fat Lady; “and the great brick building yonder–to the right, between us and the bridge–that’s the Memorial Theatre where they act his plays. There’s his statue, too, beside the water, and back in the town they keep the house he was born in. You can’t get away from Shakespeare here. If you buy a bottle of beer, he’s on the label; and if you want a tobacco-jar, they’ll sell you his head and shoulders in china, with the bald top fitted for a cover. It’s a queer place, is Stratford.”

The boy gazed. To him it was a marvellous place; and somewhere it held his secret–the secret of the Island.

“Talkin’ of beer,” said Tilda, “we mustn’ forget Sam Bossom. At the ‘Red Cow,’ he said.”

“But that won’t be till evening,” the Fat Lady warned her. “And meantime what am I to do with you. You can’t hide here all day: for one reason, I got to get up and dress. And it may be dangerous in the town for you before nightfall. Luckily, Gavel don’t know either one of you by sight; but there’s the chance of this Glasson havin’ come along with him. For all I know, Gavel may have given him a shake-down, and Gavel’s is the next van but one.”

The children implored her to let them forth before the rest of the show-people awoke. They would fend for themselves, Tilda engaged, and remain in hiding all day along the river-bank below the town. Really, when the Fat Lady thought it over, this appeared the only feasible plan. But first she insisted on cooking them a breakfast of fried sausages and boiled eggs, which she managed to do without stirring from her couch, directing Tilda how to light the stove, and where to find the utensils and the provender; and next she packed a basket for them with a loaf of bread and some slices of cold ham.

Thus furnished, they bade her good-bye for the day, left the dubious ‘Dolph in her charge, and tip-toeing past the rear of the caravan where slept the dreaded Gavel, gained the meadow’s end, passed a weed-grown ruinated lock below the churchyard, and struck into a footpath that led down-stream between the river and a pretty hanging copse. Below this a high road crossed the river. Following it, they passed over a small tributary stream that wound between lines of pollard willows, and so headed off to their right and regained the Avon’s bank.

The boy led. It seemed that the westward-running stream called to him, and that his feet trod to the tune of it. Tilda remembered this later. He was always a silent boy, and he gave no explanation; but she saw that the running water woke a new excitement in him. So long as they had followed the stagnant canal he had been curious, alert, inquisitive of every bend and bush. It was as if he had understood water by instinct, and yet the water had hitherto baffled and disappointed him. Now it ran, and he ran too. She had much ado to keep pace with him. By and by she halted by a clump of willows and seated herself, announcing hypocritically that she was tired.

He heard, and came back contritely.

“I forgot,” he said. “What has become of your crutch?”

“I left it be’ind yesterday, in the boat. There wasn’ no time to go back for it.”

“I am very sorry.”

Tilda’s conscience smote her.

“There ain’t no reason to fret about _me_,” she said reassuringly. “But what’s taken you? There’s no catchin’ up with the water, however fast you run.”

“It leads down to the Island. It _must_,” he announced, conning the stream.

“Think so?”

She too conned it, but could read nothing of his faith in the wimpled surface.

“Sure.”

The light in his eyes impressed if it did not convince her.

“Well, maybe we’ll ‘ave a try to-morrow,” she conceded after a while. “But business is business. We must get back to Stratford an’ consult Sam Bossom. And then there’s a letter to be written to ‘Ucks. I promised ‘im, you know.”

They shared their meal by the river bank; and when it was eaten, sat for a time on the scooped-out brink while Avon ran at their feet–Arthur Miles searching again in the thumbed pages of _The Tempest_ for a hint that might perchance have escaped him; Tilda as sedulously intent on a page of a ladies’ newspaper in which the bread had been wrapped.

It informed her, under the heading of _Answers to Correspondents by “Smart Set,”_ of an excellent home for Anglo-Indian children (gravel soil), of a new way to clean Brussels lace, of the number of gowns required in these days for a week-end visit, of a scale of tips for gamekeepers. It directed her to a manicure, and instructed her how to build a pergola for an Italian garden, supposing that she lived in Suffolk and could spare half an acre facing east. She drank in all this information with an impartial appetite.

