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The Little White Bird

by J. M. Barrie

July, 1998  [Etext #1376]


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THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD
OR
ADVENTURES IN
KENSINGTON GARDENS

BY

J.M. BARRIE




CONTENTS

    I. David and I Set Forth Upon a Journey
   II. The Little Nursery Governess
  III. Her Marriage, Her Clothes, Her Appetite, and an
       Inventory of Her Furniture.
   IV. A Night-Piece
    V. The Fight For Timothy
   VI. A Shock
  VII. The Last of Timothy
 VIII. The Inconsiderate Waiter
   IX. A Confirmed Spinster
    X. Sporting Reflections
   XI. The Runaway Perambulator
  XII. The Pleasantest Club in London
 XIII. The Graound Tour of the Gardens
  XIV. Peter Pan
   XV. The Thrush's Nest
  XVI. Lock-Out Time
 XVII. The Little House
XVIII. Peter's Goat
  XIX. An Interloper
   XX. David and Porthos Compared
  XXI. William Paterson
 XXII. Joey
XXIII. Pilkington's
 XXIV. Barbara
  XXV. The Cricket Match
 XXVI. The Dedication




THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD


I

David and I Set Forth Upon a Journey

Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me an
invitation from his mother: "I shall be so pleased if you will
come and see me," and I always reply in some such words as these:
"Dear madam, I decline."  And if David asks why I decline, I
explain that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman.

"Come this time, father," he urged lately, "for it is her
birthday, and she is twenty-six," which is so great an age to
David, that I think he fears she cannot last much longer.

"Twenty-six, is she, David?" I replied.  "Tell her I said she
looks more."

I had my delicious dream that night.  I dreamt that I too was
twenty-six, which was a long time ago, and that I took train to a
place called my home, whose whereabouts I see not in my waking
hours, and when I alighted at the station a dear lost love was
waiting for me, and we went away together.  She met me in no
ecstasy of emotion, nor was I surprised to find her there; it was
as if we had been married for years and parted for a day.  I like
to think that I gave her some of the things to carry.

Were I to tell my delightful dream to David's mother, to whom I
have never in my life addressed one word, she would droop her
head and raise it bravely, to imply that I make her very sad but
very proud, and she would be wishful to lend me her absurd little
pocket handkerchief.  And then, had I the heart, I might make a
disclosure that would startle her, for it is not the face of
David's mother that I see in my dreams.

Has it ever been your lot, reader, to be persecuted by a pretty
woman who thinks, without a tittle of reason, that you are bowed
down under a hopeless partiality for her?  It is thus that I have
been pursued for several years now by the unwelcome sympathy of
the tender-hearted and virtuous Mary A----.  When we pass in the
street the poor deluded soul subdues her buoyancy, as if it were
shame to walk happy before one she has lamed, and at such times
the rustle of her gown is whispered words of comfort to me, and
her arms are kindly wings that wish I was a little boy like
David. I also detect in her a fearful elation, which I am unaware
of until she has passed, when it comes back to me like a faint
note of challenge.  Eyes that say you never must, nose that says
why don't you? and a mouth that says I rather wish you could:
such is the portrait of Mary A---- as she and I pass by.

Once she dared to address me, so that she could boast to David
that I had spoken to her.  I was in the Kensington Gardens, and
she asked would I tell her the time please, just as children ask,
and forget as they run back with it to their nurse.  But I was
prepared even for this, and raising my hat I pointed with my
staff to a clock in the distance.  She should have been
overwhelmed, but as I walked on listening intently, I thought
with displeasure that I heard her laughing.

Her laugh is very like David's, whom I could punch all day in
order to hear him laugh.  I dare say she put this laugh into him.
She has been putting qualities into David, altering him, turning
him forever on a lathe since the day she first knew him, and
indeed long before, and all so deftly that he is still called a
child of nature.  When you release David's hand he is immediately
lost like an arrow from the bow.  No sooner do you cast eyes on
him than you are thinking of birds.  It is difficult to believe
that he walks to the Kensington Gardens; he always seems to have
alighted there: and were I to scatter crumbs I opine he would
come and peck.  This is not what he set out to be; it is all the
doing of that timid-looking lady who affects to be greatly
surprised by it.  He strikes a hundred gallant poses in a day;
when he tumbles, which is often, he comes to the ground like a
Greek god; so Mary A---- has willed it.  But how she suffers that
he may achieve!  I have seen him climbing a tree while she stood
beneath in unutterable anguish; she had to let him climb, for
boys must be brave, but I am sure that, as she watched him, she
fell from every branch.

David admires her prodigiously; he thinks her so good that she
will be able to get him into heaven, however naughty he is.
Otherwise he would trespass less light-heartedly.  Perhaps she
has discovered this; for, as I learn from him, she warned him
lately that she is not such a dear as he thinks her.

"I am very sure of it," I replied.

"Is she such a dear as you think her?" he asked me.

"Heaven help her," I said, "if she be not dearer than that."

Heaven help all mothers if they be not really dears, for their
boy will certainly know it in that strange short hour of the day
when every mother stands revealed before her little son.  That
dread hour ticks between six and seven; when children go to bed
later the revelation has ceased to come.  He is lapt in for the
night now and lies quietly there, madam, with great, mysterious
eyes fixed upon his mother.  He is summing up your day.  Nothing
in the revelations that kept you together and yet apart in play
time can save you now; you two are of no age, no experience of
life separates you; it is the boy's hour, and you have come up
for judgment.  "Have I done well to-day, my son?"  You have got
to say it, and nothing may you hide from him; he knows all.  How
like your voice has grown to his, but more tremulous, and both so
solemn, so unlike the voice of either of you by day.

"You were a little unjust to me to-day about the apple; were you
not, mother?"

Stand there, woman, by the foot of the bed and cross your hands
and answer him.

"Yes, my son, I was.  I thought--"

But what you thought will not affect the verdict.

"Was it fair, mother, to say that I could stay out till six, and
then pretend it was six before it was quite six?"

"No, it was very unfair.  I thought--"

"Would it have been a lie if I had said it was quite six?"

"Oh, my son, my son!  I shall never tell you a lie again."

"No, mother, please don't."

"My boy, have I done well to-day on the whole?"

Suppose he were unable to say yes.

These are the merest peccadilloes, you may say.  Is it then a
little thing to be false to the agreement you signed when you got
the boy?  There are mothers who avoid their children in that
hour, but this will not save them.  Why is it that so many women
are afraid to be left alone with their thoughts between six and
seven? I am not asking this of you, Mary.  I believe that when
you close David's door softly there is a gladness in your eyes,
and the awe of one who knows that the God to whom little boys say
their prayers has a face very like their mother's.

I may mention here that David is a stout believer in prayer, and
has had his first fight with another young Christian who
challenged him to the jump and prayed for victory, which David
thought was taking an unfair advantage.

"So Mary is twenty-six!  I say, David, she is getting on.  Tell
her that I am coming in to kiss her when she is fifty-two."

He told her, and I understand that she pretended to be indignant.
When I pass her in the street now she pouts.  Clearly preparing
for our meeting.  She has also said, I learn, that I shall not
think so much of her when she is fifty-two, meaning that she will
not be so pretty then.  So little does the sex know of beauty.
Surely a spirited old lady may be the prettiest sight in the
world.  For my part, I confess that it is they, and not the young
ones, who have ever been my undoing.  Just as I was about to fall
in love I suddenly found that I preferred the mother.  Indeed, I
cannot see a likely young creature without impatiently
considering her chances for, say, fifty-two.  Oh, you mysterious
girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; you must
come into the open then.  If the mouth has fallen sourly yours
the blame: all the meannesses your youth concealed have been
gathering in your face.  But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways
and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in
your twilight like evening primroses.

Is it not strange that, though I talk thus plainly to David about
his mother, he still seems to think me fond of her?  How now, I
reflect, what sort of bumpkin is this, and perhaps I say to him
cruelly: "Boy, you are uncommonly like your mother."

To which David: "Is that why you are so kind to me?"

I suppose I am kind to him, but if so it is not for love of his
mother, but because he sometimes calls me father.  On my honour
as a soldier, there is nothing more in it than that.  I must not
let him know this, for it would make him conscious, and so break
the spell that binds him and me together.  Oftenest I am but
Captain W---- to him, and for the best of reasons.  He addresses me
as father when he is in a hurry only, and never have I dared ask
him to use the name.  He says, "Come, father," with an accursed
beautiful carelessness.  So let it be, David, for a little while
longer.

I like to hear him say it before others, as in shops.  When in
shops he asks the salesman how much money he makes in a day, and
which drawer he keeps it in, and why his hair is red, and does he
like Achilles, of whom David has lately heard, and is so
enamoured that he wants to die to meet him.  At such times the
shopkeepers accept me as his father, and I cannot explain the
peculiar pleasure this gives me.  I am always in two minds then,
to linger that we may have more of it, and to snatch him away
before he volunteers the information, "He is not really my
father."

When David meets Achilles I know what will happen.  The little
boy will take the hero by the hand, call him father, and drag him
away to some Round Pond.

One day, when David was about five, I sent him the following
letter: "Dear David: If you really want to know how it began,
will you come and have a chop with me to-day at the club?"

Mary, who, I have found out, opens all his letters, gave her
consent, and, I doubt not, instructed him to pay heed to what
happened so that he might repeat it to her, for despite her
curiosity she knows not how it began herself.  I chuckled,
guessing that she expected something romantic.

He came to me arrayed as for a mighty journey, and looking
unusually solemn, as little boys always do look when they are
wearing a great coat.  There was a shawl round his neck.  "You
can take some of them off," I said, "when we come to summer."

"Shall we come to summer?" he asked, properly awed.

"To many summers," I replied, "for we are going away back, David,
to see your mother as she was in the days before there was you."

We hailed a hansom.  "Drive back six years," I said to the cabby,
"and stop at the Junior Old Fogies' Club."

He was a stupid fellow, and I had to guide him with my umbrella.

The streets were not quite as they had been in the morning.  For
instance, the bookshop at the corner was now selling fish.  I
dropped David a hint of what was going on.

"It doesn't make me littler, does it?" he asked anxiously; and
then, with a terrible misgiving: "It won't make me too little,
will it, father?" by which he meant that he hoped it would not do
for him altogether.  He slipped his hand nervously into mine, and
I put it in my pocket.

You can't think how little David looked as we entered the portals
of the club.


II

The Little Nursery Governess

As I enter the club smoking-room you are to conceive David
vanishing into nothingness, and that it is any day six years ago
at two in the afternoon.  I ring for coffee, cigarette, and
cherry brandy, and take my chair by the window, just as the
absurd little nursery governess comes tripping into the street.
I always feel that I have rung for her.

While I am lifting the coffee-pot cautiously lest the lid fall
into the cup, she is crossing to the post-office; as I select the
one suitable lump of sugar she is taking six last looks at the
letter; with the aid of William I light my cigarette, and now she
is re-reading the delicious address.  I lie back in my chair, and
by this time she has dropped the letter down the slit.  I toy
with my liqueur, and she is listening to hear whether the postal
authorities have come for her letter.  I scowl at a fellow-member
who has had the impudence to enter the smoking-room, and her two
little charges are pulling her away from the post-office.  When I
look out at the window again she is gone, but I shall ring for
her to-morrow at two sharp.

She must have passed the window many times before I noticed her.
I know not where she lives, though I suppose it to be hard by.
She is taking the little boy and girl, who bully her, to the St.
James's Park, as their hoops tell me, and she ought to look
crushed and faded.  No doubt her mistress overworks her.  It must
enrage the other servants to see her deporting herself as if she
were quite the lady.

I noticed that she had sometimes other letters to post, but that
the posting of the one only was a process.  They shot down the
slit, plebeians all, but it followed pompously like royalty.  I
have even seen her blow a kiss after it.

Then there was her ring, of which she was as conscious as if it
rather than she was what came gaily down the street.  She felt it
through her glove to make sure that it was still there.  She took
off the glove and raised the ring to her lips, though I doubt not
it was the cheapest trinket.  She viewed it from afar by
stretching out her hand; she stooped to see how it looked near
the ground; she considered its effect on the right of her and on
the left of her and through one eye at a time.  Even when you saw
that she had made up her mind to think hard of something else,
the little silly would take another look.

I give anyone three chances to guess why Mary was so happy.

No and no and no.  The reason was simply this, that a lout of a
young man loved her.  And so, instead of crying because she was
the merest nobody, she must, forsooth, sail jauntily down Pall
Mall, very trim as to her tackle and ticketed with the
insufferable air of an engaged woman.  At first her complacency
disturbed me, but gradually it became part of my life at two
o'clock with the coffee, the cigarette, and the liqueur.  Now
comes the tragedy.

Thursday is her great day.  She has from two to three every
Thursday for her very own; just think of it: this girl, who is
probably paid several pounds a year, gets a whole hour to herself
once a week.  And what does she with it?  Attend classes for
making her a more accomplished person?  Not she.  This is what
she does: sets sail for Pall Mall, wearing all her pretty things,
including the blue feathers, and with such a sparkle of
expectation on her face that I stir my coffee quite fiercely.  On
ordinary days she at least tries to look demure, but on a
Thursday she has had the assurance to use the glass door of the
club as a mirror in which to see how she likes her engaging
trifle of a figure to-day.

In the meantime a long-legged oaf is waiting for her outside the
post-office, where they meet every Thursday, a fellow who always
wears the same suit of clothes, but has a face that must ever
make him free of the company of gentlemen.  He is one of your
lean, clean Englishmen, who strip so well, and I fear me he is
handsome; I say fear, for your handsome men have always annoyed
me, and had I lived in the duelling days I swear I would have
called every one of them out.  He seems to be quite unaware that
he is a pretty fellow, but Lord, how obviously Mary knows it.  I
conclude that he belongs to the artistic classes, he is so easily
elated and depressed; and because he carries his left thumb
curiously, as if it were feeling for the hole of a palette, I
have entered his name among the painters.  I find pleasure in
deciding that they are shocking bad pictures, for obviously no
one buys them.  I feel sure Mary says they are splendid, she is
that sort of woman. Hence the rapture with which he greets her.
Her first effect upon him is to make him shout with laughter.  He
laughs suddenly haw from an eager exulting face, then haw again,
and then, when you are thanking heaven that it is at last over,
comes a final haw, louder than the others.  I take them to be
roars of joy because Mary is his, and they have a ring of youth
about them that is hard to bear.  I could forgive him everything
save his youth, but it is so aggressive that I have sometimes to
order William testily to close the window.

How much more deceitful than her lover is the little nursery
governess.  The moment she comes into sight she looks at the
post- office and sees him.  Then she looks straight before her,
and now she is observed, and he rushes across to her in a glory,
and she starts--positively starts--as if he had taken her by
surprise. Observe her hand rising suddenly to her wicked little
heart.  This is the moment when I stir my coffee violently.  He
gazes down at her in such rapture that he is in everybody's way,
and as she takes his arm she gives it a little squeeze, and then
away they strut, Mary doing nine-tenths of the talking.  I fall
to wondering what they will look like when they grow up.

What a ludicrous difference do these two nobodies make to each
other.  You can see that they are to be married when he has
twopence.

Thus I have not an atom of sympathy with this girl, to whom
London is famous only as the residence of a young man who
mistakes her for someone else, but her happiness had become part
of my repast at two P.M., and when one day she walked down Pall
Mall without gradually posting a letter I was most indignant.  It
was as if William had disobeyed orders.  Her two charges were as
surprised as I, and pointed questioningly to the slit, at which
she shook her head.  She put her finger to her eyes, exactly like
a sad baby, and so passed from the street.

Next day the same thing happened, and I was so furious that I bit
through my cigarette.  Thursday came, when I prayed that there
might be an end of this annoyance, but no, neither of them
appeared on that acquainted ground.  Had they changed their post-
office?  No, for her eyes were red every day, and heavy was her
foolish little heart.  Love had put out his lights, and the
little nursery governess walked in darkness.

I felt I could complain to the committee.

Oh, you selfish young zany of a man, after all you have said to
her, won't you make it up and let me return to my coffee?  Not
he.

Little nursery governess, I appeal to you.  Annoying girl, be
joyous as of old during the five minutes of the day when you are
anything to me, and for the rest of the time, so far as I am
concerned, you may be as wretched as you list.  Show some
courage. I assure you he must be a very bad painter; only the
other day I saw him looking longingly into the window of a cheap
Italian restaurant, and in the end he had to crush down his
aspirations with two penny scones.

You can do better than that.  Come, Mary.

All in vain.  She wants to be loved; can't do without love from
morning till night; never knew how little a woman needs till she
lost that little.  They are all like this.

Zounds, madam, if you are resolved to be a drooping little figure
till you die, you might at least do it in another street.

Not only does she maliciously depress me by walking past on
ordinary days, but I have discovered that every Thursday from two
to three she stands afar off, gazing hopelessly at the romantic
post-office where she and he shall meet no more.  In these windy
days she is like a homeless leaf blown about by passers-by.

There is nothing I can do except thunder at William.

At last she accomplished her unworthy ambition.  It was a wet
Thursday, and from the window where I was writing letters I saw
the forlorn soul taking up her position at the top of the street:
in a blast of fury I rose with the one letter I had completed,
meaning to write the others in my chambers.  She had driven me
from the club.

I had turned out of Pall Mall into a side street, when whom
should I strike against but her false swain!  It was my fault,
but I hit out at him savagely, as I always do when I run into
anyone in the street.  Then I looked at him.  He was hollow-eyed;
he was muddy; there was not a haw left in him.  I never saw a
more abject young man; he had not even the spirit to resent the
testy stab I had given him with my umbrella.  But this is the
important thing: he was glaring wistfully at the post-office and
thus in a twink I saw that he still adored my little governess.
Whatever had been their quarrel he was as anxious to make it up
as she, and perhaps he had been here every Thursday while she was
round the corner in Pall Mall, each watching the post-office for
an apparition.  But from where they hovered neither could see the
other.

I think what I did was quite clever.  I dropped my letter unseen
at his feet, and sauntered back to the club.  Of course, a
gentleman who finds a letter on the pavement feels bound to post
it, and I presumed that he would naturally go to the nearest
office.

With my hat on I strolled to the smoking-room window, and was
just in time to see him posting my letter across the way.  Then I
looked for the little nursery governess.  I saw her as woe-begone
as ever; then, suddenly--oh, you poor little soul, and has it
really been as bad as that!

She was crying outright, and he was holding both her hands.  It
was a disgraceful exhibition.  The young painter would evidently
explode if he could not make use of his arms.  She must die if
she could not lay her head upon his breast.  I must admit that he
rose to the occasion; he hailed a hansom.

"William," said I gaily, "coffee, cigarette, and cherry brandy."



As I sat there watching that old play David plucked my sleeve to
ask what I was looking at so deedily; and when I told him he ran
eagerly to the window, but he reached it just too late to see the
lady who was to become his mother.  What I told him of her
doings, however, interested him greatly; and he intimated rather
shyly that he was acquainted with the man who said,
"Haw-haw-haw."  On the other hand, he irritated me by betraying
an idiotic interest in the two children, whom he seemed to regard
as the hero and heroine of the story.  What were their names?
How old were they? Had they both hoops?  Were they iron hoops, or
just wooden hoops? Who gave them their hoops?

"You don't seem to understand, my boy," I said tartly, "that had
I not dropped that letter, there would never have been a little
boy called David A----."  But instead of being appalled by this he
asked, sparkling, whether I meant that he would still be a bird
flying about in the Kensington Gardens.

David knows that all children in our part of London were once
birds in the Kensington Gardens; and that the reason there are
bars on nursery windows and a tall fender by the fire is because
very little people sometimes forget that they have no longer
wings, and try to fly away through the window or up the chimney.

Children in the bird stage are difficult to catch.  David knows
that many people have none, and his delight on a summer afternoon
is to go with me to some spot in the Gardens where these
unfortunates may be seen trying to catch one with small pieces of
cake.

That the birds know what would happen if they were caught, and
are even a little undecided about which is the better life, is
obvious to every student of them.  Thus, if you leave your empty
perambulator under the trees and watch from a distance, you will
see the birds boarding it and hopping about from pillow to
blanket in a twitter of excitement; they are trying to find out
how babyhood would suit them.

Quite the prettiest sight in the Gardens is when the babies stray
from the tree where the nurse is sitting and are seen feeding the
birds, not a grownup near them.  It is first a bit to me and then
a bit to you, and all the time such a jabbering and laughing from
both sides of the railing.  They are comparing notes and
inquiring for old friends, and so on; but what they say I cannot
determine, for when I approach they all fly away.

The first time I ever saw David was on the sward behind the
Baby's Walk.  He was a missel-thrush, attracted thither that hot
day by a hose which lay on the ground sending forth a gay trickle
of water, and David was on his back in the water, kicking up his
legs.  He used to enjoy being told of this, having forgotten all
about it, and gradually it all came back to him, with a number of
other incidents that had escaped my memory, though I remember
that he was eventually caught by the leg with a long string and a
cunning arrangement of twigs near the Round Pond.  He never tires
of this story, but I notice that it is now he who tells it to me
rather than I to him, and when we come to the string he rubs his
little leg as if it still smarted.

So when David saw his chance of being a missel-thrush again he
called out to me quickly: "Don't drop the letter!" and there were
tree-tops in his eyes.

"Think of your mother," I said severely.

He said he would often fly in to see her.  The first thing he
would do would be to hug her.  No, he would alight on the water-
jug first, and have a drink.

"Tell her, father," he said with horrid heartlessness, "always to
have plenty of water in it, 'cos if I had to lean down too far I
might fall in and be drownded."

"Am I not to drop the letter, David?  Think of your poor mother
without her boy!"

It affected him, but he bore up.  When she was asleep, he said,
he would hop on to the frilly things of her night-gown and peck
at her mouth.

"And then she would wake up, David, and find that she had only a
bird instead of a boy."

This shock to Mary was more than he could endure.  "You can drop
it," he said with a sigh.  So I dropped the letter, as I think I
have already mentioned; and that is how it all began.


III

Her Marriage, Her Clothes, Her Appetite, and an Inventory of Her
Furniture

A week or two after I dropped the letter I was in a hansom on my
way to certain barracks when loud above the city's roar I heard
that accursed haw-haw-haw, and there they were, the two of them,
just coming out of a shop where you may obtain pianos on the hire
system.  I had the merest glimpse of them, but there was an
extraordinary rapture on her face, and his head was thrown
proudly back, and all because they had been ordering a piano on
the hire system.

So they were to be married directly.  It was all rather
contemptible, but I passed on tolerantly, for it is only when she
is unhappy that this woman disturbs me, owing to a clever way she
has at such times of looking more fragile than she really is.

When next I saw them, they were gazing greedily into the window
of the sixpenny-halfpenny shop, which is one of the most
deliciously dramatic spots in London.  Mary was taking notes
feverishly on a slip of paper while he did the adding up, and in
the end they went away gloomily without buying anything.  I was
in high feather. "Match abandoned, ma'am," I said to myself;
"outlook hopeless; another visit to the Governesses' Agency
inevitable; can't marry for want of a kitchen shovel."  But I was
imperfectly acquainted with the lady.

A few days afterward I found myself walking behind her.  There is
something artful about her skirts by which I always know her,
though I can't say what it is.  She was carrying an enormous
parcel that might have been a bird-cage wrapped in brown paper,
and she took it into a bric-a-brac shop and came out without it.
She then ran rather than walked in the direction of the sixpenny-
halfpenny shop.  Now mystery of any kind is detestable to me, and
I went into the bric-a-brac shop, ostensibly to look at the
cracked china; and there, still on the counter, with the wrapping
torn off it, was the article Mary had sold in order to furnish on
the proceeds.  What do you think it was?  It was a wonderful
doll's house, with dolls at tea downstairs and dolls going to bed
upstairs, and a doll showing a doll out at the front door.
Loving lips had long ago licked most of the paint off, but
otherwise the thing was in admirable preservation; obviously the
joy of Mary's childhood, it had now been sold by her that she
might get married.

"Lately purchased by us," said the shopwoman, seeing me look at
the toy, "from a lady who has no further use for it."

I think I have seldom been more indignant with Mary.  I bought
the doll's house, and as they knew the lady's address (it was at
this shop that I first learned her name) I instructed them to
send it back to her with the following letter, which I wrote in
the shop: "Dear madam, don't be ridiculous.  You will certainly
have further use for this.  I am, etc., the Man Who Dropped the
Letter."

It pained me afterward, but too late to rescind the order, to
reflect that I had sent her a wedding present; and when next I
saw her she had been married for some months.  The time was nine
o'clock of a November evening, and we were in a street of shops
that has not in twenty years decided whether to be genteel or
frankly vulgar; here it minces in the fashion, but take a step
onward and its tongue is in the cup of the ice-cream man.  I
usually rush this street, which is not far from my rooms, with
the glass down, but to-night I was walking.  Mary was in front of
me, leaning in a somewhat foolish way on the haw-er, and they
were chatting excitedly.  She seemed to be remonstrating with him
for going forward, yet more than half admiring him for not
turning back, and I wondered why.

And after all what was it that Mary and her painter had come out
to do?  To buy two pork chops.  On my honour.  She had been
trying to persuade him, I decided, that they were living too
lavishly. That was why she sought to draw him back.  But in her
heart she loves audacity, and that is why she admired him for
pressing forward.

No sooner had they bought the chops than they scurried away like
two gleeful children to cook them.  I followed, hoping to trace
them to their home, but they soon out-distanced me, and that
night I composed the following aphorism: It is idle to attempt to
overtake a pretty young woman carrying pork chops.  I was now
determined to be done with her.  First, however, to find out
their abode, which was probably within easy distance of the shop.
 I even conceived them lured into taking their house by the
advertisement, "Conveniently situated for the Pork Emporium."

Well, one day--now this really is romantic and I am rather proud
of it.  My chambers are on the second floor, and are backed by an
anxiously polite street between which and mine are little yards
called, I think, gardens.  They are so small that if you have the
tree your neighbour has the shade from it.  I was looking out at
my back window on the day we have come to when whom did I see but
the whilom nursery governess sitting on a chair in one of these
gardens.  I put up my eye-glass to make sure, and undoubtedly it
was she.  But she sat there doing nothing, which was by no means
my conception of the jade, so I brought a fieldglass to bear and
discovered that the object was merely a lady's jacket.  It hung
on the back of a kitchen chair, seemed to be a furry thing, and,
I must suppose, was suspended there for an airing.

I was chagrined, and then I insisted stoutly with myself that, as
it was not Mary, it must be Mary's jacket.  I had never seen her
wear such a jacket, mind you, yet I was confident, I can't tell
why.  Do clothes absorb a little of the character of their
wearer, so that I recognised this jacket by a certain coquetry?
If she has a way with her skirts that always advertises me of her
presence, quite possibly she is as cunning with jackets.  Or
perhaps she is her own seamstress, and puts in little tucks of
herself.

Figure it what you please; but I beg to inform you that I put on
my hat and five minutes afterward saw Mary and her husband emerge
from the house to which I had calculated that garden belonged.
Now am I clever, or am I not?

When they had left the street I examined the house leisurely, and
a droll house it is.  Seen from the front it appears to consist
of a door and a window, though above them the trained eye may
detect another window, the air-hole of some apartment which it
would be just like Mary's grandiloquence to call her bedroom.
The houses on each side of this bandbox are tall, and I
discovered later that it had once been an open passage to the
back gardens.  The story and a half of which it consists had been
knocked up cheaply, by carpenters I should say rather than
masons, and the general effect is of a brightly coloured van that
has stuck for ever on its way through the passage.

The low houses of London look so much more homely than the tall
ones that I never pass them without dropping a blessing on their
builders, but this house was ridiculous; indeed it did not call
itself a house, for over the door was a board with the
inscription "This space to be sold," and I remembered, as I rang
the bell, that this notice had been up for years.  On avowing
that I wanted a space, I was admitted by an elderly, somewhat
dejected looking female, whose fine figure was not on scale with
her surroundings. Perhaps my face said so, for her first remark
was explanatory.

"They get me cheap," she said, "because I drink."

I bowed, and we passed on to the drawing-room.  I forget whether
I have described Mary's personal appearance, but if so you have a
picture of that sunny drawing-room.  My first reflection was, How
can she have found the money to pay for it all! which is always
your first reflection when you see Mary herself a-tripping down
the street.

I have no space (in that little room) to catalogue all the whim-
whams with which she had made it beautiful, from the hand-sewn
bell-rope which pulled no bell to the hand-painted cigar-box that
contained no cigars.  The floor was of a delicious green with
exquisite oriental rugs; green and white, I think, was the lady's
scheme of colour, something cool, you observe, to keep the sun
under.  The window-curtains were of some rare material and the
colour of the purple clematis; they swept the floor grandly and
suggested a picture of Mary receiving visitors.  The piano we may
ignore, for I knew it to be hired, but there were many dainty
pieces, mostly in green wood, a sofa, a corner cupboard, and a
most captivating desk, which was so like its owner that it could
have sat down at her and dashed off a note.  The writing paper on
this desk had the word Mary printed on it, implying that if there
were other Marys they didn't count.  There were many oil-
paintings on the walls, mostly without frames, and I must mention
the chandelier, which was obviously of fabulous worth, for she
had encased it in a holland bag.

"I perceive, ma'am," said I to the stout maid, "that your master
is in affluent circumstances."

She shook her head emphatically, and said something that I failed
to catch.

"You wish to indicate," I hazarded, "that he married a fortune."

This time I caught the words.  They were "Tinned meats," and
having uttered them she lapsed into gloomy silence.

"Nevertheless," I said, "this room must have cost a pretty
penny."

"She done it all herself," replied my new friend, with
concentrated scorn.

"But this green floor, so beautifully stained--"

"Boiling oil," said she, with a flush of honest shame, "and a
shillingsworth o' paint."

"Those rugs--"

"Remnants," she sighed, and showed me how artfully they had been
pieced together.

"The curtains--"

"Remnants."

"At all events the sofa--"

She raised its drapery, and I saw that the sofa was built of
packing cases.

"The desk--"

I really thought that I was safe this time, for could I not see
the drawers with their brass handles, the charming shelf for
books, the pigeon-holes with their coverings of silk?

"She made it out of three orange boxes," said the lady, at last a
little awed herself.

I looked around me despairingly, and my eye alighted on the
holland covering.  "There is a fine chandelier in that holland
bag," I said coaxingly.

She sniffed and was raising an untender hand, when I checked her.
"Forbear, ma'am," I cried with authority, "I prefer to believe in
that bag.  How much to be pitied, ma'am, are those who have lost
faith in everything."  I think all the pretty things that the
little nursery governess had made out of nothing squeezed my hand
for letting the chandelier off.

"But, good God, ma'am," said I to madam, "what an exposure."

She intimated that there were other exposures upstairs.

"So there is a stair," said I, and then, suspiciously, "did she
make it?"

No, but how she had altered it.

The stair led to Mary's bedroom, and I said I would not look at
that, nor at the studio, which was a shed in the garden.

"Did she build the studio with her own hands?"

No, but how she had altered it.

"How she alters everything," I said.  "Do you think you are safe,
ma'am?"

She thawed a little under my obvious sympathy and honoured me
with some of her views and confidences.  The rental paid by Mary
and her husband was not, it appeared, one on which any self-
respecting domestic could reflect with pride.  They got the house
very cheap on the understanding that they were to vacate it
promptly if anyone bought it for building purposes, and because
they paid so little they had to submit to the indignity of the
notice-board.  Mary A---- detested the words "This space to be
sold," and had been known to shake her fist at them.  She was as
elated about her house as if it were a real house, and always
trembled when any possible purchaser of spaces called.

As I have told you my own aphorism I feel I ought in fairness to
record that of this aggrieved servant.  It was on the subject of
art.  "The difficulty," she said, "is not to paint pictures, but
to get frames for them."  A home thrust this.

She could not honestly say that she thought much of her master's
work.  Nor, apparently, did any other person.  Result, tinned
meats.

Yes, one person thought a deal of it, or pretended to do so; was
constantly flinging up her hands in delight over it; had even
been caught whispering fiercely to a friend, "Praise it, praise
it, praise it!"  This was when the painter was sunk in gloom.
Never, as I could well believe, was such a one as Mary for luring
a man back to cheerfulness.

"A dangerous woman," I said, with a shudder, and fell to
examining a painting over the mantel-shelf.  It was a portrait of
a man, and had impressed me favourably because it was framed.

"A friend of hers," my guide informed me, "but I never seed him."

I would have turned away from it, had not an inscription on the
picture drawn me nearer.  It was in a lady's handwriting, and
these were the words: "Fancy portrait of our dear unknown."
Could it be meant for me?  I cannot tell you how interested I
suddenly became.

It represented a very fine looking fellow, indeed, and not a day
more than thirty.

"A friend of hers, ma'am, did you say?" I asked quite shakily.
"How do you know that, if you have never seen him?"

"When master was painting of it," she said, "in the studio, he
used to come running in here to say to her such like as, 'What
colour would you make his eyes?'"

"And her reply, ma'am?" I asked eagerly.

"She said, 'Beautiful blue eyes.'  And he said, 'You wouldn't
make it a handsome face, would you?' and she says, 'A very
handsome face.'  And says he, 'Middle-aged?' and says she,
'Twenty-nine.' And I mind him saying, 'A little bald on the top?'
and she says, says she, 'Not at all.'"

The dear, grateful girl, not to make me bald on the top.

"I have seed her kiss her hand to that picture," said the maid.

Fancy Mary kissing her hand to me!  Oh, the pretty love!

Pooh!

I was staring at the picture, cogitating what insulting message I
could write on it, when I heard the woman's voice again.  "I
think she has known him since she were a babby," she was saying,
"for this here was a present he give her."

She was on her knees drawing the doll's house from beneath the
sofa, where it had been hidden away; and immediately I thought,
"I shall slip the insulting message into this."  But I did not,
and I shall tell you why.  It was because the engaging toy had
been redecorated by loving hands; there were fresh gowns for all
the inhabitants, and the paint on the furniture was scarcely dry.
 The little doll's house was almost ready for further use.

I looked at the maid, but her face was expressionless.  "Put it
back," I said, ashamed to have surprised Mary's pretty secret,
and I left the house dejectedly, with a profound conviction that
the little nursery governess had hooked on to me again.


IV

A Night-Piece

There came a night when the husband was alone in that street
waiting.  He can do nothing for you now, little nursery
governess, you must fight it out by yourself; when there are
great things to do in the house the man must leave.  Oh, man,
selfish, indelicate, coarse-grained at the best, thy woman's hour
has come; get thee gone.

He slouches from the house, always her true lover I do believe,
chivalrous, brave, a boy until to-night; but was he ever unkind
to her?  It is the unpardonable sin now; is there the memory of
an unkindness to stalk the street with him to-night?  And if not
an unkindness, still might he not sometimes have been a little
kinder?

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to
be a little kinder than is necessary?

Poor youth, she would come to the window if she were able, I am
sure, to sign that the one little unkindness is long forgotten,
to send you a reassuring smile till you and she meet again; and,
if you are not to meet again, still to send you a reassuring,
trembling smile.

Ah, no, that was for yesterday; it is too late now.  He wanders
the streets thinking of her tonight, but she has forgotten him.
In her great hour the man is nothing to the woman; their love is
trivial now.

He and I were on opposite sides of the street, now become
familiar ground to both of us, and divers pictures rose before me
in which Mary A---- walked.  Here was the morning after my only
entry into her house.  The agent had promised me to have the
obnoxious notice-board removed, but I apprehended that as soon as
the letter announcing his intention reached her she would remove
it herself, and when I passed by in the morning there she was on
a chair and a foot-stool pounding lustily at it with a hammer.
When it fell she gave it such a vicious little kick.

There were the nights when her husband came out to watch for the
postman.  I suppose he was awaiting some letter big with the fate
of a picture.  He dogged the postman from door to door like an
assassin or a guardian angel; never had he the courage to ask if
there was a letter for him, but almost as it fell into the box he
had it out and tore it open, and then if the door closed
despairingly the woman who had been at the window all this time
pressed her hand to her heart.  But if the news was good they
might emerge presently and strut off arm in arm in the direction
of the pork emporium.

One last picture.  On summer evenings I had caught glimpses of
them through the open window, when she sat at the piano singing
and playing to him.  Or while she played with one hand, she flung
out the other for him to grasp.  She was so joyously happy, and
she had such a romantic mind.  I conceived her so sympathetic
that she always laughed before he came to the joke, and I am sure
she had filmy eyes from the very start of a pathetic story.

And so, laughing and crying, and haunted by whispers, the little
nursery governess had gradually become another woman, glorified,
mysterious.  I suppose a man soon becomes used to the great
change, and cannot recall a time when there were no babes
sprawling in his Mary's face.

I am trying to conceive what were the thoughts of the young
husband on the other side of the street.  "If the barrier is to
be crossed to-night may I not go with her?  She is not so brave
as you think her.  When she talked so gaily a few hours ago, O my
God, did she deceive even you?"

Plain questions to-night.  "Why should it all fall on her?  What
is the man that he should be flung out into the street in this
terrible hour?  You have not been fair to the man."

Poor boy, his wife has quite forgotten him and his trumpery love.
If she lives she will come back to him, but if she dies she will
die triumphant and serene.  Life and death, the child and the
mother, are ever meeting as the one draws into harbour and the
other sets sail.  They exchange a bright "All's well" and pass
on.

But afterward?

The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead
young mothers, returned to see how their children fare.  There is
no other inducement great enough to bring the departed back.
They glide into the acquainted room when day and night, their
jailers, are in the grip, and whisper, "How is it with you, my
child?" but always, lest a strange face should frighten him, they
whisper it so low that he may not hear.  They bend over him to
see that he sleeps peacefully, and replace his sweet arm beneath
the coverlet, and they open the drawers to count how many little
vests he has.  They love to do these things.

What is saddest about ghosts is that they may not know their
child.  They expect him to be just as he was when they left him,
and they are easily bewildered, and search for him from room to
room, and hate the unknown boy he has become.  Poor, passionate
souls, they may even do him an injury.  These are the ghosts that
go wailing about old houses, and foolish wild stories are
invented to explain what is all so pathetic and simple.  I know
of a man who, after wandering far, returned to his early home to
pass the evening of his days in it, and sometimes from his chair
by the fire he saw the door open softly and a woman's face
appear.  She always looked at him very vindictively, and then
vanished. Strange things happened in this house.  Windows were
opened in the night.  The curtains of his bed were set fire to.
A step on the stair was loosened.  The covering of an old well in
a corridor where he walked was cunningly removed.  And when he
fell ill the wrong potion was put in the glass by his bedside,
and he died. How could the pretty young mother know that this
grizzled interloper was the child of whom she was in search?

All our notions about ghosts are wrong.  It is nothing so petty
as lost wills or deeds of violence that brings them back, and we
are not nearly so afraid of them as they are of us.

One by one the lights of the street went out, but still a lamp
burned steadily in the little window across the way.  I know not
how it happened, whether I had crossed first to him or he to me,
but, after being for a long time as the echo of each other's
steps, we were together now.  I can have had no desire to deceive
him, but some reason was needed to account for my vigil, and I
may have said something that he misconstrued, for above my words
he was always listening for other sounds.  But however it came
about he had conceived the idea that I was an outcast for a
reason similar to his own, and I let his mistake pass, it seemed
to matter so little and to draw us together so naturally.  We
talked together of many things, such as worldly ambition.  For
long ambition has been like an ancient memory to me, some
glorious day recalled from my springtime, so much a thing of the
past that I must make a railway journey to revisit it as to look
upon the pleasant fields in which that scene was laid.  But he
had been ambitious yesterday.

I mentioned worldly ambition.  "Good God!" he said with a
shudder.

There was a clock hard by that struck the quarters, and one
o'clock passed and two.  What time is it now?  Twenty past two.
And now?  It is still twenty past two.

I asked him about his relatives, and neither he nor she had any.
"We have a friend--" he began and paused, and then rambled into a
not very understandable story about a letter and a doll's house
and some unknown man who had bought one of his pictures, or was
supposed to have done so, in a curiously clandestine manner.  I
could not quite follow the story.

"It is she who insists that it is always the same person," he
said.  "She thinks he will make himself known to me if anything
happens to her."  His voice suddenly went husky.  "She told me,"
he said, "if she died and I discovered him, to give him her
love."

At this we parted abruptly, as we did at intervals throughout the
night, to drift together again presently.  He tried to tell me of
some things she had asked him to do should she not get over this,
but what they were I know not, for they engulfed him at the first
step.  He would draw back from them as ill-omened things, and
next moment he was going over them to himself like a child at
lessons. A child!  In that short year she had made him entirely
dependent on her.  It is ever thus with women: their first
deliberate act is to make their husband helpless.  There are few
men happily married who can knock in a nail.

But it was not of this that I was thinking.  I was wishing I had
not degenerated so much.

Well, as you know, the little nursery governess did not die.  At
eighteen minutes to four we heard the rustle of David's wings.
He boasts about it to this day, and has the hour to a syllable as
if the first thing he ever did was to look at the clock.

An oldish gentleman had opened the door and waved congratulations
to my companion, who immediately butted at me, drove me against a
wall, hesitated for a second with his head down as if in doubt
whether to toss me, and then rushed away.  I followed slowly.  I
shook him by the hand, but by this time he was haw-haw-hawing so
abominably that a disgust of him swelled up within me, and with
it a passionate desire to jeer once more at Mary A--

"It is little she will care for you now," I said to the fellow;
"I know the sort of woman; her intellectuals (which are all she
has to distinguish her from the brutes) are so imperfectly
developed that she will be a crazy thing about that boy for the
next three years.  She has no longer occasion for you, my dear
sir; you are like a picture painted out."

But I question whether he heard me.  I returned to my home.
Home! As if one alone can build a nest.  How often as I have
ascended the stairs that lead to my lonely, sumptuous rooms, have
I paused to listen to the hilarity of the servants below.  That
morning I could not rest: I wandered from chamber to chamber,
followed by my great dog, and all were alike empty and desolate.
I had nearly finished a cigar when I thought I heard a pebble
strike the window, and looking out I saw David's father standing
beneath.  I had told him that I lived in this street, and I
suppose my lights had guided him to my window.

"I could not lie down," he called up hoarsely, "until I heard
your news.  Is it all right?"

For a moment I failed to understand him.  Then I said sourly:
"Yes, all is right."

"Both doing well?" he inquired.

"Both," I answered, and all the time I was trying to shut the
window.  It was undoubtedly a kindly impulse that had brought him
out, but I was nevertheless in a passion with him.

"Boy or girl?" persisted the dodderer with ungentlemanlike
curiosity.

"Boy," I said, very furiously.

"Splendid," he called out, and I think he added something else,
but by that time I had closed the window with a slam.