“What a favourite it is still, the mushroom ‘at!” she spelled out slowly. “W’y the other day, at Messrs. Freebody and Williams’s in Regent Street, there it confronted me again in a whole bevy of new model shapes. The medium, in brown Ottoman silk, fronted with wings of fine brown or blue lustre, is quite ridiculously cheap at 27s. 6d. And a large hat in black satin, swathed with black chiffon in which lurks just a touch of real ermine, asks you no more than 35s. 9d. Truly age cannot wither nor custom stale the infinite variety of the mushroom.'”

“What nonsense are you reading?” the boy demanded.

“Nonsense?” echoed Tilda. “What’s nonsense? It’s–it’s ‘eavingly–and anyway it ain’t no farther off than your Island.”

They resumed their way, slightly huffed one with another; passed a group of willows; and came to a halt, surprised and irresolute.

In the centre of a small sunny clearing they beheld a tent, with the litter of a camp equipage scattered on the turf about it; and between the tent and the river, where shone the flank of a bass-wood canoe moored between the alders, an artist had set up his easel. He was a young man, tall and gaunt, and stood back a little way from his canvas with paint-brush held at a slope, while across it he studied the subject of his picture–a grey bridge and the butt-end of a grey building, with a sign-board overtopping the autumnal willows.

For a few seconds the children observed him in silence. But some sound must have warned him; for by and by he turned a quick, eager face, and caught sight of them.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, scanning them rapidly up and down. “The very thing!–that is to say”–after a second and more prolonged scrutiny– “the boy. He just fills the bill. ‘Youthful Shakespeare Mews his Mighty Youth. The scene: Binton Bridges, beside Avon.'”

“Binton Bridges?” echoed Tilda, and walked forward to scan the sign-board.

“I must put that down,” said the artist, drawing out a notebook and pencil. “Ignorance of Juvenile Population in respect of Immediate Surroundings. Implied Reproach against Britain’s Primary Schools.”

But by this time the girl was standing under the sign-board and staring up at it. Four figures were depicted thereon in gay colours–a king, a priest, a soldier, and a John Bull farmer. Around them ran this legend–

“RULE ALL,
PRAY ALL,
FIGHT ALL,
PAY ALL.”

“Do you ‘appen to know, sir,” she asked, coming back, “if there’s a young woman employed ‘ere?”

“There is,” answered the artist. “I happen to know, because she won’t let me paint her, although I offered ten dollars.”

“That’s a good sign,” said Tilda.

“Oh, is it now?” he queried, staring after her as she marched boldly towards the house and was lost to sight between the willow-stems.

CHAPTER XVI.

ADVENTURES OF THE “FOUR ALLS” AND OF THE CELESTIAL CHEMIST

“‘_Friend Sancho,’ said Don Quixote, ‘this Island that I promised you can neither stir nor fly._'”–CERVANTES.

“Now what precisely did your sister mean by that?” asked the artist, withdrawing his gaze and fixing it on Arthur Miles.

“She is not my sister,” said the boy.

The artist–he was an extraordinarily tall young man, with a keen hatchet face, restless brown eyes, and straight auburn hair parted accurately in the middle–considered for a moment, then nodded.

“That’s so. It comes out, soon as you talk . . . Well, see here now, we’ll start right away. That’s how Art hits me–once I take hold of a notion, I must sling in and get going. It’s my temperament; and what’s Art–right _there_, please–what’s Art, after all, but expressed temperament? You catch the idea? You’re the Infant Shakespeare, the youth to fortune and to fame unknown–“

‘His listless length at noontide would he stretch’–

“Stretch what you have of it–“

‘And pore upon the brook that babbles by.’

“But I don’t want you to paint me,” rebelled the boy.

“Goodness! Why not?”

For a moment or two Arthur Miles faced the question almost sullenly.