V

The Fight For Timothy

Mary's poor pretentious babe screamed continually, with a note of
exultation in his din, as if he thought he was devoting himself
to a life of pleasure, and often the last sound I heard as I got
me out of the street was his haw-haw-haw, delivered triumphantly
as if it were some entirely new thing, though he must have
learned it like a parrot. I had not one tear for the woman, but
Poor father, thought I; to know that every time your son is happy
you are betrayed.  Phew, a nauseous draught.

I have the acquaintance of a deliciously pretty girl, who is
always sulky, and the thoughtless beseech her to be bright, not
witting wherein lies her heroism.  She was born the merriest of
maids, but, being a student of her face, learned anon that
sulkiness best becomes it, and so she has struggled and
prevailed.  A woman's history.  Brave Margaret, when night falls
and thy hair is down, dost thou return, I wonder, to thy natural
state, or, dreading the shadow of indulgence, sleepest thou even
sulkily?

But will a male child do as much for his father?  This remains to
be seen, and so, after waiting several months, I decided to buy
David a rocking-horse.  My St. Bernard dog accompanied me, though
I have always been diffident of taking him to toy-shops, which
over-excite him.  Hitherto the toys I had bought had always been
for him, and as we durst not admit this to the saleswoman we were
both horribly self-conscious when in the shop.  A score of times
I have told him that he had much better not come, I have
announced fiercely that he is not to come.  He then lets go of
his legs, which is how a St. Bernard sits down, making the noise
of a sack of coals suddenly deposited, and, laying his head
between his front paws, stares at me through the red haws that
make his eyes so mournful.  He will do this for an hour without
blinking, for he knows that in time it will unman me.  My dog
knows very little, but what little he does know he knows
extraordinarily well.  One can get out of my chambers by a back
way, and I sometimes steal softly--but I can't help looking back,
and there he is, and there are those haws asking sorrowfully, "Is
this worthy of you?"

"Curse you," I say, "get your hat," or words to that effect.

He has even been to the club, where he waddles up the stairs so
exactly like some respected member that he makes everybody most
uncomfortable.  I forget how I became possessor of him.  I think
I cut him out of an old number of Punch.  He costs me as much as
an eight-roomed cottage in the country.

He was a full-grown dog when I first, most foolishly, introduced
him to toys.  I had bought a toy in the street for my own
amusement.  It represented a woman, a young mother, flinging her
little son over her head with one hand and catching him in the
other, and I was entertaining myself on the hearth-rug with this
pretty domestic scene when I heard an unwonted sound from
Porthos, and, looking up, I saw that noble and melancholic
countenance on the broad grin.  I shuddered and was for putting
the toy away at once, but he sternly struck down my arm with his,
and signed that I was to continue.  The unmanly chuckle always
came, I found, when the poor lady dropped her babe, but the whole
thing entranced him; he tried to keep his excitement down by
taking huge draughts of water; he forgot all his niceties of
conduct; he sat in holy rapture with the toy between his paws,
took it to bed with him, ate it in the night, and searched for it
so longingly next day that I had to go out and buy him the man
with the scythe.  After that we had everything of note, the
bootblack boy, the toper with bottle, the woolly rabbit that
squeaks when you hold it in your mouth; they all vanished as
inexplicably as the lady, but I dared not tell him my suspicions,
for he suspected also and his gentle heart would have mourned had
I confirmed his fears.

The dame in the temple of toys which we frequent thinks I want
them for a little boy and calls him "the precious" and "the
lamb," the while Porthos is standing gravely by my side.  She is
a motherly soul, but over-talkative.

"And how is the dear lamb to-day?" she begins, beaming.

"Well, ma'am, well," I say, keeping tight grip of his collar.

"This blighty weather is not affecting his darling appetite?"

"No, ma'am, not at all."  (She would be considerably surprised if
informed that he dined to-day on a sheepshead, a loaf, and three
cabbages, and is suspected of a leg of mutton.)

"I hope he loves his toys?"

"He carries them about with him everywhere, ma'am."  (Has the one
we bought yesterday with him now, though you might not think it
to look at him.)

"What do you say to a box of tools this time?"

"I think not, ma'am."

"Is the deary fond of digging?"

"Very partial to digging."  (We shall find the leg of mutton some
day.)

"Then perhaps a weeny spade and a pail?"

She got me to buy a model of Canterbury Cathedral once, she was
so insistent, and Porthos gave me his mind about it when we got
home. He detests the kindergarten system, and as she is absurdly
prejudiced in its favour we have had to try other shops.  We went
to the Lowther Arcade for the rocking-horse.  Dear Lowther
Arcade!  Ofttimes have we wandered agape among thy enchanted
palaces, Porthos and I, David and I, David and Porthos and I.  I
have heard that thou art vulgar, but I cannot see how, unless it
be that tattered children haunt thy portals, those awful yet
smiling entrances to so much joy.  To the Arcade there are two
entrances, and with much to be sung in laudation of that which
opens from the Strand I yet on the whole prefer the other as the
more truly romantic, because it is there the tattered ones
congregate, waiting to see the Davids emerge with the magic lamp.
We have always a penny for them, and I have known them, before
entering the Arcade with it, retire (but whither?) to wash;
surely the prettiest of all the compliments that are paid to the
home of toys.

And now, O Arcade, so much fairer than thy West End brother, we
are told that thou art doomed, anon to be turned into an
eatinghouse or a hive for usurers, something rankly useful.  All
thy delights are under notice to quit.  The Noah's arks are
packed one within another, with clockwork horses harnessed to
them; the soldiers, knapsack on back, are kissing their hands to
the dear foolish girls, who, however, will not be left behind
them; all the four-footed things gather around the elephant, who
is overful of drawing-room furniture; the birds flutter their
wings; the man with the scythe mows his way through the crowd;
the balloons tug at their strings; the ships rock under a swell
of sail, everything is getting ready for the mighty exodus into
the Strand.  Tears will be shed.

So we bought the horse in the Lowther Arcade, Porthos, who
thought it was for him, looking proud but uneasy, and it was sent
to the bandbox house anonymously.  About a week afterward I had
the ill- luck to meet Mary's a husband in Kensington, so I asked
him what he had called his little girl.

"It is a boy," he replied, with intolerable good-humour, "we call
him David."

And then with a singular lack of taste he wanted the name of my
boy.

I flicked my glove.  "Timothy," said I.

I saw a suppressed smile on his face, and said hotly that Timothy
was as good a name as David.  "I like it," he assured me, and
expressed a hope that they would become friends.  I boiled to say
that I really could not allow Timothy to mix with boys of the
David class, but I refrained, and listened coldly while he told
me what David did when you said his toes were pigs going to
market or returning from it, I forget which.  He also boasted of
David's weight (a subject about which we are uncommonly touchy at
the club), as if children were for throwing forth for a wager.

But no more about Timothy.  Gradually this vexed me.  I felt what
a forlorn little chap Timothy was, with no one to say a word for
him, and I became his champion and hinted something about
teething, but withdrew it when it seemed too surprising, and
tried to get on to safer ground, such as bibs and general
intelligence, but the painter fellow was so willing to let me
have my say, and knew so much more about babies than is fitting
for men to know, that I paled before him and wondered why the
deuce he was listening to me so attentively.

You may remember a story he had told me about some anonymous
friend.  "His latest," said he now, "is to send David a rocking-
horse!"

I must say I could see no reason for his mirth.  "Picture it,"
said he, "a rocking-horse for a child not three months old!"

I was about to say fiercely: "The stirrups are adjustable," but
thought it best to laugh with him.  But I was pained to hear that
Mary had laughed, though heaven knows I have often laughed at
her.

"But women are odd," he said unexpectedly, and explained.  It
appears that in the middle of her merriment Mary had become grave
and said to him quite haughtily, "I see nothing to laugh at."
Then she had kissed the horse solemnly on the nose and said, "I
wish he was here to see me do it."  There are moments when one
cannot help feeling a drawing to Mary.

But moments only, for the next thing he said put her in a
particularly odious light.  He informed me that she had sworn to
hunt Mr. Anon down.

"She won't succeed," I said, sneering but nervous.

"Then it will be her first failure," said he.

"But she knows nothing about the man."

"You would not say that if you heard her talking of him.  She
says he is a gentle, whimsical, lonely old bachelor."

"Old?" I cried.

"Well, what she says is that he will soon be old if he doesn't
take care.  He is a bachelor at all events, and is very fond of
children, but has never had one to play with."

"Could not play with a child though there was one," I said
brusquely; "has forgotten the way; could stand and stare only."

"Yes, if the parents were present.  But he thinks that if he were
alone with the child he could come out strong."

"How the deuce--" I began

"That is what she says," he explained, apologetically.  "I think
she will prove to be too clever for him."

"Pooh," I said, but undoubtedly I felt a dizziness, and the next
time I met him he quite frightened me.  "Do you happen to know
any one," he said, "who has a St. Bernard dog?"

"No," said I, picking up my stick.

"He has a St. Bernard dog."

"How have you found that out?"

"She has found it out."

"But how?"

"I don't know."

I left him at once, for Porthos was but a little way behind me.
The mystery of it scared me, but I armed promptly for battle.  I
engaged a boy to walk Porthos in Kensington Gardens, and gave him
these instructions: "Should you find yourself followed by a young
woman wheeling a second-hand perambulator, instantly hand her
over to the police on the charge of attempting to steal the dog."

Now then, Mary.

"By the way," her husband said at our next meeting, "that
rocking- horse I told you of cost three guineas."

"She has gone to the shop to ask?"

"No, not to ask that, but for a description of the purchaser's
appearance."

Oh, Mary, Mary.

Here is the appearance of purchaser as supplied at the Arcade:--
looked like a military gentleman; tall, dark, and rather dressy;
fine Roman nose (quite so), carefully trimmed moustache going
grey (not at all); hair thin and thoughtfully distributed over
the head like fiddlestrings, as if to make the most of it (pah!);
dusted chair with handkerchief before sitting down on it, and had
other oldmaidish ways (I should like to know what they are);
tediously polite, but no talker; bored face; age forty-five if a
day (a lie); was accompanied by an enormous yellow dog with sore
eyes.  (They always think the haws are sore eyes.)

"Do you know anyone who is like that?" Mary's husband asked me
innocently.

"My dear man," I said, "I know almost no one who is not like
that," and it was true, so like each other do we grow at the
club. I was pleased, on the whole, with this talk, for it at
least showed me how she had come to know of the St. Bernard, but
anxiety returned when one day from behind my curtains I saw Mary
in my street with an inquiring eye on the windows.  She stopped a
nurse who was carrying a baby and went into pretended ecstasies
over it. I was sure she also asked whether by any chance it was
called Timothy.  And if not, whether that nurse knew any other
nurse who had charge of a Timothy.

Obviously Mary suspicioned me, but nevertheless, I clung to
Timothy, though I wished fervently that I knew more about him;
for I still met that other father occasionally, and he always
stopped to compare notes about the boys.  And the questions he
asked were so intimate, how Timothy slept, how he woke up, how he
fell off again, what we put in his bath.  It is well that dogs
and little boys have so much in common, for it was really of
Porthos I told him; how he slept (peacefully), how he woke up
(supposed to be subject to dreams), how he fell off again (with
one little hand on his nose), but I glided past what we put in
his bath (carbolic and a mop).

The man had not the least suspicion of me, and I thought it
reasonable to hope that Mary would prove as generous.  Yet was I
straitened in my mind.  For it might be that she was only biding
her time to strike suddenly, and this attached me the more to
Timothy, as if I feared she might soon snatch him from me.  As
was indeed to be the case.


VI

A Shock

It was on a May day, and I saw Mary accompany her husband as far
as the first crossing, whence she waved him out of sight as if he
had boarded an Atlantic-liner.  All this time she wore the face
of a woman happily married who meant to go straight home, there
to await her lord's glorious return; and the military-looking
gentleman watching her with a bored smile saw nothing better
before him than a chapter on the Domestic Felicities.  Oh, Mary,
can you not provide me with the tiniest little plot?

Hallo!

No sooner was she hid from him than she changed into another
woman; she was now become a calculating purposeful madam, who
looked around her covertly and, having shrunk in size in order to
appear less noticeable, set off nervously on some mysterious
adventure.

"The deuce!" thought I, and followed her.

Like one anxious to keep an appointment, she frequently consulted
her watch, looking long at it, as if it were one of those watches
that do not give up their secret until you have made a mental
calculation.  Once she kissed it.  I had always known that she
was fond of her cheap little watch, which he gave her, I think,
on the day I dropped the letter, but why kiss it in the street?
Ah, and why then replace it so hurriedly in your leather-belt,
Mary, as if it were guilt to you to kiss to-day, or any day, the
watch your husband gave you?

It will be seen that I had made a very rapid journey from light
thoughts to uneasiness.  I wanted no plot by the time she reached
her destination, a street of tawdry shops.  She entered none of
them, but paced slowly and shrinking from observation up and down
the street, a very figure of shame; and never had I thought to
read shame in the sweet face of Mary A----.  Had I crossed to her
and pronounced her name I think it would have felled her, and yet
she remained there, waiting.  I, too, was waiting for him,
wondering if this was the man, or this, or this, and I believe I
clutched my stick.

Did I suspect Mary?  Oh, surely not for a moment of time.  But
there was some foolishness here; she was come without the
knowledge of her husband, as her furtive manner indicated, to a
meeting she dreaded and was ashamed to tell him of; she was come
into danger; then it must be to save, not herself but him; the
folly to be concealed could never have been Mary's.  Yet what
could have happened in the past of that honest boy from the
consequences of which she might shield him by skulking here?
Could that laugh of his have survived a dishonour?  The open
forehead, the curly locks, the pleasant smile, the hundred
ingratiating ways which we carry with us out of childhood, they
may all remain when the innocence has fled, but surely the laugh
of the morning of life must go.  I have never known the devil
retain his grip on that.

But Mary was still waiting.  She was no longer beautiful; shame
had possession of her face, she was an ugly woman.  Then the
entanglement was her husband's, and I cursed him for it.  But
without conviction, for, after all, what did I know of women?  I
have some distant memories of them, some vain inventions.  But of
men--I have known one man indifferent well for over forty years,
have exulted in him (odd to think of it), shuddered at him,
wearied of him, been willing (God forgive me) to jog along with
him tolerantly long after I have found him out; I know something
of men, and, on my soul, boy, I believe I am wronging you.

Then Mary is here for some innocent purpose, to do a good deed
that were better undone, as it so scares her.  Turn back, you
foolish, soft heart, and I shall say no more about it.  Obstinate
one, you saw the look on your husband's face as he left you.  It
is the studio light by which he paints and still sees to hope,
despite all the disappointments of his not ignoble ambitions.
That light is the dower you brought him, and he is a wealthy man
if it does not flicker.

So anxious to be gone, and yet she would not go.  Several times
she made little darts, as if at last resolved to escape from that
detestable street, and faltered and returned like a bird to the
weasel.  Again she looked at her watch and kissed it.

Oh, Mary, take flight.  What madness is this?  Woman, be gone.

Suddenly she was gone.  With one mighty effort and a last
terrified look round, she popped into a pawnshop.

Long before she emerged I understood it all, I think even as the
door rang and closed on her; why the timid soul had sought a
street where she was unknown, why she crept so many times past
that abhorred shop before desperately venturing in, why she
looked so often at the watch she might never see again.  So
desperately cumbered was Mary to keep her little house over her
head, and yet the brave heart was retaining a smiling face for
her husband, who must not even know where her little treasures
were going.

It must seem monstrously cruel of me, but I was now quite light-
hearted again.  Even when Mary fled from the shop where she had
left her watch, and I had peace of mind to note how thin and worn
she had become, as if her baby was grown too big for her slight
arms, even then I was light-hearted.  Without attempting to
follow her, I sauntered homeward humming a snatch of song with a
great deal of fal-de-lal-de-riddle-o in it, for I can never
remember words.  I saw her enter another shop, baby linen shop or
some nonsense of that sort, so it was plain for what she had
popped her watch; but what cared I?  I continued to sing most
beautifully.  I lunged gayly with my stick at a lamp-post and
missed it, whereat a street-urchin grinned, and I winked at him
and slipped twopence down his back.



I presume I would have chosen the easy way had time been given
me, but fate willed that I should meet the husband on his
homeward journey, and his first remark inspired me to a folly.

"How is Timothy?" he asked; and the question opened a way so
attractive that I think no one whose dull life craves for colour
could have resisted it.

"He is no more," I replied impulsively.

The painter was so startled that he gave utterance to a very oath
of pity, and I felt a sinking myself, for in these hasty words my
little boy was gone, indeed; all my bright dreams of Timothy, all
my efforts to shelter him from Mary's scorn, went whistling down
the wind.


VII

The Last of Timothy

So accomplished a person as the reader must have seen at once
that I made away with Timothy in order to give his little vests
and pinafores and shoes to David, and, therefore, dear sir or
madam, rail not overmuch at me for causing our painter pain.
Know, too, that though his sympathy ran free I soon discovered
many of his inquiries to be prompted by a mere selfish desire to
save his boy from the fate of mine.  Such are parents.

He asked compassionately if there was anything he could do for
me, and, of course, there was something he could do, but were I
to propose it I doubted not he would be on his stilts at once,
for already I had reason to know him for a haughty, sensitive
dog, who ever became high at the first hint of help.  So the
proposal must come from him.  I spoke of the many little things
in the house that were now hurtful to me to look upon, and he
clutched my hand, deeply moved, though it was another house with
its little things he saw.  I was ashamed to harass him thus, but
he had not a sufficiency of the little things, and besides my
impulsiveness had plunged me into a deuce of a mess, so I went on
distastefully. Was there no profession in this age of specialism
for taking away children's garments from houses where they were
suddenly become a pain?  Could I sell them?  Could I give them to
the needy, who would probably dispose of them for gin?  I told
him of a friend with a young child who had already refused them
because it would be unpleasant to him to be reminded of Timothy,
and I think this was what touched him to the quick, so that he
made the offer I was waiting for.

I had done it with a heavy foot, and by this time was in a rage
with both him and myself, but I always was a bungler, and, having
adopted this means in a hurry, I could at the time see no other
easy way out.  Timothy's hold on life, as you may have
apprehended, was ever of the slightest, and I suppose I always
knew that he must soon revert to the obscure.  He could never
have penetrated into the open.  It was no life for a boy.

Yet now, that his time had come, I was loath to see him go.  I
seem to remember carrying him that evening to the window with
uncommon tenderness (following the setting sun that was to take
him away), and telling him with not unnatural bitterness that he
had got to leave me because another child was in need of all his
pretty things; and as the sun, his true father, lapt him in its
dancing arms, he sent his love to a lady of long ago whom he
called by the sweetest of names, not knowing in his innocence
that the little white birds are the birds that never have a
mother.  I wished (so had the phantasy of Timothy taken
possession of me) that before he went he could have played once
in the Kensington Gardens, and have ridden on the fallen trees,
calling gloriously to me to look; that he could have sailed one
paper-galleon on the Round Pond; fain would I have had him chase
one hoop a little way down the laughing avenues of childhood,
where memory tells us we run but once, on a long summer-day,
emerging at the other end as men and women with all the fun to
pay for; and I think (thus fancy wantons with me in these
desolate chambers) he knew my longings, and said with a boy-like
flush that the reason he never did these things was not that he
was afraid, for he would have loved to do them all, but because
he was not quite like other boys; and, so saying, he let go my
finger and faded from before my eyes into another and golden
ether; but I shall ever hold that had he been quite like other
boys there would have been none braver than my Timothy.

I fear I am not truly brave myself, for though when under fire,
so far as I can recollect, I behaved as others, morally I seem to
be deficient.  So I discovered next day when I attempted to buy
David's outfit, and found myself as shy of entering the shop as
any Mary at the pawnbroker's.  The shop for little garments seems
very alarming when you reach the door; a man abruptly become a
parent, and thus lost to a finer sense of the proprieties, may be
able to stalk in unprotected, but apparently I could not.
Indeed, I have allowed a repugnance to entering shops of any
kind, save my tailor's, to grow on me, and to my tailor's I fear
I go too frequently.

So I skulked near the shop of the little garments, jeering at
myself, and it was strange to me to reflect at, say, three
o'clock that if I had been brazen at half-past two all would now
be over.

To show what was my state, take the case of the very gentleman-
like man whom I detected gazing fixedly at me, or so I thought,
just as I had drawn valiantly near the door.  I sauntered away,
but when I returned he was still there, which seemed conclusive
proof that he had smoked my purpose.  Sternly controlling my
temper I bowed, and said with icy politeness, "You have the
advantage of me, sir."

"I beg your pardon," said he, and I am now persuaded that my
words turned his attention to me for the first time, but at the
moment I was sure some impertinent meaning lurked behind his
answer.

"I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance," I barked.

"No one regrets it more than I do," he replied, laughing.

"I mean, sir," said I, "that I shall wait here until you retire,"
and with that I put my back to a shop-window.

By this time he was grown angry, and said he, "I have no
engagement," and he put his back to the shop-window.  Each of us
was doggedly determined to tire the other out, and we must have
looked ridiculous.  We also felt it, for ten minutes afterward,
our passions having died away, we shook hands cordially and
agreed to call hansoms.

Must I abandon the enterprise?  Certainly I knew divers ladies
who would make the purchases for me, but first I must explain,
and, rather than explain it has ever been my custom to do
without.  I was in this despondency when a sudden recollection of
Irene and Mrs. Hicking heartened me like a cordial, for I saw in
them at once the engine and decoy by which David should procure
his outfit.

You must be told who they were.


VIII

The Inconsiderate Waiter

They were the family of William, one of our club waiters who had
been disappointing me grievously of late.  Many a time have I
deferred dining several minutes that I might have the attendance
of this ingrate.  His efforts to reserve the window-table for me
were satisfactory, and I used to allow him privileges, as to
suggest dishes; I have given him information, as that someone had
startled me in the reading-room by slamming a door; I have shown
him how I cut my finger with a piece of string.  William was none
of your assertive waiters.  We could have plotted a murder safely
before him.  It was one member who said to him that Saucy Sarah
would win the Derby and another who said that Saucy Sarah had no
chance, but it was William who agreed with both.  The excellent
fellow (as I thought him) was like a cheroot which may be smoked
from either end.

I date his lapse from one evening when I was dining by the
window. I had to repeat my order "Devilled kidney," and instead
of answering brightly, "Yes, sir," as if my selection of devilled
kidney was a personal gratification to him, which is the manner
one expects of a waiter, he gazed eagerly out at the window, and
then, starting, asked, "Did you say devilled kidney, sir?"  A few
minutes afterward I became aware that someone was leaning over
the back of my chair, and you may conceive my indignation on
discovering that this rude person was William.  Let me tell, in
the measured words of one describing a past incident, what next
took place.  To get nearer the window he pressed heavily on my
shoulder.  "William," I said, "you are not attending to me!"

To be fair to him, he shook, but never shall I forget his
audacious apology, "Beg pardon, sir, but I was thinking of
something else."

And immediately his eyes resought the window, and this burst from
him passionately, "For God's sake, sir, as we are man and man,
tell me if you have seen a little girl looking up at the club-
windows."

Man and man!  But he had been a good waiter once, so I pointed
out the girl to him.  As soon as she saw William she ran into the
middle of Pall Mall, regardless of hansoms (many of which seemed
to pass over her), nodded her head significantly three times and
then disappeared (probably on a stretcher).  She was the
tawdriest little Arab of about ten years, but seemed to have
brought relief to William.  "Thank God!" said he fervently, and
in the worst taste.

I was as much horrified as if he had dropped a plate on my toes.
"Bread, William," I said sharply.

"You are not vexed with me, sir?" he had the hardihood to
whisper.

"It was a liberty," I said.

"I know, sir, but I was beside myself."

"That was a liberty again."

"It is my wife, sir, she--"

So William, whom I had favoured in so many ways, was a married
man.  I felt that this was the greatest liberty of all.

I gathered that the troublesome woman was ailing, and as one who
likes after dinner to believe that there is no distress in the
world, I desired to be told by William that the signals meant her
return to health.  He answered inconsiderately, however, that the
doctor feared the worst.

"Bah, the doctor," I said in a rage.

"Yes, sir," said William.

"What is her confounded ailment?"

"She was allus one of the delicate kind, but full of spirit, and
you see, sir, she has had a baby-girl lately--"

"William, how dare you," I said, but in the same moment I saw
that this father might be useful to me.  "How does your baby
sleep, William?" I asked in a low voice, "how does she wake up?
what do you put in her bath?"

I saw surprise in his face, so I hurried on without waiting for
an answer.  "That little girl comes here with a message from your
wife?"

"Yes, sir, every evening; she's my eldest, and three nods from
her means that the missus is a little better."

"There were three nods to-day?"

"Yes, sir.

"I suppose you live in some low part, William?"

The impudent fellow looked as if he could have struck me.  "Off
Drury Lane," he said, flushing, "but it isn't low.  And now," he
groaned, "she's afeared she will die without my being there to
hold her hand."

"She should not say such things."

"She never says them, sir.  She allus pretends to be feeling
stronger.  But I knows what is in her mind when I am leaving the
house in the morning, for then she looks at me from her bed, and
I looks at her from the door--oh, my God, sir!"

"William!"

At last he saw that I was angry, and it was characteristic of him
to beg my pardon and withdraw his wife as if she were some
unsuccessful dish.  I tried to forget his vulgar story in
billiards, but he had spoiled my game, and next day to punish him
I gave my orders through another waiter.  As I had the window-
seat, however, I could not but see that the little girl was late,
and though this mattered nothing to me and I had finished my
dinner, I lingered till she came.  She not only nodded three
times but waved her hat, and I arose, having now finished my
dinner.

William came stealthily toward me.  "Her temperature has gone
down, sir," he said, rubbing his hands together.

"To whom are you referring?" I asked coldly, and retired to the
billiard-room, where I played a capital game.

I took pains to show William that I had forgotten his
maunderings, but I observed the girl nightly, and once, instead
of nodding, she shook her head, and that evening I could not get
into a pocket. Next evening there was no William in the
dining-room, and I thought I knew what had happened.  But,
chancing to enter the library rather miserably, I was surprised
to see him on a ladder dusting books.  We had the room
practically to ourselves, for though several members sat on
chairs holding books in their hands they were all asleep, and
William descended the ladder to tell me his blasting tale.  He
had sworn at a member!

"I hardly knew what I was doing all day, sir, for I had left her
so weakly that--"

I stamped my foot.

"I beg your pardon for speaking of her," he had the grace to say.
"But Irene had promised to come every two hours; and when she
came about four o'clock and I saw she was crying, it sort of
blinded me, sir, and I stumbled against a member, Mr. B----, and he
said, 'Damn you!'  Well, sir, I had but touched him after all,
and I was so broken it sort of stung me to be treated so and I
lost my senses, and I said, 'Damn you!'"

His shamed head sank on his chest, and I think some of the
readers shuddered in their sleep.

"I was turned out of the dining-room at once, and sent here until
the committee have decided what to do with me.  Oh, sir, I am
willing to go on my knees to Mr. B----"

How could I but despise a fellow who would be thus abject for a
pound a week?

"For if I have to tell her I have lost my place she will just
fall back and die."

"I forbid your speaking to me of that woman," I cried wryly,
"unless you can speak pleasantly," and I left him to his fate and
went off to look for B----.  "What is this story about your
swearing at one of the waiters?" I asked him.

"You mean about his swearing at me," said B----, reddening.

"I am glad that was it," I said, "for I could not believe you
guilty of such bad form.  The version which reached me was that
you swore at each other, and that he was to be dismissed and you
reprimanded."

"Who told you that?" asked B----, who is a timid man.

"I am on the committee," I replied lightly, and proceeded to talk
of other matters, but presently B----, who had been reflecting,
said: "Do you know I fancy I was wrong in thinking that the
waiter swore at me, and I shall withdraw the charge to-morrow."

I was pleased to find that William's troubles were near an end
without my having to interfere in his behalf, and I then
remembered that he would not be able to see the girl Irene from
the library windows, which are at the back of the club.  I was
looking down at her, but she refrained from signalling because
she could not see William, and irritated by her stupidity I went
out and asked her how her mother was.

"My," she ejaculated after a long scrutiny of me, "I b'lieve you
are one of them!" and she gazed at me with delighted awe.  I
suppose William tells them of our splendid doings.

The invalid, it appeared, was a bit better, and this annoying
child wanted to inform William that she had took all the
tapiocar. She was to indicate this by licking an imaginary plate
in the middle of Pall Mall.  I gave the little vulgarian a
shilling, and returned to the club disgusted.

"By the way, William," I said, "Mr. B---- is to inform the
committee that he was mistaken in thinking you used improper
language to him, so you will doubtless be restored to the
dining-room to- morrow."

I had to add immediately, "Remember your place, William."

"But Mr. B---- knows I swore," he insisted.

"A gentleman," I replied stiffly, "cannot remember for many hours
what a waiter has said to him."

"No, sir, but--"

To stop him I had to say, "And--ah--William, your wife is decidedly
better.  She has eaten the tapioca--all of it."

"How can you know, sir?"

"By an accident."

"Irene signed to the window?"

"No."

"Then you saw her and went out and--"

"How dare you, William?"

"Oh, sir, to do that for me!  May God bl--"

"William."

He was reinstated in the dining-room, but often when I looked at
him I seemed to see a dying wife in his face, and so the
relations between us were still strained.  But I watched the
girl, and her pantomime was so illuminating that I knew the
sufferer had again cleaned the platter on Tuesday, had attempted
a boiled egg on Wednesday (you should have seen Irene chipping it
in Pall Mall, and putting in the salt), but was in a woful state
of relapse on Thursday.

"Is your mother very ill to-day, Miss Irene?" I asked, as soon as
I had drawn her out of range of the club-windows.

"My!" she exclaimed again, and I saw an ecstatic look pass
between her and a still smaller girl with her, whom she referred
to as a neighbour.

I waited coldly.  William's wife, I was informed, had looked like
nothing but a dead one till she got the brandy.

"Hush, child," I said, shocked.  "You don't know how the dead
look."

"Bless yer!" she replied.

Assisted by her friend, who was evidently enormously impressed by
Irene's intimacy with me, she gave me a good deal of
miscellaneous information, as that William's real name was Mr.
Hicking, but that he was known in their street, because of the
number of his shirts, as Toff Hicking.  That the street held he
should get away from the club before two in the morning, for his
missus needed him more than the club needed him.  That William
replied (very sensibly) that if the club was short of waiters at
supper-time some of the gentlemen might be kept waiting for their
marrow- bone.  That he sat up with his missus most of the night,
and pretended to her that he got some nice long naps at the club.
That what she talked to him about mostly was the kid.  That the
kid was in another part of London (in charge of a person called
the old woman), because there was an epidemic in Irene's street.

"And what does the doctor say about your mother?"

"He sometimes says she would have a chance if she could get her
kid back."

"Nonsense."

"And if she was took to the country."

"Then why does not William take her?"

"My!  And if she drank porty wine."

"Doesn't she?"

"No.  But father, he tells her 'bout how the gentlemen drinks
it."

I turned from her with relief, but she came after me.

"Ain't yer going to do it this time?" she demanded with a falling
face.  "You done it last time.  I tell her you done it"--she
pointed to her friend who was looking wistfully at me--"ain't you
to let her see you doing of it?"

For a moment I thought that her desire was another shilling, but
by a piece of pantomime she showed that she wanted me to lift my
hat to her.  So I lifted it, and when I looked behind she had her
head in the air and her neighbour was gazing at her awestruck.
These little creatures are really not without merit.

About a week afterward I was in a hired landau, holding a
newspaper before my face lest anyone should see me in company of
a waiter and his wife.  William was taking her into Surrey to
stay with an old nurse of mine, and Irene was with us, wearing
the most outrageous bonnet.

I formed a mean opinion of Mrs. Hicking's intelligence from her
pride in the baby, which was a very ordinary one.  She created a
regrettable scene when it was brought to her, because "she had
been feared it would not know her again."  I could have told her
that they know no one for years had I not been in terror of
Irene, who dandled the child on her knees and talked to it all
the way. I have never known a bolder little hussy than this
Irene.  She asked the infant improper questions, such as "Oo know
who gave me this bonnet?" and answered them herself.  "It was the
pretty gentleman there," and several times I had to affect sleep,
because she announced, "Kiddy wants to kiss the pretty
gentleman."

Irksome as all this necessarily was to a man of taste, I suffered
still more acutely when we reached our destination, where
disagreeable circumstances compelled me to drink tea with a
waiter's family.  William knew that I regarded thanks from
persons of his class as an outrage, yet he looked them though he
dared not speak them.  Hardly had he sat down at the table by my
orders than he remembered that I was a member of the club and
jumped up.  Nothing is in worse form than whispering, yet again
and again he whispered to his poor, foolish wife, "How are you
now?  You don't feel faint?" and when she said she felt like
another woman already, his face charged me with the change.  I
could not but conclude from the way she let the baby pound her
that she was stronger than she pretended.

I remained longer than was necessary because I had something to
say to William which I feared he would misunderstand, but when he
announced that it was time for him to catch a train back to
London, at which his wife paled, I delivered the message.

"William," I said, backing away from him, "the head-waiter asked
me to say that you could take a fortnight's holiday.  Your wages
will be paid as usual."

Confound him.

"William," I cried furiously, "go away."

Then I saw his wife signing to him, and I knew she wanted to be
left alone with me.

"William," I cried in a panic, "stay where you are."

But he was gone, and I was alone with a woman whose eyes were
filmy.  Her class are fond of scenes.  "If you please, ma'am!" I
said imploringly.

But she kissed my hand; she was like a little dog.

"It can be only the memory of some woman," said she, "that makes
you so kind to me and mine."

Memory was the word she used, as if all my youth were fled.  I
suppose I really am quite elderly.

"I should like to know her name, sir," she said, "that I may
mention her with loving respect in my prayers."

I raised the woman and told her the name.  It was not Mary.  "But
she has a home," I said, "as you have, and I have none.  Perhaps,
ma'am, it would be better worth your while to mention me."



It was this woman, now in health, whom I intrusted with the
purchase of the outfits, "one for a boy of six months," I
explained to her, "and one for a boy of a year," for the painter
had boasted to me of David's rapid growth.  I think she was a
little surprised to find that both outfits were for the same
house; and she certainly betrayed an ignoble curiosity about the
mother's Christian name, but she was much easier to brow-beat
than a fine lady would have been, and I am sure she and her
daughter enjoyed themselves hugely in the shops, from one of
which I shall never forget Irene emerging proudly with a
commissionaire, who conducted her under an umbrella to the cab
where I was lying in wait.  I think that was the most celestial
walk of Irene's life.

I told Mrs. Hicking to give the articles a little active ill-
treatment that they might not look quite new, at which she
exclaimed, not being in my secret, and then to forward them to
me. I then sent them to Mary and rejoiced in my devilish cunning
all the evening, but chagrin came in the morning with a letter
from her which showed she knew all, that I was her Mr. Anon, and
that there never had been a Timothy.  I think I was never so
gravelled. Even now I don't know how she had contrived it.

Her cleverness raised such a demon in me that I locked away her
letter at once and have seldom read it since.  No married lady
should have indited such an epistle to a single man.  It said,
with other things which I decline to repeat, that I was her good
fairy.  As a sample of the deliberate falsehoods in it, I may
mention that she said David loved me already.  She hoped that I
would come in often to see her husband, who was very proud of my
friendship, and suggested that I should pay him my first visit
to- day at three o'clock, an hour at which, as I happened to
know, he is always away giving a painting-lesson.  In short, she
wanted first to meet me alone, so that she might draw the
delicious, respectful romance out of me, and afterward repeat it
to him, with sighs and little peeps at him over her
pocket-handkerchief.

She had dropped what were meant to look like two tears for me
upon the paper, but I should not wonder though they were only
artful drops of water.

I sent her a stiff and tart reply, declining to hold any
communication with her.


IX

A Confirmed Spinster

I am in danger, I see, of being included among the whimsical
fellows, which I so little desire that I have got me into my
writing-chair to combat the charge, but, having sat for an
unconscionable time with pen poised, I am come agitatedly to the
fear that there may be something in it.

So long a time has elapsed, you must know, since I abated of the
ardours of self-inquiry that I revert in vain (through many rusty
doors) for the beginning of this change in me, if changed I am; I
seem ever to see this same man until I am back in those wonderful
months which were half of my life, when, indeed, I know that I
was otherwise than I am now; no whimsical fellow then, for that
was one of the possibilities I put to myself while seeking for
the explanation of things, and found to be inadmissible.  Having
failed in those days to discover why I was driven from the
garden, I suppose I ceased to be enamoured of myself, as of some
dull puzzle, and then perhaps the whimsicalities began to collect
unnoticed.

It is a painful thought to me to-night, that he could wake up
glorious once, this man in the elbow-chair by the fire, who is
humorously known at the club as a "confirmed spinster."  I
remember him well when his years told four and twenty; on my soul
the proudest subaltern of my acquaintance, and with the most
reason to be proud.  There was nothing he might not do in the
future, having already done the biggest thing, this toddler up
club-steps to-day.

Not, indeed, that I am a knave; I am tolerably kind, I believe,
and most inoffensive, a gentleman, I trust, even in the eyes of
the ladies who smile at me as we converse; they are an ever-
increasing number, or so it seems to me to-night.  Ah, ladies, I
forget when I first began to notice that smile and to be made
uneasy by it.  I think I understand it now, and in some vague way
it hurts me.  I find that I watch for it nowadays, but I hope I
am still your loyal, obedient servant.

You will scarcely credit it, but I have just remembered that I
once had a fascinating smile of my own.  What has become of my
smile?  I swear I have not noticed that it was gone till now; I
am like one who revisiting his school feels suddenly for his old
knife.  I first heard of my smile from another boy, whose sisters
had considered all the smiles they knew and placed mine on top.
My friend was scornful, and I bribed him to mention the
plebiscite to no one, but secretly I was elated and amazed.  I
feel lost to- night without my smiles.  I rose a moment ago to
look for it in my mirror.

I like to believe that she has it now.  I think she may have some
other forgotten trifles of mine with it that make the difference
between that man and this.  I remember her speaking of my smile,
telling me it was my one adornment, and taking it from me, so to
speak, for a moment to let me see how she looked in it; she
delighted to make sport of me when she was in a wayward mood, and
to show me all my ungainly tricks of voice and gesture,
exaggerated and glorified in her entrancing self, like a star
calling to the earth: "See, I will show you how you hobble
round," and always there was a challenge to me in her eyes to
stop her if I dared, and upon them, when she was most audacious,
lay a sweet mist.

They all came to her court, as is the business of young fellows,
to tell her what love is, and she listened with a noble
frankness, having, indeed, the friendliest face for all engaged
in this pursuit that can ever have sat on woman.  I have heard
ladies call her coquette, not understanding that she shone softly
upon all who entered the lists because, with the rarest
intuition, she foresaw that they must go away broken men and
already sympathised with their dear wounds.  All wounds incurred
for love were dear to her; at every true utterance about love she
exulted with grave approval, or it might be a with a little "ah!"
or "oh!" like one drinking deliciously.  Nothing could have been
more fair, for she was for the first comer who could hit the
target, which was her heart.

She adored all beautiful things in their every curve and
fragrance, so that they became part of her.  Day by day, she
gathered beauty; had she had no heart (she who was the bosom of
womanhood) her thoughts would still have been as lilies, because
the good is the beautiful.

And they all forgave her; I never knew of one who did not forgive
her; I think had there been one it would have proved that there
was a flaw in her.  Perhaps, when good-bye came she was weeping
because all the pretty things were said and done with, or she was
making doleful confessions about herself, so impulsive and
generous and confidential, and so devoid of humour, that they
compelled even a tragic swain to laugh.  She made a looking-glass
of his face to seek wofully in it whether she was at all to
blame, and when his arms went out for her, and she stepped back
so that they fell empty, she mourned, with dear sympathy, his
lack of skill to seize her.  For what her soft eyes said was that
she was always waiting tremulously to be won.  They all forgave
her, because there was nothing to forgive, or very little, just
the little that makes a dear girl dearer, and often afterward, I
believe, they have laughed fondly when thinking of her, like boys
brought back.  You ladies who are everything to your husbands
save a girl from the dream of youth, have you never known that
double- chinned industrious man laugh suddenly in a reverie and
start up, as if he fancied he were being hailed from far-away?

I hear her hailing me now.  She was so light-hearted that her
laugh is what comes first across the years; so high-spirited that
she would have wept like Mary of Scots because she could not lie
on the bare plains like the men.  I hear her, but it is only as
an echo; I see her, but it is as a light among distant trees, and
the middle-aged man can draw no nearer; she was only for the
boys. There was a month when I could have shown her to you in all
her bravery, but then the veil fell, and from that moment I
understood her not.  For long I watched her, but she was never
clear to me again, and for long she hovered round me, like a dear
heart willing to give me a thousand chances to regain her love.
She was so picturesque that she was the last word of art, but she
was as young as if she were the first woman.  The world must have
rung with gallant deeds and grown lovely thoughts for numberless
centuries before she could be; she was the child of all the brave
and wistful imaginings of men.  She was as mysterious as night
when it fell for the first time upon the earth.  She was the
thing we call romance, which lives in the little hut beyond the
blue haze of the pine-woods.

No one could have looked less elfish.  She was all on a noble
scale, her attributes were so generous, her manner unconquerably
gracious, her movements indolently active, her face so candid
that you must swear her every thought lived always in the open.
Yet, with it all, she was a wild thing, alert, suspicious of the
lasso, nosing it in every man's hand, more curious about it than
about aught else in the world; her quivering delight was to see
it cast for her, her game to elude it; so mettlesome was she that
she loved it to be cast fair that she might escape as it was
closing round her; she scorned, however her heart might be
beating, to run from her pursuers; she took only the one step
backward, which still left her near them but always out of reach;
her head on high now, but her face as friendly, her manner as
gracious as before, she is yours for the catching.  That was ever
the unspoken compact between her and the huntsmen.

It may be but an old trick come back to me with these memories,
but again I clasp my hands to my brows in amaze at the thought
that all this was for me could I retain her love.  For I won it,
wonder of the gods, but I won it.  I found myself with one foot
across the magic circle wherein she moved, and which none but I
had entered; and so, I think, I saw her in revelation, not as the
wild thing they had all conceived her, but as she really was.  I
saw no tameless creature, nothing wild or strange.  I saw my
sweet love placid as a young cow browsing.  As I brushed aside
the haze and she was truly seen for the first time, she raised
her head, like one caught, and gazed at me with meek affrighted
eyes.  I told her what had been revealed to me as I looked upon
her, and she trembled, knowing she was at last found, and fain
would she have fled away, but that her fear was less than her
gladness.  She came to me slowly; no incomprehensible thing to me
now, but transparent as a pool, and so restful to look upon that
she was a bath to the eyes, like banks of moss.