“I don’t want my likeness taken,” he explained at length.

“My young friend,” the artist cheerfully assured him, “if that’s your trouble, dismiss it. I can’t paint a likeness for nuts.”

“You are sure?”

“Well, I should say I have a grounded expectation, seeing that I claim a bigger circle of friends than any other fellow that ever studied with Carolus; and apart from their liking for me, their conviction that never under any circumstances could I catch a likeness is about the only thing they have in common. I don’t say it’s the cement of their friendship; but, anyway, it’s an added tie.”

“If Tilda doesn’t mind–“

The boy hesitated, with a glance over his shoulder.

“We’ll consult the lady when the portrait’s finished. If she recognises you, I’ll destroy the canvas; and I can’t say fairer than that . . . No, I shan’t regret it. We’ll call it an offering to the gods . . . And now,” pursued the young man, flinging in a charcoal outline in fiery haste, “we’ll consider the brakes open.”

It took him perhaps thirty seconds to block in the figure, and at once he fell to mixing his palette, his fingers moving with a nervous, delicate haste. He held a brush between his teeth during the operation; but no sooner was it over, and the gag removed, than his speech began to gush in quick, impetuous jerks, each jerk marking an interval as, after flinging a fresh splash of paint upon the canvas, he stepped back half a pace to eye its effect.

“That’s my theory–what’s Art but temperament? expressed temperament? Now I’m a fellow that could never stick long to a thing–never in my life. I’ve not told you that I’m American, by the way. My name’s Jessup–George Pulteney Jessup, of Boise City, Idaho. My father–he’s about the most prominent citizen in the State of Idaho. You don’t get any ways far west of the Rockies before you bump against Nahum P. Jessup–and you’ll be apt to hurt yourself by bumping too hard. . . . My father began by setting it down to fickleness. He said it came of having too much money to play with. Mind you, he didn’t complain. He sent for me into his office, and ‘George,’ he said, ‘there’s some fathers, finding you so vola_tile_, would take the line of cutting down your allowance; but that’s no line for me. To begin with,’ he said, ‘it would set up a constraint between us, and constraint in my family relations is what, God helping me, I’ll never allow. And next, whatever I saved on you I’d just have to re-invest, and I’m over-capitalised as it is–you ‘d never guess the straits I’m put to daily in keeping fair abreast of fifteen per cent., which is my notion of making two ends meet. And, lastly, it ain’t natural. If a man’s born vola_tile_, vola_tile_ he is; and the sensible plan, I take it, is to lean your ear to Nature, the Mighty Mother, and find a career that has some use for that kind of temperament. Now,’ said my father, ‘I know a little about most legitimate careers, from ticket-punching up to lobbying, and there’s not one in which a man would hand in testimonials that he was vola_tile_. But,’ says my father, ‘what about Art? I’ve never taken stock of that occupation, myself: I never had time. But I remember once in New York going to a theatre and seeing Booth act William Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_; and not twenty minutes later, after all the ghosts and murderings, I happened into a restaurant, and saw the same man drinking cocktails and eating Blue Point oysters–with twice my appetite too. And Booth was at the very top of his profession.'”

“Yes,” said Arthur Miles, by this time greatly interested. “That’s like Mr. Mortimer, too.”

“Mortimer?” Mr. Jessup queried; and then, getting no answer, “Is he an actor?”

The boy nodded.

“A prominent one?”

“I–I believe so. I mean, he says he _ought_ to be.”

“I’d like to make his acquaintance. It’s queer, too, a child like you knowing about actors. What’s your name?”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur Miles, with another glance in the direction of the inn, “that Tilda would like me to tell.”

The young artist eyed him.

“Well, never mind; we were talking about my father. That’s how he came to send me to Paris to study Art. And since then I’ve done some thinking. It works out like this,” he pursued, stepping back and studying his daub between half-closed eyes, “the old man had struck ore as usual. I never knew a mind fuller of common sense–just homely