Because I knew the maid, she was mine.  Every maid, I say, is for
him who can know her.  The others had but followed the glamour in
which she walked, but I had pierced it and found the woman.  I
could anticipate her every thought and gesture, I could have
flashed and rippled and mocked for her, and melted for her and
been dear disdain for her.  She would forget this and be suddenly
conscious of it as she began to speak, when she gave me a look
with a shy smile in it which meant that she knew I was already
waiting at the end of what she had to say.  I call this the blush
of the eye.  She had a look and a voice that were for me alone;
her very finger-tips were charged with caresses for me.  And I
loved even her naughtinesses, as when she stamped her foot at me,
which she could not do without also gnashing her teeth, like a
child trying to look fearsome.  How pretty was that gnashing of
her teeth!  All her tormentings of me turned suddenly into
sweetnesses, and who could torment like this exquisite fury,
wondering in sudden flame why she could give herself to anyone,
while I wondered only why she could give herself to me.  It may
be that I wondered over-much.  Perhaps that was why I lost her.

It was in the full of the moon that she was most restive, but I
brought her back, and at first she could have bit my hand, but
then she came willingly.  Never, I thought, shall she be wholly
tamed, but he who knows her will always be able to bring her
back.

I am not that man, for mystery of mysteries, I lost her.  I know
not how it was, though in the twilight of my life that then began
I groped for reasons until I wearied of myself; all I know is
that she had ceased to love me; I had won her love, but I could
not keep it.  The discovery came to me slowly, as if I were a
most dull-witted man; at first I knew only that I no longer
understood her as of old.  I found myself wondering what she had
meant by this and that; I did not see that when she began to
puzzle me she was already lost to me.  It was as if, unknowing, I
had strayed outside the magic circle.

When I did understand I tried to cheat myself into the belief
that there was no change, and the dear heart bleeding for me
assisted in that poor pretence.  She sought to glide to me with
swimming eyes as before, but it showed only that this caressing
movement was still within her compass, but never again for me.
With the hands she had pressed to her breast she touched mine,
but no longer could they convey the message.  The current was
broken, and soon we had to desist miserably from our pretences.
She could tell no more than I why she had ceased to love me; she
was scarcely less anxious than I that I should make her love me
again, and, as I have said, she waited with a wonderful tolerance
while I strove futilely to discover in what I was lacking and to
remedy it.  And when, at last, she had to leave me, it was with
compassionate cries and little backward flights.

The failure was mine alone, but I think I should not have been so
altered by it had I known what was the defect in me through which
I let her love escape.  This puzzle has done me more harm than
the loss of her.  Nevertheless, you must know (if I am to speak
honestly to you) that I do not repent me those dallyings in
enchanted fields.  It may not have been so always, for I remember
a black night when a poor lieutenant lay down in an oarless boat
and let it drift toward the weir.  But his distant moans do not
greatly pain me now; rather am I elated to find (as the waters
bring him nearer) that this boy is I, for it is something to know
that, once upon a time, a woman could draw blood from me as from
another.

I saw her again, years afterward, when she was a married woman
playing with her children.  She stamped her foot at a naughty
one, and I saw the gleam of her teeth as she gnashed them in the
dear pretty way I can't forget; and then a boy and girl, fighting
for her shoulders, brought the whole group joyously to the
ground. She picked herself up in the old leisurely manner, lazily
active, and looked around her benignantly, like a cow: our dear
wild one safely tethered at last with a rope of children.  I
meant to make her my devoirs, but, as I stepped forward, the old
wound broke out afresh, and I had to turn away.  They were but a
few poor drops, which fell because I found that she was even a
little sweeter than I had thought.


X

Sporting Reflections

I have now told you (I presume) how I became whimsical, and I
fear it would please Mary not at all.  But speaking of her, and,
as the cat's light keeps me in a ruminating mood, suppose,
instead of returning Mary to her lover by means of the letter, I
had presented a certain clubman to her consideration?  Certainly
no such whimsical idea crossed my mind when I dropped the letter,
but between you and me and my night-socks, which have all this
time been airing by the fire because I am subject to cold feet, I
have sometimes toyed with it since.

Why did I not think of this in time?  Was it because I must ever
remain true to the unattainable she?

I am reminded of a passage in the life of a sweet lady, a friend
of mine, whose daughter was on the eve of marriage, when suddenly
her lover died.  It then became pitiful to watch that trembling
old face trying to point the way of courage to the young one.  In
time, however, there came another youth, as true, I dare say, as
the first, but not so well known to me, and I shrugged my
shoulders cynically to see my old friend once more a matchmaker.
She took him to her heart and boasted of him; like one made young
herself by the great event, she joyously dressed her pale
daughter in her bridal gown, and, with smiles upon her face, she
cast rice after the departing carriage.  But soon after it had
gone, I chanced upon her in her room, and she was on her knees in
tears before the spirit of the dead lover.  "Forgive me," she
besought him, "for I am old, and life is gray to friendless
girls."  The pardon she wanted was for pretending to her daughter
that women should act thus.

I am sure she felt herself soiled.

But men are of a coarser clay.  At least I am, and nearly twenty
years had elapsed, and here was I burdened under a load of
affection, like a sack of returned love-letters, with no lap into
which to dump them.

"They were all written to another woman, ma'am, and yet I am in
hopes that you will find something in them about yourself."  It
would have sounded oddly to Mary, but life is gray to friendless
girls, and something might have come of it.

On the other hand, it would have brought her for ever out of the
wood of the little hut, and I had but to drop the letter to send
them both back there.  The easiness of it tempted me.

Besides, she would tire of me when I was really known to her.
They all do, you see.

And, after all, why should he lose his laugh because I had lost
my smile?

And then, again, the whole thing was merely a whimsical idea.

I dropped the letter, and shouldered my burden.


XI

The Runaway Perambulator

I sometimes met David in public places such as the Kensington
Gardens, where he lorded it surrounded by his suite and wearing
the blank face and glass eyes of all carriage-people.  On these
occasions I always stalked by, meditating on higher things,
though Mary seemed to think me very hardhearted, and Irene, who
had become his nurse (I forget how, but fear I had something to
do with it), ran after me with messages, as, would I not call and
see him in his home at twelve o'clock, at which moment, it
seemed, he was at his best.

No, I would not.

"He says tick-tack to the clock," Irene said, trying to snare me.

"Pooh!" said I.

"Other little 'uns jest says 'tick-tick,'" she told me, with a
flush of pride.

"I prefer 'tick-tick,'" I said, whereat she departed in dudgeon.

Had they had the sense to wheel him behind a tree and leave him,
I would have looked, but as they lacked it, I decided to wait
until he could walk, when it would be more easy to waylay him.
However, he was a cautious little gorbal who, after many threats
to rise, always seemed to come to the conclusion that he might do
worse than remain where he was, and when he had completed his
first year I lost patience with him.

"When I was his age," I said to Irene, "I was running about."  I
consulted them casually about this matter at the club, and they
had all been running about at a year old.

I made this nurse the following offer: If she would bring the
dilatory boy to my rooms and leave him there for half an hour I
would look at him.  At first Mary, to whom the offer was passed
on, rejected it with hauteur, but presently she wavered, and the
upshot was that Irene, looking scornful and anxious, arrived one
day with the perambulator.  Without casting eyes on its occupant,
I pointed Irene to the door: "In half-an-hour," I said.

She begged permission to remain, and promised to turn her back,
and so on, but I was obdurate, and she then delivered herself of
a passionately affectionate farewell to her charge, which was
really all directed against me, and ended with these powerful
words: "And if he takes off your socks, my pretty, may he be
blasted for evermore."

"I shall probably take off her socks," I said carelessly to this.

Her socks.  Do you see what made Irene scream?

"It is a girl, is it not?" I asked, thus neatly depriving her of
coherent speech as I pushed her to the door.  I then turned round
to--to begin, and, after reflecting, I began by sitting down
behind the hood of his carriage.  My plan was to accustom him to
his new surroundings before bursting on the scene myself.

I had various thoughts.  Was he awake?  If not, better let him
wake naturally.  Half-an-hour was a long time.  Why had I not
said quarter-of-an-hour?  Anon, I saw that if I was to sit there
much longer I should have said an hour, so I whistled softly; but
he took no notice.  I remember trying to persuade myself that if
I never budged till Irene's return, it would be an amusing
triumph over Mary.  I coughed, but still there was no response.
Abruptly, the fear smote me.  Perhaps he is not there.

I rose hastily, and was striding forward, when I distinctly
noticed a covert movement somewhere near the middle of the
carriage, and heard a low gurgle, which was instantly suppressed.
I stopped dead at this sharp reminder that I was probably not the
only curious person in the room, and for a long moment we both
lay low, after which, I am glad to remember, I made the first
advance. Earlier in the day I had arranged some likely articles
on a side- table: my watch and chain, my bunch of keys, and two
war-medals for plodding merit, and with a glance at these (as
something to fall back upon), I stepped forward doggedly, looking
(I fear now) a little like a professor of legerdemain.  David was
sitting up, and he immediately fixed his eyes on me.

It would ill become me to attempt to describe this dear boy to
you, for of course I know really nothing about children, so I
shall say only this, that I thought him very like what Timothy
would have been had he ever had a chance.

I to whom David had been brought for judgment, now found myself
being judged by him, and this rearrangement of the pieces seemed
so natural that I felt no surprise; I felt only a humble craving
to hear him signify that I would do.  I have stood up before
other keen judges and deceived them all, but I made no effort to
deceive David; I wanted to, but dared not.  Those unblinking eyes
were too new to the world to be hooded by any of its tricks.  In
them I saw my true self.  They opened for me that pedler's pack
of which I have made so much ado, and I found that it was
weighted less with pretty little sad love-tokens than with
ignoble thoughts and deeds and an unguided life.  I looked
dejectedly at David, not so much, I think, because I had such a
sorry display for him, as because I feared he would not have me
in his service.  I seemed to know that he was making up his mind
once and for all.

And in the end he smiled, perhaps only because I looked so
frightened, but the reason scarcely mattered to me, I felt myself
a fine fellow at once.  It was a long smile, too, opening slowly
to its fullest extent (as if to let me in), and then as slowly
shutting.

Then, to divert me from sad thoughts, or to rivet our friendship,
or because the time had come for each of us to show the other
what he could do, he immediately held one foot high in the air.
This made him slide down the perambulator, and I saw at once that
it was very necessary to replace him.  But never before had I
come into such close contact with a child; the most I had ever
done was, when they were held up to me, to shut my eyes and kiss
a vacuum.  David, of course, though no doubt he was eternally
being replaced, could tell as little as myself how it was
contrived, and yet we managed it between us quite easily.  His
body instinctively assumed a certain position as I touched him,
which compelled my arms to fall into place, and the thing was
done.  I felt absurdly pleased, but he was already considering
what he should do next.

He again held up his foot, which had a gouty appearance owing to
its being contained in a dumpy little worsted sock, and I thought
he proposed to repeat his first performance, but in this I did
him an injustice, for, unlike Porthos, he was one who scorned to
do the same feat twice; perhaps, like the conjurors, he knew that
the audience were more on the alert the second time.

I discovered that he wanted me to take off his sock!

Remembering Irene's dread warnings on this subject I must say
that I felt uneasy.  Had he heard her, and was he daring me?  And
what dire thing could happen if the sock was removed?  I sought
to reason with him, but he signed to me to look sharp, and I
removed the sock.  The part of him thus revealed gave David
considerable pleasure, but I noticed, as a curious thing, that he
seemed to have no interest in the other foot.

However, it was not there merely to be looked at, for after
giving me a glance which said "Now observe!" he raised his bare
foot and ran his mouth along the toes, like one playing on a
barbaric instrument.  He then tossed his foot aside, smiled his
long triumphant smile and intimated that it was now my turn to do
something.  I thought the best thing I could do would be to put
his sock on him again, but as soon as I tried to do so I
discovered why Irene had warned me so portentously against taking
it off.  I should say that she had trouble in socking him every
morning.

Nevertheless I managed to slip it on while he was debating what
to do with my watch.  I bitterly regretted that I could do
nothing with it myself, put it under a wine-glass, for instance,
and make it turn into a rabbit, which so many people can do.  In
the meantime David, occupied with similar thoughts, very nearly
made it disappear altogether, and I was thankful to be able to
pull it back by the chain.

"Haw-haw-haw!"

Thus he commented on his new feat, but it was also a reminder to
me, a trifle cruel, that he was not my boy.  After all, you see,
Mary had not given him the whole of his laugh.  The watch said
that five and twenty minutes had passed, and looking out I saw
Irene at one end of the street staring up at my window, and at
the other end Mary's husband staring up at my window, and beneath
me Mary staring up at my window.  They had all broken their
promise.

I returned to David, and asked him in a low voice whether he
would give me a kiss.  He shook his head about six times, and I
was in despair.  Then the smile came, and I knew that he was
teasing me only.  He now nodded his head about six times.

This was the prettiest of all his exploits.  It was so pretty
that, contrary to his rule, he repeated it.  I had held out my
arms to him, and first he shook his head, and then after a long
pause (to frighten me), he nodded it.

But no sooner was he in my arms than I seemed to see Mary and her
husband and Irene bearing down upon my chambers to take him from
me, and acting under an impulse I whipped him into the
perambulator and was off with it without a license down the back
staircase.  To the Kensington Gardens we went; it may have been
Manitoba we started for, but we arrived at the Kensington
Gardens, and it had all been so unpremeditated and smartly
carried out that I remember clapping my hand to my head in the
street, to make sure that I was wearing a hat.

I watched David to see what he thought of it, and he had not yet
made up his mind.  Strange to say, I no longer felt shy.  I was
grown suddenly indifferent to public comment, and my elation
increased when I discovered that I was being pursued.  They drew
a cordon round me near Margot Meredith's tree, but I broke
through it by a strategic movement to the south, and was next
heard of in the Baby's Walk.  They held both ends of this
passage, and then thought to close on me, but I slipped through
their fingers by doubling up Bunting's Thumb into Picnic Street.
Cowering at St. Govor's Well, we saw them rush distractedly up
the Hump, and when they had crossed to the Round Pond we paraded
gaily in the Broad Walk, not feeling the tiniest bit sorry for
anybody.

Here, however, it gradually came into David's eyes that, after
all, I was a strange man, and they opened wider and wider, until
they were the size of my medals, and then, with the deliberation
that distinguishes his smile, he slowly prepared to howl.  I saw
all his forces gathering in his face, and I had nothing to oppose
to them; it was an unarmed man against a regiment.

Even then I did not chide him.   He could not know that it was I
who had dropped the letter.

I think I must have stepped over a grateful fairy at that moment,
for who else could have reminded me so opportunely of my famous
manipulation of the eyebrows, forgotten since I was in the fifth
form?  I alone of boys had been able to elevate and lower my
eyebrows separately; when the one was climbing my forehead the
other descended it, like the two buckets in the well.

Most diffidently did I call this accomplishment to my aid now,
and immediately David checked his forces and considered my
unexpected movement without prejudice.  His face remained as it
was, his mouth open to emit the howl if I did not surpass
expectation.  I saw that, like the fair-minded boy he has always
been, he was giving me my chance, and I worked feverishly, my
chief fear being that, owing to his youth, he might not know how
marvellous was this thing I was doing.  It is an appeal to the
intellect, as well as to the senses, and no one on earth can do
it except myself.

When I paused for a moment exhausted he signed gravely, with
unchanged face, that though it was undeniably funny, he had not
yet decided whether it was funny enough, and, taking this for
encouragement, at it I went once more, till I saw his forces
wavering, when I sent my left eyebrow up almost farther than I
could bring it back, and with that I had him, the smile broke
through the clouds.

In the midst of my hard-won triumph I heard cheering.

I had been vaguely conscious that we were not quite alone, but
had not dared to look away from David; I looked now, and found to
my annoyance that I was the centre of a deeply interested
gathering of children.  There was, in particular, one vulgar
little street- boy--

However, if that damped me in the moment of victory, I was soon
to triumph gloriously in what began like defeat.  I had sat me
down on one of the garden-seats in the Figs, with one hand
resting carelessly on the perambulator, in imitation of the
nurses, it was so pleasant to assume the air of one who walked
with David daily, when to my chagrin I saw Mary approaching with
quick stealthy steps, and already so near me that flight would
have been ignominy.  Porthos, of whom she had hold, bounded
toward me, waving his traitorous tail, but she slowed on seeing
that I had observed her.  She had run me down with my own dog.

I have not mentioned that Porthos had for some time now been a
visitor at her house, though never can I forget the shock I got
the first time I saw him strolling out of it like an afternoon
caller.  Of late he has avoided it, crossing to the other side
when I go that way, and rejoining me farther on, so I conclude
that Mary's husband is painting him.

I waited her coming stiffly, in great depression of spirits, and
noted that her first attentions were for David, who, somewhat
shabbily, gave her the end of a smile which had been begun for
me. It seemed to relieve her, for what one may call the wild
maternal look left her face, and trying to check little gasps of
breath, the result of unseemly running, she signed to her
confederates to remain in the background, and turned curious eyes
on me.  Had she spoken as she approached, I am sure her words
would have been as flushed as her face, but now her mouth
puckered as David's does before he sets forth upon his smile, and
I saw that she thought she had me in a parley at last.

"I could not help being a little anxious," she said craftily, but
I must own, with some sweetness.

I merely raised my hat, and at that she turned quickly to David--I
cannot understand why the movement was so hasty--and lowered her
face to his.  Oh, little trump of a boy!  Instead of kissing her,
he seized her face with one hand and tried to work her eyebrows
up and down with the other.  He failed, and his obvious
disappointment in his mother was as nectar to me.

"I don't understand what you want, darling," said she in
distress, and looked at me inquiringly, and I understood what he
wanted, and let her see that I understood.  Had I been prepared
to converse with her, I should have said elatedly that, had she
known what he wanted, still she could not have done it, though
she had practised for twenty years.

I tried to express all this by another movement of my hat.

It caught David's eye and at once he appealed to me with the most
perfect confidence.  She failed to see what I did, for I shyly
gave her my back, but the effect on David was miraculous; he
signed to her to go, for he was engaged for the afternoon.

What would you have done then, reader?  I didn't.  In my great
moment I had strength of character to raise my hat for the third
time and walk away, leaving the child to judge between us.  I
walked slowly, for I knew I must give him time to get it out, and
I listened eagerly, but that was unnecessary, for when it did
come it was a very roar of anguish.  I turned my head, and saw
David fiercely pushing the woman aside, that he might have one
last long look at me.  He held out his wistful arms and nodded
repeatedly, and I faltered, but my glorious scheme saved me, and
I walked on. It was a scheme conceived in a flash, and ever since
relentlessly pursued, to burrow under Mary's influence with the
boy, expose her to him in all her vagaries, take him utterly from
her and make him mine.


XII

The Pleasantest Club in London

All perambulators lead to the Kensington Gardens.

Not, however, that you will see David in his perambulator much
longer, for soon after I first shook his faith in his mother, it
came to him to be up and doing, and he up and did in the Broad
Walk itself, where he would stand alone most elaborately poised,
signing imperiously to the British public to time him, and
looking his most heavenly just before he fell.  He fell with a
dump, and as they always laughed then, he pretended that this was
his funny way of finishing.

That was on a Monday.  On Tuesday he climbed the stone stair of
the Gold King, looking over his shoulder gloriously at each step,
and on Wednesday he struck three and went into knickerbockers.
For the Kensington Gardens, you must know, are full of short
cuts, familiar to all who play there; and the shortest leads from
the baby in long clothes to the little boy of three riding on the
fence.  It is called the Mother's Tragedy.

If you are a burgess of the gardens (which have a vocabulary of
their own), the faces of these quaint mothers are a clock to you,
in which you may read the ages of their young.  When he is three
they are said to wear the knickerbocker face, and you may take it
from me that Mary assumed that face with a sigh; fain would she
have kept her boy a baby longer, but he insisted on his rights,
and I encouraged him that I might notch another point against
her. I was now seeing David once at least every week, his mother,
who remained culpably obtuse to my sinister design, having
instructed Irene that I was to be allowed to share him with her,
and we had become close friends, though the little nurse was ever
a threatening shadow in the background.  Irene, in short, did not
improve with acquaintance.  I found her to be high and mighty,
chiefly, I think, because she now wore a nurse's cap with
streamers, of which the little creature was ludicrously proud.
She assumed the airs of an official person, and always talked as
if generations of babies had passed through her hands.  She was
also extremely jealous, and had a way of signifying disapproval
of my methods that led to many coldnesses and even bickerings
between us, which I now see to have been undignified.  I brought
the following accusations against her:

That she prated too much about right and wrong.

That she was a martinet.

That she pretended it was a real cap, with real streamers, when
she knew Mary had made the whole thing out of a muslin blind.  I
regret having used this argument, but it was the only one that
really damped her.

On the other hand, she accused me of spoiling him.

Of not thinking of his future.

Of never asking him where he expected to go to if he did such
things.

Of telling him tales that had no moral application.

Of saying that the handkerchief disappeared into nothingness,
when it really disappeared into a small tin cup, attached to my
person by a piece of elastic.

To this last charge I plead guilty, for in those days I had a
pathetic faith in legerdemain, and the eyebrow feat (which,
however, is entirely an affair of skill) having yielded such good
results, I naturally cast about for similar diversions when it
ceased to attract.  It lost its hold on David suddenly, as I was
to discover was the fate of all of them; twenty times would he
call for my latest, and exult in it, and the twenty-first time
(and ever afterward) he would stare blankly, as if wondering what
the man meant.  He was like the child queen who, when the great
joke was explained to her, said coldly, "We are not amused," and,
I assure you, it is a humiliating thing to perform before an
infant who intimates, after giving you ample time to make your
points, that he is not amused.  I hoped that when David was able
to talk--and not merely to stare at me for five minutes and then
say "hat"--his spoken verdict, however damning, would be less
expressive than his verdict without words, but I was
disillusioned.  I remember once in those later years, when he
could keep up such spirited conversations with himself that he
had little need for any of us, promising him to do something
exceedingly funny with a box and two marbles, and after he had
watched for a long time he said gravely, "Tell me when it begins
to be funny."

I confess to having received a few simple lessons in conjuring,
in a dimly lighted chamber beneath a shop, from a gifted young
man with a long neck and a pimply face, who as I entered took a
barber's pole from my pocket, saying at the same time, "Come,
come, sir, this will never do."  Whether because he knew too
much, or because he wore a trick shirt, he was the most
depressing person I ever encountered; he felt none of the
artist's joy, and it was sad to see one so well calculated to
give pleasure to thousands not caring a dump about it.

The barber's pole I successfully extracted from David's mouth,
but the difficulty (not foreseen) of knowing how to dispose of a
barber's pole in the Kensington Gardens is considerable, there
always being polite children hovering near who run after you and
restore it to you.  The young man, again, had said that anyone
would lend me a bottle or a lemon, but though these were articles
on which he seemed ever able to lay his hand, I found (what I had
never noticed before) that there is a curious dearth of them in
the Gardens.  The magic egg-cup I usually carried about with me,
and with its connivance I did some astonishing things with
pennies, but even the penny that costs sixpence is uncertain, and
just when you are saying triumphantly that it will be found in
the egg-cup, it may clatter to the ground, whereon some
ungenerous spectator, such as Irene, accuses you of fibbing and
corrupting youthful minds.  It was useless to tell her, through
clenched teeth, that the whole thing was a joke, for she
understood no jokes except her own, of which she had the most
immoderately high opinion, and that would have mattered little to
me had not David liked them also.  There were times when I could
not but think less of the boy, seeing him rock convulsed over
antics of Irene that have been known to every nursemaid since the
year One.  While I stood by, sneering, he would give me the
ecstatic look that meant, "Irene is really very entertaining,
isn't she?"

We were rivals, but I desire to treat her with scrupulous
fairness, and I admit that she had one good thing, to wit, her
gutta-percha tooth.  In earlier days one of her front teeth, as
she told me, had fallen out, but instead of then parting with it,
the resourceful child had hammered it in again with a hair-brush,
which she offered to show me, with the dents on it.  This tooth,
having in time passed away, its place was supplied by one of
gutta-percha, made by herself, which seldom came out except when
she sneezed, and if it merely fell at her feet this was a sign
that the cold was to be a slight one, but if it shot across the
room she knew she was in for something notable.  Irene's tooth
was very favourably known in the Gardens, where the perambulators
used to gather round her to hear whether it had been doing
anything to-day, and I would not have grudged David his
proprietary pride in it, had he seemed to understand that Irene's
one poor little accomplishment, though undeniably showy, was
without intellectual merit.  I have sometimes stalked away from
him, intimating that if his regard was to be got so cheaply I
begged to retire from the competition, but the Gardens are the
pleasantest club in London, and I soon returned.  How I scoured
the Gardens looking for him, and how skilful I became at picking
him out far away among the trees, though other mothers imitated
the picturesque attire of him, to Mary's indignation.  I also cut
Irene's wings (so to speak) by taking her to a dentist.

And David did some adorable things.  For instance, he used my
pockets as receptacles into which he put any article he might not
happen to want at the moment.  He shoved it in, quite as if they
were his own pockets, without saying, By your leave, and perhaps
I discovered it on reaching home--a tin-soldier, or a pistol--when
I put it on my mantleshelf and sighed.  And here is another
pleasant memory.  One day I had been over-friendly to another
boy, and, after enduring it for some time David up and struck
him.  It was exactly as Porthos does, when I favour other dogs
(he knocks them down with his foot and stands over them, looking
very noble and stern), so I knew its meaning at once; it was
David's first public intimation that he knew I belonged to him.

Irene scolded him for striking that boy, and made him stand in
disgrace at the corner of a seat in the Broad Walk.  The seat at
the corner of which David stood suffering for love of me, is the
one nearest to the Round Pond to persons coming from the north.

You may be sure that she and I had words over this fiendish
cruelty.  When next we met I treated her as one who no longer
existed, and at first she bridled and then was depressed, and as
I was going away she burst into tears.  She cried because neither
at meeting nor parting had I lifted my hat to her, a foolish
custom of mine, of which, as I now learned to my surprise, she
was very proud.  She and I still have our tiffs, but I have never
since then forgotten to lift my hat to Irene.  I also made her
promise to bow to me, at which she affected to scoff, saying I
was taking my fun of her, but she was really pleased, and I tell
you, Irene has one of the prettiest and most touching little bows
imaginable; it is half to the side (if I may so express myself),
which has always been my favourite bow, and, I doubt not, she
acquired it by watching Mary.

I should be sorry to have it thought, as you may now be thinking,
that I look on children as on puppy-dogs, who care only for play.
Perhaps that was my idea when first I tried to lure David to my
unaccustomed arms, and even for some time after, for if I am to
be candid, I must own that until he was three years old I sought
merely to amuse him.  God forgive me, but I had only one day a
week in which to capture him, and I was very raw at the business.

I was about to say that David opened my eyes to the folly of it,
but really I think this was Irene's doing.  Watching her with
children I learned that partial as they are to fun they are moved
almost more profoundly by moral excellence.  So fond of babes was
this little mother that she had always room near her for one
more, and often have I seen her in the Gardens, the centre of a
dozen mites who gazed awestruck at her while she told them
severely how little ladies and gentlemen behave.  They were
children of the well-to-pass, and she was from Drury Lane, but
they believed in her as the greatest of all authorities on little
ladies and gentlemen, and the more they heard of how these
romantic creatures keep themselves tidy and avoid pools and wait
till they come to a gate, the more they admired them, though
their faces showed how profoundly they felt that to be little
ladies and gentlemen was not for them.  You can't think what
hopeless little faces they were.

Children are not at all like puppies, I have said.  But do
puppies care only for play?  That wistful look, which the
merriest of them sometimes wear, I wonder whether it means that
they would like to hear about the good puppies?

As you shall see, I invented many stories for David, practising
the telling of them by my fireside as if they were conjuring
feats, while Irene knew only one, but she told it as never has
any other fairy-tale been told in my hearing.  It was the
prettiest of them all, and was recited by the heroine.

"Why were the king and queen not at home?" David would ask her
breathlessly.

"I suppose," said Irene, thinking it out, "they was away buying
the victuals."

She always told the story gazing into vacancy, so that David
thought it was really happening somewhere up the Broad Walk, and
when she came to its great moments her little bosom heaved.
Never shall I forget the concentrated scorn with which the prince
said to the sisters, "Neither of you ain't the one what wore the
glass slipper."

"And then--and then--and then--," said Irene, not artistically to
increase the suspense, but because it was all so glorious to her.

"Tell me--tell me quick," cried David, though he knew the tale by
heart.

"She sits down like," said Irene, trembling in second-sight, "and
she tries on the glass slipper, and it fits her to a T, and then
the prince, he cries in a ringing voice, 'This here is my true
love, Cinderella, what now I makes my lawful wedded wife.'"

Then she would come out of her dream, and look round at the
grandees of the Gardens with an extraordinary elation.  "Her, as
was only a kitchen drudge," she would say in a strange soft voice
and with shining eyes, "but was true and faithful in word and
deed, such was her reward."

I am sure that had the fairy godmother appeared just then and
touched Irene with her wand, David would have been interested
rather than astonished.  As for myself, I believe I have
surprised this little girl's secret.  She knows there are no
fairy godmothers nowadays, but she hopes that if she is always
true and faithful she may some day turn into a lady in word and
deed, like the mistress whom she adores.

It is a dead secret, a Drury Lane child's romance; but what an
amount of heavy artillery will be brought to bear against it in
this sad London of ours.  Not much chance for her, I suppose.

Good luck to you, Irene.


XIII

The Grand Tour of the Gardens

You must see for yourselves that it will be difficult to follow
our adventures unless you are familiar with the Kensington
Gardens, as they now became known to David.  They are in London,
where the King lives, and you go to them every day unless you are
looking decidedly flushed, but no one has ever been in the whole
of the Gardens, because it is so soon time to turn back.  The
reason it is soon time to turn back is that you sleep from twelve
to one.  If your mother was not so sure that you sleep from
twelve to one, you could most likely see the whole of them.

The Gardens are bounded on one side by a never-ending line of
omnibuses, over which Irene has such authority that if she holds
up her finger to any one of them it stops immediately.  She then
crosses with you in safety to the other side.  There are more
gates to the Gardens than one gate, but that is the one you go in
at, and before you go in you speak to the lady with the balloons,
who sits just outside.  This is as near to being inside as she
may venture, because, if she were to let go her hold of the
railings for one moment, the balloons would lift her up, and she
would be flown away.  She sits very squat, for the balloons are
always tugging at her, and the strain has given her quite a red
face. Once she was a new one, because the old one had let go, and
David was very sorry for the old one, but as she did let go, he
wished he had been there to see.

The Gardens are a tremendous big place, with millions and
hundreds of trees, and first you come to the Figs, but you scorn
to loiter there, for the Figs is the resort of superior little
persons, who are forbidden to mix with the commonalty, and is so
named, according to legend, because they dress in full fig.
These dainty ones are themselves contemptuously called Figs by
David and other heroes, and you have a key to the manners and
customs of this dandiacal section of the Gardens when I tell you
that cricket is called crickets here.  Occasionally a rebel Fig
climbs over the fence into the world, and such a one was Miss
Mabel Grey, of whom I shall tell you when we come to Miss Mabel
Grey's gate.  She was the only really celebrated Fig.

We are now in the Broad Walk, and it is as much bigger than the
other walks as your father is bigger than you.  David wondered if
it began little, and grew and grew, till it was quite grown up,
and whether the other walks are its babies, and he drew a
picture, which diverted him very much, of the Broad Walk giving a
tiny walk an airing in a perambulator.  In the Broad Walk you
meet all the people who are worth knowing, and there is usually a
grown-up with them to prevent their going on the damp grass, and
to make them stand disgraced at the corner of a seat if they have
been mad-dog or Mary-Annish.  To be Mary-Annish is to behave like
a girl, whimpering because nurse won't carry you, or simpering
with your thumb in your mouth, and it is a hateful quality, but
to be mad- dog is to kick out at everything, and there is some
satisfaction in that.

If I were to point out all the notable places as we pass up the
Broad Walk, it would be time to turn back before we reach them,
and I simply wave my stick at Cecco's Tree, that memorable spot
where a boy called Cecco lost his penny, and, looking for it,
found twopence.  There has been a good deal of excavation going
on there ever since.  Farther up the walk is the little wooden
house in which Marmaduke Perry hid.  There is no more awful story
of the Gardens by day than this of Marmaduke Perry, who had been
Mary- Annish three days in succession, and was sentenced to
appear in the Broad Walk dressed in his sister's clothes.  He hid
in the little wooden house, and refused to emerge until they
brought him knickerbockers with pockets.

You now try to go to the Round Pond, but nurses hate it, because
they are not really manly, and they make you look the other way,
at the Big Penny and the Baby's Palace.  She was the most
celebrated baby of the Gardens, and lived in the palace all
alone, with ever so many dolls, so people rang the bell, and up
she got out of her bed, though it was past six o'clock, and she
lighted a candle and opened the door in her nighty, and then they
all cried with great rejoicings, "Hail, Queen of England!"  What
puzzled David most was how she knew where the matches were kept.
The Big Penny is a statue about her.

Next we come to the Hump, which is the part of the Broad Walk
where all the big races are run, and even though you had no
intention of running you do run when you come to the Hump, it is
such a fascinating, slide-down kind of place.  Often you stop
when you have run about half-way down it, and then you are lost,
but there is another little wooden house near here, called the
Lost House, and so you tell the man that you are lost and then he
finds you.  It is glorious fun racing down the Hump, but you
can't do it on windy days because then you are not there, but the
fallen leaves do it instead of you.  There is almost nothing that
has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf.

From the Hump we can see the gate that is called after Miss Mabel
Grey, the Fig I promised to tell you about.  There were always
two nurses with her, or else one mother and one nurse, and for a
long time she was a pattern-child who always coughed off the
table and said, "How do you do?" to the other Figs, and the only
game she played at was flinging a ball gracefully and letting the
nurse bring it back to her.  Then one day she tired of it all and
went mad-dog, and, first, to show that she as really was mad-dog,
she unloosened both her boot-laces and put out her tongue east,
west, north, and south.  She then flung her sash into a puddle
and danced on it till dirty water was squirted over her frock,
after which she climbed the fence and had a series of incredible
adventures, one of the least of which was that she kicked off
both her boots.  At last she came to the gate that is now called
after her, out of which she ran into streets David and I have
never been in though we have heard them roaring, and still she
ran on and would never again have been heard of had not her
mother jumped into a bus and thus overtaken her.  It all
happened, I should say, long ago, and this is not the Mabel Grey
whom David knows.

Returning up the Broad Walk we have on our right the Baby Walk,
which is so full of perambulators that you could cross from side
to side stepping on babies, but the nurses won't let you do it.
From this walk a passage called Bunting's Thumb, because it is
that length, leads into Picnic Street, where there are real
kettles, and chestnut-blossom falls into your mug as you are
drinking.  Quite common children picnic here also, and the
blossom falls into their mugs just the same.

Next comes St. Govor's Well, which was full of water when Malcolm
the Bold fell into it.  He was his mother's favourite, and he let
her put her arm round his neck in public because she was a widow,
but he was also partial to adventures and liked to play with a
chimney-sweep who had killed a good many bears.  The sweep's name
was Sooty, and one day when they were playing near the well,
Malcolm fell in and would have been drowned had not Sooty dived
in and rescued him, and the water had washed Sooty clean and he
now stood revealed as Malcolm's long-lost father.  So Malcolm
would not let his mother put her arm round his neck any more.

Between the well and the Round Pond are the cricket-pitches, and
frequently the choosing of sides exhausts so much time that there
is scarcely any cricket.  Everybody wants to bat first, and as
soon as he is out he bowls unless you are the better wrestler,
and while you are wrestling with him the fielders have scattered
to play at something else.  The Gardens are noted for two kinds
of cricket: boy cricket, which is real cricket with a bat, and
girl cricket, which is with a racquet and the governess.  Girls
can't really play cricket, and when you are watching their futile
efforts you make funny sounds at them.  Nevertheless, there was a
very disagreeable incident one day when some forward girls
challenged David's team, and a disturbing creature called Angela
Clare sent down so many yorkers that--However, instead of telling
you the result of that regrettable match I shall pass on
hurriedly to the Round Pond, which is the wheel that keeps all
the Gardens going.

It is round because it is in the very middle of the Gardens, and
when you are come to it you never want to go any farther.  You
can't be good all the time at the Round Pond, however much you
try.  You can be good in the Broad Walk all the time, but not at
the Round Pond, and the reason is that you forget, and, when you
remember, you are so wet that you may as well be wetter.  There
are men who sail boats on the Round Pond, such big boats that
they bring them in barrows and sometimes in perambulators, and
then the baby has to walk.  The bow-legged children in the
Gardens are these who had to walk too soon because their father
needed the perambulator.

You always want to have a yacht to sail on the Round Pond, and in
the end your uncle gives you one; and to carry it to the Pond the
first day is splendid, also to talk about it to boys who have no
uncle is splendid, but soon you like to leave it at home.  For
the sweetest craft that slips her moorings in the Round Pond is
what is called a stick-boat, because she is rather like a stick
until she is in the water and you are holding the string.  Then
as you walk round, pulling her, you see little men running about
her deck, and sails rise magically and catch the breeze, and you
put in on dirty nights at snug harbours which are unknown to the
lordly yachts.  Night passes in a twink, and again your rakish
craft noses for the wind, whales spout, you glide over buried
cities, and have brushes with pirates and cast anchor on coral
isles.  You are a solitary boy while all this is taking place,
for two boys together cannot adventure far upon the Round Pond,
and though you may talk to yourself throughout the voyage, giving
orders and executing them with dispatch, you know not, when it is
time to go home, where you have been or what swelled your sails;
your treasure-trove is all locked away in your hold, so to speak,
which will be opened, perhaps, by another little boy many years
afterward.

But those yachts have nothing in their hold.  Does anyone return
to this haunt of his youth because of the yachts that used to
sail it?  Oh, no.  It is the stick-boat that is freighted with
memories.  The yachts are toys, their owner a fresh-water
mariner, they can cross and recross a pond only while the stick-
boat goes to sea.  You yachtsmen with your wands, who think we
are all there to gaze on you, your ships are only accidents of
this place, and were they all to be boarded and sunk by the ducks
the real business of the Round Pond would be carried on as usual.

Paths from everywhere crowd like children to the pond.  Some of
them are ordinary paths, which have a rail on each side, and are
made by men with their coats off, but others are vagrants, wide
at one spot and at another so narrow that you can stand astride
them. They are called Paths that have Made Themselves, and David
did wish he could see them doing it.  But, like all the most
wonderful things that happen in the Gardens, it is done, we
concluded, at night after the gates are closed.  We have also
decided that the paths make themselves because it is their only
chance of getting to the Round Pond.

One of these gypsy paths comes from the place where the sheep get
their hair cut.  When David shed his curls at the hair-dresser's,
I am told, he said good-bye to them without a tremor, though Mary
has never been quite the same bright creature since, so he
despises the sheep as they run from their shearer and calls out
tauntingly, "Cowardy, cowardy custard!"  But when the man grips
them between his legs David shakes a fist at him for using such
big scissors.  Another startling moment is when the man turns
back the grimy wool from the sheeps' shoulders and they look
suddenly like ladies in the stalls of a theatre.  The sheep are
so frightened by the shearing that it makes them quite white and
thin, and as soon as they are set free they begin to nibble the
grass at once, quite anxiously, as if they feared that they would
never be worth eating.  David wonders whether they know each
other, now that they are so different, and if it makes them fight
with the wrong ones.  They are great fighters, and thus so unlike
country sheep that every year they give Porthos a shock.  He can
make a field of country sheep fly by merely announcing his
approach, but these town sheep come toward him with no promise of
gentle entertainment, and then a light from last year breaks upon
Porthos.  He cannot with dignity retreat, but he stops and looks
about him as if lost in admiration of the scenery, and presently
he strolls away with a fine indifference and a glint at me from
the corner of his eye.

The Serpentine begins near here.  It is a lovely lake, and there
is a drowned forest at the bottom of it.  If you peer over the
edge you can see the trees all growing upside down, and they say
that at night there are also drowned stars in it.  If so, Peter
Pan sees them when he is sailing across the lake in the Thrush's
Nest.  A small part only of the Serpentine is in the Gardens, for
soon it passes beneath a bridge to far away where the island is
on which all the birds are born that become baby boys and girls.
No one who is human, except Peter Pan (and he is only half
human), can land on the island, but you may write what you want
(boy or girl, dark or fair) on a piece of paper, and then twist
it into the shape of a boat and slip it into the water, and it
reaches Peter Pan's island after dark.

We are on the way home now, though, of course, it is all pretence
that we can go to so many of the places in one day.  I should
have had to be carrying David long ago and resting on every seat
like old Mr. Salford.  That was what we called him, because he
always talked to us of a lovely place called Salford where he had
been born.  He was a crab-apple of an old gentleman who wandered
all day in the Gardens from seat to seat trying to fall in with
somebody who was acquainted with the town of Salford, and when we
had known him for a year or more we actually did meet another
aged solitary who had once spent Saturday to Monday in Salford.
He was meek and timid and carried his address inside his hat, and
whatever part of London he was in search of he always went to the
General Post-office first as a starting-point.  Him we carried in
triumph to our other friend, with the story of that Saturday to
Monday, and never shall I forget the gloating joy with which Mr.
Salford leapt at him.  They have been cronies ever since, and I
notice that Mr. Salford, who naturally does most of the talking,
keeps tight grip of the other old man's coat.

The two last places before you come to our gate are the Dog's
Cemetery and the chaffinch's nest, but we pretend not to know
what the Dog's Cemetery is, as Porthos is always with us.  The
nest is very sad.  It is quite white, and the way we found it was
wonderful.  We were having another look among the bushes for
David's lost worsted ball, and instead of the ball we found a
lovely nest made of the worsted, and containing four eggs, with
scratches on them very like David's handwriting, so we think they
must have been the mother's love-letters to the little ones
inside.  Every day we were in the Gardens we paid a call at the
nest, taking care that no cruel boy should see us, and we dropped
crumbs, and soon the bird knew us as friends, and sat in the nest
looking at us kindly with her shoulders hunched up.  But one day
when we went, there were only two eggs in the nest, and the next
time there were none.  The saddest part of it was that the poor
little chaffinch fluttered about the bushes, looking so
reproachfully at us that we knew she thought we had done it, and
though David tried to explain to her, it was so long since he had
spoken the bird language that I fear she did not understand.  He
and I left the Gardens that day with our knuckles in our eyes.


XIV

Peter Pan

If you ask your mother whether she knew about Peter Pan when she
was a little girl she will say, "Why, of course, I did, child,"
and if you ask her whether he rode on a goat in those days she
will say, "What a foolish question to ask; certainly he did."
Then if you ask your grandmother whether she knew about Peter Pan
when she was a girl, she also says, "Why, of course, I did,
child," but if you ask her whether he rode on a goat in those
days, she says she never heard of his having a goat.  Perhaps she
has forgotten, just as she sometimes forgets your name and calls
you Mildred, which is your mother's name.  Still, she could
hardly forget such an important thing as the goat.  Therefore
there was no goat when your grandmother was a little girl.  This
shows that, in telling the story of Peter Pan, to begin with the
goat (as most people do) is as silly as to put on your jacket
before your vest.

Of course, it also shows that Peter is ever so old, but he is
really always the same age, so that does not matter in the least.
His age is one week, and though he was born so long ago he has
never had a birthday, nor is there the slightest chance of his
ever having one.  The reason is that he escaped from being a
human when he was seven days' old; he escaped by the window and
flew back to the Kensington Gardens.

If you think he was the only baby who ever wanted to escape, it
shows how completely you have forgotten your own young days.
When David heard this story first he was quite certain that he
had never tried to escape, but I told him to think back hard,
pressing his hands to his temples, and when he had done this
hard, and even harder, he distinctly remembered a youthful desire
to return to the tree-tops, and with that memory came others, as
that he had lain in bed planning to escape as soon as his mother
was asleep, and how she had once caught him half-way up the
chimney.  All children could have such recollections if they
would press their hands hard to their temples, for, having been
birds before they were human, they are naturally a little wild
during the first few weeks, and very itchy at the shoulders,
where their wings used to be.  So David tells me.

I ought to mention here that the following is our way with a
story: First, I tell it to him, and then he tells it to me, the
understanding being that it is quite a different story; and then
I retell it with his additions, and so we go on until no one
could say whether it is more his story or mine.  In this story of
Peter Pan, for instance, the bald narrative and most of the moral
reflections are mine, though not all, for this boy can be a stern
moralist, but the interesting bits about the ways and customs of
babies in the bird-stage are mostly reminiscences of David's,
recalled by pressing his hands to his temples and thinking hard.

Well, Peter Pan got out by the window, which had no bars.
Standing on the ledge he could see trees far away, which were
doubtless the Kensington Gardens, and the moment he saw them he
entirely forgot that he was now a little boy in a nightgown, and
away he flew, right over the houses to the Gardens.  It is
wonderful that he could fly without wings, but the place itched
tremendously, and, perhaps we could all fly if we were as dead-
confident-sure of our capacity to do it as was bold Peter Pan
that evening.

He alighted gaily on the open sward, between the Baby's Palace
and the Serpentine, and the first thing he did was to lie on his
back and kick.  He was quite unaware already that he had ever
been human, and thought he was a bird, even in appearance, just
the same as in his early days, and when he tried to catch a fly
he did not understand that the reason he missed it was because he
had attempted to seize it with his hand, which, of course, a bird
never does.  He saw, however, that it must be past Lock-out Time,
for there were a good many fairies about, all too busy to notice
him; they were getting breakfast ready, milking their cows,
drawing water, and so on, and the sight of the water-pails made
him thirsty, so he flew over to the Round Pond to have a drink.
He stooped, and dipped his beak in the pond; he thought it was
his beak, but, of course, it was only his nose, and, therefore,
very little water came up, and that not so refreshing as usual,
so next he tried a puddle, and he fell flop into it.  When a real
bird falls in flop, he spreads out his feathers and pecks them
dry, but Peter could not remember what was the thing to do, and
he decided, rather sulkily, to go to sleep on the weeping beech
in the Baby Walk.

At first he found some difficulty in balancing himself on a
branch, but presently he remembered the way, and fell asleep.  He
awoke long before morning, shivering, and saying to himself, "I
never was out in such a cold night;" he had really been out in
colder nights when he was a bird, but, of course, as everybody
knows, what seems a warm night to a bird is a cold night to a boy
in a nightgown.  Peter also felt strangely uncomfortable, as if
his head was stuffy, he heard loud noises that made him look
round sharply, though they were really himself sneezing.  There
was something he wanted very much, but, though he knew he wanted
it, he could not think what it was.  What he wanted so much was
his mother to blow his nose, but that never struck him, so he
decided to appeal to the fairies for enlightenment.  They are
reputed to know a good deal.

There were two of them strolling along the Baby Walk, with their
arms round each other's waists, and he hopped down to address
them.  The fairies have their tiffs with the birds, but they
usually give a civil answer to a civil question, and he was quite
angry when these two ran away the moment they saw him.  Another
was lolling on a garden-chair, reading a postage-stamp which some
human had let fall, and when he heard Peter's voice he popped in
alarm behind a tulip.

To Peter's bewilderment he discovered that every fairy he met
fled from him.  A band of workmen, who were sawing down a
toadstool, rushed away, leaving their tools behind them.  A
milkmaid turned her pail upside down and hid in it.  Soon the
Gardens were in an uproar.  Crowds of fairies were running this
away and that, asking each other stoutly, who was afraid, lights
were extinguished, doors barricaded, and from the grounds of
Queen Mab's palace came the rubadub of drums, showing that the
royal guard had been called out.  A regiment of Lancers came
charging down the Broad Walk, armed with holly-leaves, with which
they jog the enemy horribly in passing.  Peter heard the little
people crying everywhere that there was a human in the Gardens
after Lock-out Time, but he never thought for a moment that he
was the human.  He was feeling stuffier and stuffier, and more
and more wistful to learn what he wanted done to his nose, but he
pursued them with the vital question in vain; the timid creatures
ran from him, and even the Lancers, when he approached them up
the Hump, turned swiftly into a side-walk, on the pretence that
they saw him there.

Despairing of the fairies, he resolved to consult the birds, but
now he remembered, as an odd thing, that all the birds on the
weeping beech had flown away when he alighted on it, and though
that had not troubled him at the time, he saw its meaning now.
Every living thing was shunning him.  Poor little Peter Pan, he
sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for a
bird, he was sitting on his wrong part.  It is a blessing that he
did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power
to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease
forever to be able to do it.  The reason birds can fly and we
can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith
is to have wings.

Now, except by flying, no one can reach the island in the
Serpentine, for the boats of humans are forbidden to land there,
and there are stakes round it, standing up in the water, on each
of which a bird-sentinel sits by day and night.  It was to the
island that Peter now flew to put his strange case before old
Solomon Caw, and he alighted on it with relief, much heartened to
find himself at last at home, as the birds call the island.  All
of them were asleep, including the sentinels, except Solomon, who
was wide awake on one side, and he listened quietly to Peter's
adventures, and then told him their true meaning.

"Look at your night-gown, if you don't believe me," Solomon said,
and with staring eyes Peter looked at his night-gown, and then at
the sleeping birds.  Not one of them wore anything.

"How many of your toes are thumbs?" said Solomon a little
cruelly, and Peter saw to his consternation, that all his toes
were fingers.  The shock was so great that it drove away his
cold.

"Ruffle your feathers," said that grim old Solomon, and Peter
tried most desperately hard to ruffle his feathers, but he had
none.  Then he rose up, quaking, and for the first time since he
stood on the window-ledge, he remembered a lady who had been very
fond of him.

"I think I shall go back to mother," he said timidly.

"Good-bye," replied Solomon Caw with a queer look.

But Peter hesitated.  "Why don't you go?" the old one asked
politely.

"I suppose," said Peter huskily, "I suppose I can still fly?"

You see, he had lost faith.

"Poor little half-and-half," said Solomon, who was not really
hard-hearted, "you will never be able to fly again, not even on
windy days.  You must live here on the island always."

"And never even go to the Kensington Gardens?" Peter asked
tragically.

"How could you get across?" said Solomon.  He promised very
kindly, however, to teach Peter as many of the bird ways as could
be learned by one of such an awkward shape.

"Then I sha'n't be exactly a human?" Peter asked.

"No."

"Nor exactly a bird?"

"No."

"What shall I be?"

"You will be a Betwixt-and-Between," Solomon said, and certainly
he was a wise old fellow, for that is exactly how it turned out.

The birds on the island never got used to him.  His oddities
tickled them every day, as if they were quite new, though it was
really the birds that were new.  They came out of the eggs daily,
and laughed at him at once, then off they soon flew to be humans,
and other birds came out of other eggs, and so it went on
forever. The crafty mother-birds, when they tired of sitting on
their eggs, used to get the young one to break their shells a day
before the right time by whispering to them that now was their
chance to see Peter washing or drinking or eating.  Thousands
gathered round him daily to watch him do these things, just as
you watch the peacocks, and they screamed with delight when he
lifted the crusts they flung him with his hands instead of in the
usual way with the mouth.  All his food was brought to him from
the Gardens at Solomon's orders by the birds.  He would not eat
worms or insects (which they thought very silly of him), so they
brought him bread in their beaks.  Thus, when you cry out,
"Greedy! Greedy!" to the bird that flies away with the big crust,
you know now that you ought not to do this, for he is very likely
taking it to Peter Pan.

Peter wore no night-gown now.  You see, the birds were always
begging him for bits of it to line their nests with, and, being
very good-natured, he could not refuse, so by Solomon's advice he
had hidden what was left of it.  But, though he was now quite
naked, you must not think that he was cold or unhappy.  He was
usually very happy and gay, and the reason was that Solomon had
kept his promise and taught him many of the bird ways.  To be
easily pleased, for instance, and always to be really doing
something, and to think that whatever he was doing was a thing of
vast importance.  Peter became very clever at helping the birds
to build their nests; soon he could build better than a
wood-pigeon, and nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did
he satisfy the finches, and he made nice little water-troughs
near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his
fingers.  He also became very learned in bird-lore, and knew an
east-wind from a west-wind by its smell, and he could see the
grass growing and hear the insects walking about inside the
tree-trunks.  But the best thing Solomon had done was to teach
him to have a glad heart.  All birds have glad hearts unless you
rob their nests, and so as they were the only kind of heart
Solomon knew about, it was easy to him to teach Peter how to have
one.

Peter's heart was so glad that he felt he must sing all day long,
just as the birds sing for joy, but, being partly human, he
needed an instrument, so he made a pipe of reeds, and he used to
sit by the shore of the island of an evening, practising the
sough of the wind and the ripple of the water, and catching
handfuls of the shine of the moon, and he put them all in his
pipe and played them so beautifully that even the birds were
deceived, and they would say to each other, "Was that a fish
leaping in the water or was it Peter playing leaping fish on his
pipe?" and sometimes he played the birth of birds, and then the
mothers would turn round in their nests to see whether they had
laid an egg.  If you are a child of the Gardens you must know the
chestnut-tree near the bridge, which comes out in flower first of
all the chestnuts, but perhaps you have not heard why this tree
leads the way.  It is because Peter wearies for summer and plays
that it has come, and the chestnut being so near, hears him and
is cheated.

But as Peter sat by the shore tootling divinely on his pipe he
sometimes fell into sad thoughts and then the music became sad
also, and the reason of all this sadness was that he could not
reach the Gardens, though he could see them through the arch of
the bridge.  He knew he could never be a real human again, and
scarcely wanted to be one, but oh, how he longed to play as other
children play, and of course there is no such lovely place to
play in as the Gardens.  The birds brought him news of how boys
and girls play, and wistful tears started in Peter's eyes.

Perhaps you wonder why he did not swim across.  The reason was
that he could not swim.  He wanted to know how to swim, but no
one on the island knew the way except the ducks, and they are so
stupid.  They were quite willing to teach him, but all they could
say about it was, "You sit down on the top of the water in this
way, and then you kick out like that."  Peter tried it often, but
always before he could kick out he sank.  What he really needed
to know was how you sit on the water without sinking, and they
said it was quite impossible to explain such an easy thing as
that. Occasionally swans touched on the island, and he would give
them all his day's food and then ask them how they sat on the
water, but as soon as he had no more to give them the hateful
things hissed at him and sailed away.

Once he really thought he had discovered a way of reaching the
Gardens.  A wonderful white thing, like a runaway newspaper,
floated high over the island and then tumbled, rolling over and
over after the manner of a bird that has broken its wing.  Peter
was so frightened that he hid, but the birds told him it was only
a kite, and what a kite is, and that it must have tugged its
string out of a boy's hand, and soared away.  After that they
laughed at Peter for being so fond of the kite, he loved it so
much that he even slept with one hand on it, and I think this was
pathetic and pretty, for the reason he loved it was because it
had belonged to a real boy.

To the birds this was a very poor reason, but the older ones felt
grateful to him at this time because he had nursed a number of
fledglings through the German measles, and they offered to show
him how birds fly a kite.  So six of them took the end of the
string in their beaks and flew away with it; and to his amazement
it flew after them and went even higher than they.

Peter screamed out, "Do it again!" and with great good-nature
they did it several times, and always instead of thanking them he
cried, "Do it again!" which shows that even now he had not quite
forgotten what it was to be a boy.

At last, with a grand design burning within his brave heart, he
begged them to do it once more with him clinging to the tail, and
now a hundred flew off with the string, and Peter clung to the
tail, meaning to drop off when he was over the Gardens.  But the
kite broke to pieces in the air, and he would have drowned in the
Serpentine had he not caught hold of two indignant swans and made
them carry him to the island.  After this the birds said that
they would help him no more in his mad enterprise.

Nevertheless, Peter did reach the Gardens at last by the help of
Shelley's boat, as I am now to tell you.


XV

The Thrush's Nest

Shelley was a young gentleman and as grown-up as he need ever
expect to be.  He was a poet; and they are never exactly
grown-up. They are people who despise money except what you need
for to-day, and he had all that and five pounds over.  So, when
he was walking in the Kensington Gardens, he made a paper boat of
his bank-note, and sent it sailing on the Serpentine.

It reached the island at night: and the look-out brought it to
Solomon Caw, who thought at first that it was the usual thing, a
message from a lady, saying she would be obliged if he could let
her have a good one.  They always ask for the best one he has,
and if he likes the letter he sends one from Class A; but if it
ruffles him he sends very funny ones indeed.  Sometimes he sends
none at all, and at another time he sends a nestful; it all
depends on the mood you catch him in.  He likes you to leave it
all to him, and if you mention particularly that you hope he will
see his way to making it a boy this time, he is almost sure to
send another girl.  And whether you are a lady or only a little
boy who wants a baby-sister, always take pains to write your
address clearly.  You can't think what a lot of babies Solomon
has sent to the wrong house.

Shelley's boat, when opened, completely puzzled Solomon, and he
took counsel of his assistants, who having walked over it twice,
first with their toes pointed out, and then with their toes
pointed in, decided that it came from some greedy person who
wanted five.  They thought this because there was a large five
printed on it.  "Preposterous!" cried Solomon in a rage, and he
presented it to Peter; anything useless which drifted upon the
island was usually given to Peter as a play-thing.

But he did not play with his precious bank-note, for he knew what
it was at once, having been very observant during the week when
he was an ordinary boy.  With so much money, he reflected, he
could surely at last contrive to reach the Gardens, and he
considered all the possible ways, and decided (wisely, I think)
to choose the best way.  But, first, he had to tell the birds of
the value of Shelley's boat; and though they were too honest to
demand it back, he saw that they were galled, and they cast such
black looks at Solomon, who was rather vain of his cleverness,
that he flew away to the end of the island, and sat there very
depressed with his head buried in his wings.  Now Peter knew that
unless Solomon was on your side, you never got anything done for
you in the island, so he followed him and tried to hearten him.

Nor was this all that Peter did to gain the powerful old fellow's
good will.  You must know that Solomon had no intention of
remaining in office all his life.  He looked forward to retiring
by-and-by, and devoting his green old age to a life of pleasure
on a certain yew-stump in the Figs which had taken his fancy, and
for years he had been quietly filling his stocking.  It was a
stocking belonging to some bathing person which had been cast
upon the island, and at the time I speak of it contained a
hundred and eighty crumbs, thirty-four nuts, sixteen crusts, a
pen-wiper and a boot-lace.  When his stocking was full, Solomon
calculated that he would be able to retire on a competency.
Peter now gave him a pound.  He cut it off his bank-note with a
sharp stick.

This made Solomon his friend for ever, and after the two had
consulted together they called a meeting of the thrushes.  You
will see presently why thrushes only were invited.

The scheme to be put before them was really Peter's, but Solomon
did most of the talking, because he soon became irritable if
other people talked.  He began by saying that he had been much
impressed by the superior ingenuity shown by the thrushes in
nest-building, and this put them into good-humour at once, as it
was meant to do; for all the quarrels between birds are about the
best way of building nests.  Other birds, said Solomon, omitted
to line their nests with mud, and as a result they did not hold
water.  Here he cocked his head as if he had used an unanswerable
argument; but, unfortunately, a Mrs. Finch had come to the
meeting uninvited, and she squeaked out, "We don't build nests to
hold water, but to hold eggs," and then the thrushes stopped
cheering, and Solomon was so perplexed that he took several sips
of water.

"Consider," he said at last, "how warm the mud makes the nest."

"Consider," cried Mrs. Finch, "that when water gets into the nest
it remains there and your little ones are drowned."

The thrushes begged Solomon with a look to say something crushing
in reply to this, but again he was perplexed.

"Try another drink," suggested Mrs. Finch pertly.  Kate was her
name, and all Kates are saucy.

Solomon did try another drink, and it inspired him.  "If," said
he, "a finch's nest is placed on the Serpentine it fills and
breaks to pieces, but a thrush's nest is still as dry as the cup
of a swan's back."

How the thrushes applauded!  Now they knew why they lined their
nests with mud, and when Mrs. Finch called out, "We don't place
our nests on the Serpentine," they did what they should have done
at first: chased her from the meeting.  After this it was most
orderly.  What they had been brought together to hear, said
Solomon, was this: their young friend, Peter Pan, as they well
knew, wanted very much to be able to cross to the Gardens, and he
now proposed, with their help, to build a boat.

At this the thrushes began to fidget, which made Peter tremble
for his scheme.

Solomon explained hastily that what he meant was not one of the
cumbrous boats that humans use; the proposed boat was to be
simply a thrush's nest large enough to hold Peter.

But still, to Peter's agony, the thrushes were sulky.  "We are
very busy people," they grumbled, "and this would be a big job."

"Quite so," said Solomon, "and, of course, Peter would not allow
you to work for nothing.  You must remember that he is now in
comfortable circumstances, and he will pay you such wages as you
have never been paid before.  Peter Pan authorises me to say that
you shall all be paid sixpence a day."

Then all the thrushes hopped for joy, and that very day was begun
the celebrated Building of the Boat.  All their ordinary business
fell into arrears.  It was the time of year when they should have
been pairing, but not a thrush's nest was built except this big
one, and so Solomon soon ran short of thrushes with which to
supply the demand from the mainland.  The stout, rather greedy
children, who look so well in perambulators but get puffed easily
when they walk, were all young thrushes once, and ladies often
ask specially for them.  What do you think Solomon did?  He sent
over to the house-tops for a lot of sparrows and ordered them to
lay their eggs in old thrushes' nests and sent their young to the
ladies and swore they were all thrushes!  It was known afterward
on the island as the Sparrows' Year, and so, when you meet, as
you doubtless sometimes do, grown-up people who puff and blow as
if they thought themselves bigger than they are, very likely they
belong to that year.  You ask them.

Peter was a just master, and paid his workpeople every evening.
They stood in rows on the branches, waiting politely while he cut
the paper sixpences out of his bank-note, and presently he called
the roll, and then each bird, as the names were mentioned, flew
down and got sixpence.  It must have been a fine sight.

And at last, after months of labor, the boat was finished.  Oh,
the deportment of Peter as he saw it growing more and more like a
great thrush's nest!  From the very beginning of the building of
it he slept by its side, and often woke up to say sweet things to
it, and after it was lined with mud and the mud had dried he
always slept in it.  He sleeps in his nest still, and has a
fascinating way of curling round in it, for it is just large
enough to hold him comfortably when he curls round like a kitten.
It is brown inside, of course, but outside it is mostly green,
being woven of grass and twigs, and when these wither or snap the
walls are thatched afresh.  There are also a few feathers here
and there, which came off the thrushes while they were building.

The other birds were extremely jealous and said that the boat
would not balance on the water, but it lay most beautifully
steady; they said the water would come into it, but no water came
into it.  Next they said that Peter had no oars, and this caused
the thrushes to look at each other in dismay, but Peter replied
that he had no need of oars, for he had a sail, and with such a
proud, happy face he produced a sail which he had fashioned out
of his night-gown, and though it was still rather like a
night-gown it made a lovely sail.  And that night, the moon being
full, and all the birds asleep, he did enter his coracle (as
Master Francis Pretty would have said) and depart out of the
island.  And first, he knew not why, he looked upward, with his
hands clasped, and from that moment his eyes were pinned to the
west.

He had promised the thrushes to begin by making short voyages,
with them to his guides, but far away he saw the Kensington
Gardens beckoning to him beneath the bridge, and he could not
wait.  His face was flushed, but he never looked back; there was
an exultation in his little breast that drove out fear.  Was
Peter the least gallant of the English mariners who have sailed
westward to meet the Unknown?

At first, his boat turned round and round, and he was driven back
to the place of his starting, whereupon he shortened sail, by
removing one of the sleeves, and was forthwith carried backward
by a contrary breeze, to his no small peril.  He now let go the
sail, with the result that he was drifted toward the far shore,
where are black shadows he knew not the dangers of, but suspected
them, and so once more hoisted his night-gown and went roomer of
the shadows until he caught a favouring wind, which bore him
westward, but at so great a speed that he was like to be broke
against the bridge.  Which, having avoided, he passed under the
bridge and came, to his great rejoicing, within full sight of the
delectable Gardens.  But having tried to cast anchor, which was a
stone at the end of a piece of the kite-string, he found no
bottom, and was fain to hold off, seeking for moorage, and,
feeling his way, he buffeted against a sunken reef that cast him
overboard by the greatness of the shock, and he was near to being
drowned, but clambered back into the vessel.  There now arose a
mighty storm, accompanied by roaring of waters, such as he had
never heard the like, and he was tossed this way and that, and
his hands so numbed with the cold that he could not close them.
Having escaped the danger of which, he was mercifully carried
into a small bay, where his boat rode at peace.

Nevertheless, he was not yet in safety; for, on pretending to
disembark, he found a multitude of small people drawn up on the
shore to contest his landing, and shouting shrilly to him to be
off, for it was long past Lock-out Time.  This, with much
brandishing of their holly-leaves, and also a company of them
carried an arrow which some boy had left in the Gardens, and this
they were prepared to use as a battering-ram.

Then Peter, who knew them for the fairies, called out that he was
not an ordinary human and had no desire to do them displeasure,
but to be their friend; nevertheless, having found a jolly
harbour, he was in no temper to draw off therefrom, and he warned
them if they sought to mischief him to stand to their harms.

So saying, he boldly leapt ashore, and they gathered around him
with intent to slay him, but there then arose a great cry among
the women, and it was because they had now observed that his sail
was a baby's night-gown.  Whereupon, they straightway loved him,
and grieved that their laps were too small, the which I cannot
explain, except by saying that such is the way of women.  The
men- fairies now sheathed their weapons on observing the
behaviour of their women, on whose intelligence they set great
store, and they led him civilly to their queen, who conferred
upon him the courtesy of the Gardens after Lock-out Time, and
henceforth Peter could go whither he chose, and the fairies had
orders to put him in comfort.

Such was his first voyage to the Gardens, and you may gather from
the antiquity of the language that it took place a long time ago.
But Peter never grows any older, and if we could be watching for
him under the bridge to-night (but, of course, we can't), I
daresay we should see him hoisting his night-gown and sailing or
paddling toward us in the Thrush's Nest.  When he sails, he sits
down, but he stands up to paddle.  I shall tell you presently how
he got his paddle.

Long before the time for the opening of the gates comes he steals
back to the island, for people must not see him (he is not so
human as all that), but this gives him hours for play, and he
plays exactly as real children play.  At least he thinks so, and
it is one of the pathetic things about him that he often plays
quite wrongly.

You see, he had no one to tell him how children really play, for
the fairies were all more or less in hiding until dusk, and so
know nothing, and though the birds pretended that they could tell
him a great deal, when the time for telling came, it was
wonderful how little they really knew.  They told him the truth
about hide- and-seek, and he often plays it by himself, but even
the ducks on the Round Pond could not explain to him what it is
that makes the pond so fascinating to boys.  Every night the
ducks have forgotten all the events of the day, except the number
of pieces of cake thrown to them.  They are gloomy creatures, and
say that cake is not what it was in their young days.

So Peter had to find out many things for himself.  He often
played ships at the Round Pond, but his ship was only a hoop
which he had found on the grass.  Of course, he had never seen a
hoop, and he wondered what you play at with them, and decided
that you play at pretending they are boats.  This hoop always
sank at once, but he waded in for it, and sometimes he dragged it
gleefully round the rim of the pond, and he was quite proud to
think that he had discovered what boys do with hoops.

Another time, when he found a child's pail, he thought it was for
sitting in, and he sat so hard in it that he could scarcely get
out of it.  Also he found a balloon.  It was bobbing about on the
Hump, quite as if it was having a game by itself, and he caught
it after an exciting chase.  But he thought it was a ball, and
Jenny Wren had told him that boys kick balls, so he kicked it;
and after that he could not find it anywhere.

Perhaps the most surprising thing he found was a perambulator.
It was under a lime-tree, near the entrance to the Fairy Queen's
Winter Palace (which is within the circle of the seven Spanish
chestnuts), and Peter approached it warily, for the birds had
never mentioned such things to him.  Lest it was alive, he
addressed it politely, and then, as it gave no answer, he went
nearer and felt it cautiously.  He gave it a little push, and it
ran from him, which made him think it must be alive after all;
but, as it had run from him, he was not afraid.  So he stretched
out his hand to pull it to him, but this time it ran at him, and
he was so alarmed that he leapt the railing and scudded away to
his boat.  You must not think, however, that he was a coward, for
he came back next night with a crust in one hand and a stick in
the other, but the perambulator had gone, and he never saw
another one.  I have promised to tell you also about his paddle.
It was a child's spade which he had found near St. Govor's Well,
and he thought it was a paddle.

Do you pity Peter Pan for making these mistakes?  If so, I think
it rather silly of you.  What I mean is that, of course, one must
pity him now and then, but to pity him all the time would be
impertinence.  He thought he had the most splendid time in the
Gardens, and to think you have it is almost quite as good as
really to have it.  He played without ceasing, while you often
waste time by being mad-dog or Mary-Annish.  He could be neither
of these things, for he had never heard of them, but do you think
he is to be pitied for that?

Oh, he was merry.  He was as much merrier than you, for instance,
as you are merrier than your father.  Sometimes he fell, like a
spinning-top, from sheer merriment.  Have you seen a greyhound
leaping the fences of the Gardens?  That is how Peter leaps them.

And think of the music of his pipe.  Gentlemen who walk home at
night write to the papers to say they heard a nightingale in the
Gardens, but it is really Peter's pipe they hear.  Of course, he
had no mother--at least, what use was she to him?  You can be
sorry for him for that, but don't be too sorry, for the next
thing I mean to tell you is how he revisited her.  It was the
fairies who gave him the chance


XVI

Lock-Out Time

It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and
almost the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies
wherever there are children.  Long ago children were forbidden
the Gardens, and at that time there was not a fairy in the place;
then the children were admitted, and the fairies came trooping in
that very evening.  They can't resist following the children, but
you seldom see them, partly because they live in the daytime
behind the railings, where you are not allowed to go, and also
partly because they are so cunning.  They are not a bit cunning
after Lock-out, but until Lock-out, my word!

When you were a bird you knew the fairies pretty well, and you
remember a good deal about them in your babyhood, which it is a
great pity you can't write down, for gradually you forget, and I
have heard of children who declared that they had never once seen
a fairy.  Very likely if they said this in the Kensington
Gardens, they were standing looking at a fairy all the time.  The
reason they were cheated was that she pretended to be something
else. This is one of their best tricks.  They usually pretend to
be flowers, because the court sits in the Fairies' Basin, and
there are so many flowers there, and all along the Baby Walk,
that a flower is the thing least likely to attract attention.
They dress exactly like flowers, and change with the seasons,
putting on white when lilies are in and blue for blue-bells, and
so on.  They like crocus and hyacinth time best of all, as they
are partial to a bit of colour, but tulips (except white ones,
which are the fairy-cradles) they consider garish, and they
sometimes put off dressing like tulips for days, so that the
beginning of the tulip weeks is almost the best time to catch
them.

When they think you are not looking they skip along pretty
lively, but if you look and they fear there is no time to hide,
they stand quite still, pretending to be flowers.  Then, after
you have passed without knowing that they were fairies, they rush
home and tell their mothers they have had such an adventure.  The
Fairy Basin, you remember, is all covered with ground-ivy (from
which they make their castor-oil), with flowers growing in it
here and there.  Most of them really are flowers, but some of
them are fairies.  You never can be sure of them, but a good plan
is to walk by looking the other way, and then turn round sharply.
Another good plan, which David and I sometimes follow, is to
stare them down.  After a long time they can't help winking, and
then you know for certain that they are fairies.

There are also numbers of them along the Baby Walk, which is a
famous gentle place, as spots frequented by fairies are called.
Once twenty-four of them had an extraordinary adventure.  They
were a girls' school out for a walk with the governess, and all
wearing hyacinth gowns, when she suddenly put her finger to her
mouth, and then they all stood still on an empty bed and
pretended to be hyacinths.  Unfortunately, what the governess had
heard was two gardeners coming to plant new flowers in that very
bed.  They were wheeling a handcart with the flowers in it, and
were quite surprised to find the bed occupied.  "Pity to lift
them hyacinths," said the one man.  "Duke's orders," replied the
other, and, having emptied the cart, they dug up the boarding-
school and put the poor, terrified things in it in five rows.  Of
course, neither the governess nor the girls dare let on that they
were fairies, so they were carted far away to a potting-shed, out
of which they escaped in the night without their shoes, but there
was a great row about it among the parents, and the school was
ruined.

As for their houses, it is no use looking for them, because they
are the exact opposite of our houses.  You can see our houses by
day but you can't see them by dark.  Well, you can see their
houses by dark, but you can't see them by day, for they are the
colour of night, and I never heard of anyone yet who could see
night in the daytime.  This does not mean that they are black,
for night has its colours just as day has, but ever so much
brighter. Their blues and reds and greens are like ours with a
light behind them.  The palace is entirely built of many-coloured
glasses, and is quite the loveliest of all royal residences, but
the queen sometimes complains because the common people will peep
in to see what she is doing.  They are very inquisitive folk, and
press quite hard against the glass, and that is why their noses
are mostly snubby.  The streets are miles long and very twisty,
and have paths on each side made of bright worsted.  The birds
used to steal the worsted for their nests, but a policeman has
been appointed to hold on at the other end.

One of the great differences between the fairies and us is that
they never do anything useful.  When the first baby laughed for
the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they
all went skipping about.  That was the beginning of fairies.
They look tremendously busy, you know, as if they had not a
moment to spare, but if you were to ask them what they are doing,
they could not tell you in the least.  They are frightfully
ignorant, and everything they do is make-believe.  They have a
postman, but he never calls except at Christmas with his little
box, and though they have beautiful schools, nothing is taught in
them; the youngest child being chief person is always elected
mistress, and when she has called the roll, they all go out for a
walk and never come back.  It is a very noticeable thing that, in
fairy families, the youngest is always chief person, and usually
becomes a prince or princess; and children remember this, and
think it must be so among humans also, and that is why they are
often made uneasy when they come upon their mother furtively
putting new frills on the basinette.

You have probably observed that your baby-sister wants to do all
sorts of things that your mother and her nurse want her not to
do: to stand up at sitting-down time, and to sit down at
standing-up time, for instance, or to wake up when she should
fall asleep, or to crawl on the floor when she is wearing her
best frock, and so on, and perhaps you put this down to
naughtiness.  But it is not; it simply means that she is doing as
she has seen the fairies do; she begins by following their ways,
and it takes about two years to get her into the human ways.  Her
fits of passion, which are awful to behold, and are usually
called teething, are no such thing; they are her natural
exasperation, because we don't understand her, though she is
talking an intelligible language. She is talking fairy.  The
reason mothers and nurses know what her remarks mean, before
other people know, as that "Guch" means "Give it to me at once,"
while "Wa" is "Why do you wear such a funny hat?" is because,
mixing so much with babies, they have picked up a little of the
fairy language.

Of late David has been thinking back hard about the fairy tongue,
with his hands clutching his temples, and he has remembered a
number of their phrases which I shall tell you some day if I
don't forget.  He had heard them in the days when he was a
thrush, and though I suggested to him that perhaps it is really
bird language he is remembering, he says not, for these phrases
are about fun and adventures, and the birds talked of nothing but
nest- building.  He distinctly remembers that the birds used to
go from spot to spot like ladies at shop-windows, looking at the
different nests and saying, "Not my colour, my dear," and "How
would that do with a soft lining?" and "But will it wear?" and
"What hideous trimming!" and so on.

The fairies are exquisite dancers, and that is why one of the
first things the baby does is to sign to you to dance to him and
then to cry when you do it.  They hold their great balls in the
open air, in what is called a fairy-ring.  For weeks afterward
you can see the ring on the grass.  It is not there when they
begin, but they make it by waltzing round and round.  Sometimes
you will find mushrooms inside the ring, and these are fairy
chairs that the servants have forgotten to clear away.  The
chairs and the rings are the only tell-tale marks these little
people leave behind them, and they would remove even these were
they not so fond of dancing that they toe it till the very moment
of the opening of the gates.  David and I once found a fairy-ring
quite warm.

But there is also a way of finding out about the ball before it
takes place.  You know the boards which tell at what time the
Gardens are to close to-day.  Well, these tricky fairies
sometimes slyly change the board on a ball night, so that it says
the Gardens are to close at six-thirty for instance, instead of
at seven.  This enables them to get begun half an hour earlier.

If on such a night we could remain behind in the Gardens, as the
famous Maimie Mannering did, we might see delicious sights,
hundreds of lovely fairies hastening to the ball, the married
ones wearing their wedding-rings round their waists, the
gentlemen, all in uniform, holding up the ladies' trains, and
linkmen running in front carrying winter cherries, which are the
fairy-lanterns, the cloakroom where they put on their silver
slippers and get a ticket for their wraps, the flowers streaming
up from the Baby Walk to look on, and always welcome because they
can lend a pin, the suppertable, with Queen Mab at the head of
it, and behind her chair the Lord Chamberlain, who carries a
dandelion on which he blows when Her Majesty wants to know the
time.

The table-cloth varies according to the seasons, and in May it is
made of chestnut-blossom.  The ways the fairy-servants do is
this: The men, scores of them, climb up the trees and shake the
branches, and the blossom falls like snow.  Then the lady
servants sweep it together by whisking their skirts until it is
exactly like a table-cloth, and that is how they get their
table-cloth.

They have real glasses and real wine of three kinds, namely,
blackthorn wine, berberris wine, and cowslip wine, and the Queen
pours out, but the bottles are so heavy that she just pretends to
pour out.  There is bread and butter to begin with, of the size
of a threepenny bit; and cakes to end with, and they are so small
that they have no crumbs.  The fairies sit round on mushrooms,
and at first they are very well-behaved and always cough off the
table, and so on, but after a bit they are not so well-behaved
and stick their fingers into the butter, which is got from the
roots of old trees, and the really horrid ones crawl over the
table- cloth chasing sugar or other delicacies with their
tongues.  When the Queen sees them doing this she signs to the
servants to wash up and put away, and then everybody adjourns to
the dance, the Queen walking in front while the Lord Chamberlain
walks behind her, carrying two little pots, one of which contains
the juice of wall-flower and the other the juice of Solomon's
Seals.  Wall- flower juice is good for reviving dancers who fall
to the ground in a fit, and Solomon's Seals juice is for bruises.
 They bruise very easily and when Peter plays faster and faster
they foot it till they fall down in fits.  For, as you know
without my telling you, Peter Pan is the fairies' orchestra.  He
sits in the middle of the ring, and they would never dream of
having a smart dance nowadays without him.  "P.  P."  is written
on the corner of the invitation-cards sent out by all really good
families.  They are grateful little people, too, and at the
princess's coming-of-age ball (they come of age on their second
birthday and have a birthday every month) they gave him the wish
of his heart.

The way it was done was this.  The Queen ordered him to kneel,
and then said that for playing so beautifully she would give him
the wish of his heart.  Then they all gathered round Peter to
hear what was the wish of his heart, but for a long time he
hesitated, not being certain what it was himself.

"If I chose to go back to mother," he asked at last, "could you
give me that wish?"

Now this question vexed them, for were he to return to his mother
they should lose his music, so the Queen tilted her nose
contemptuously and said, "Pooh, ask for a much bigger wish than
that."

"Is that quite a little wish?" he inquired.

"As little as this," the Queen answered, putting her hands near
each other.

"What size is a big wish?" he asked.

She measured it off on her skirt and it was a very handsome
length.

Then Peter reflected and said, "Well, then, I think I shall have
two little wishes instead of one big one."

Of course, the fairies had to agree, though his cleverness rather
shocked them, and he said that his first wish was to go to his
mother, but with the right to return to the Gardens if he found
her disappointing.  His second wish he would hold in reserve.

They tried to dissuade him, and even put obstacles in the way.

"I can give you the power to fly to her house," the Queen said,
"but I can't open the door for you.

"The window I flew out at will be open," Peter said confidently.
"Mother always keeps it open in the hope that I may fly back."

"How do you know?" they asked, quite surprised, and, really,
Peter could not explain how he knew.

"I just do know," he said.

So as he persisted in his wish, they had to grant it.  The way
they gave him power to fly was this: They all tickled him on the
shoulder, and soon he felt a funny itching in that part and then
up he rose higher and higher and flew away out of the Gardens and
over the house-tops.

It was so delicious that instead of flying straight to his old
home he skimmed away over St. Paul's to the Crystal Palace and
back by the river and Regent's Park, and by the time he reached
his mother's window he had quite made up his mind that his second
wish should be to become a bird.

The window was wide open, just as he knew it would be, and in he
fluttered, and there was his mother lying asleep.  Peter alighted
softly on the wooden rail at the foot of the bed and had a good
look at her.  She lay with her head on her hand, and the hollow
in the pillow was like a nest lined with her brown wavy hair.  He
remembered, though he had long forgotten it, that she always gave
her hair a holiday at night.  How sweet the frills of her night-
gown were.  He was very glad she was such a pretty mother.

But she looked sad, and he knew why she looked sad.  One of her
arms moved as if it wanted to go round something, and he knew
what it wanted to go round.

"Oh, mother," said Peter to himself, "if you just knew who is
sitting on the rail at the foot of the bed."

Very gently he patted the little mound that her feet made, and he
could see by her face that she liked it.  He knew he had but to
say "Mother" ever so softly, and she would wake up.  They always
wake up at once if it is you that says their name.  Then she
would give such a joyous cry and squeeze him tight.  How nice
that would be to him, but oh, how exquisitely delicious it would
be to her. That I am afraid is how Peter regarded it.  In
returning to his mother he never doubted that he was giving her
the greatest treat a woman can have.  Nothing can be more
splendid, he thought, than to have a little boy of your own.  How
proud of him they are; and very right and proper, too.

But why does Peter sit so long on the rail, why does he not tell
his mother that he has come back?

I quite shrink from the truth, which is that he sat there in two
minds.  Sometimes he looked longingly at his mother, and
sometimes he looked longingly at the window.  Certainly it would
be pleasant to be her boy again, but, on the other hand, what
times those had been in the Gardens!  Was he so sure that he
would enjoy wearing clothes again?  He popped off the bed and
opened some drawers to have a look at his old garments.  They
were still there, but he could not remember how you put them on.
The socks, for instance, were they worn on the hands or on the
feet?  He was about to try one of them on his hand, when he had a
great adventure.  Perhaps the drawer had creaked; at any rate,
his mother woke up, for he heard her say "Peter," as if it was
the most lovely word in the language.  He remained sitting on the
floor and held his breath, wondering how she knew that he had
come back.  If she said "Peter" again, he meant to cry "Mother"
and run to her.  But she spoke no more, she made little moans
only, and when next he peeped at her she was once more asleep,
with tears on her face.

It made Peter very miserable, and what do you think was the first
thing he did?  Sitting on the rail at the foot of the bed, he
played a beautiful lullaby to his mother on his pipe.  He had
made it up himself out of the way she said "Peter," and he never
stopped playing until she looked happy.

He thought this so clever of him that he could scarcely resist
wakening her to hear her say, "Oh, Peter, how exquisitely you
play."  However, as she now seemed comfortable, he again cast
looks at the window.  You must not think that he meditated flying
away and never coming back.  He had quite decided to be his
mother's boy, but hesitated about beginning to-night.  It was the
second wish which troubled him.  He no longer meant to make it a
wish to be a bird, but not to ask for a second wish seemed
wasteful, and, of course, he could not ask for it without
returning to the fairies.  Also, if he put off asking for his
wish too long it might go bad.  He asked himself if he had not
been hardhearted to fly away without saying good-bye to Solomon.
"I should like awfully to sail in my boat just once more," he
said wistfully to his sleeping mother.  He quite argued with her
as if she could hear him.  "It would be so splendid to tell the
birds of this adventure," he said coaxingly.  "I promise to come
back," he said solemnly and meant it, too.

And in the end, you know, he flew away.  Twice he came back from
the window, wanting to kiss his mother, but he feared the delight
of it might waken her, so at last he played her a lovely kiss on
his pipe, and then he flew back to the Gardens.

Many nights and even months passed before he asked the fairies
for his second wish; and I am not sure that I quite know why he
delayed so long.  One reason was that he had so many good-byes to
say, not only to his particular friends, but to a hundred
favourite spots.  Then he had his last sail, and his very last
sail, and his last sail of all, and so on.  Again, a number of
farewell feasts were given in his honour; and another comfortable
reason was that, after all, there was no hurry, for his mother
would never weary of waiting for him.  This last reason
displeased old Solomon, for it was an encouragement to the birds
to procrastinate.  Solomon had several excellent mottoes for
keeping them at their work, such as "Never put off laying to-day,
because you can lay to-morrow," and "In this world there are no
second chances," and yet here was Peter gaily putting off and
none the worse for it.  The birds pointed this out to each other,
and fell into lazy habits.

But, mind you, though Peter was so slow in going back to his
mother, he was quite decided to go back.  The best proof of this
was his caution with the fairies.  They were most anxious that he
should remain in the Gardens to play to them, and to bring this
to pass they tried to trick him into making such a remark as "I
wish the grass was not so wet," and some of them danced out of
time in the hope that he might cry, "I do wish you would keep
time!"  Then they would have said that this was his second wish.
But he smoked their design, and though on occasions he began, "I
wish--" he always stopped in time.  So when at last he said to
them bravely, "I wish now to go back to mother for ever and
always," they had to tickle his shoulders and let him go.

He went in a hurry in the end because he had dreamt that his
mother was crying, and he knew what was the great thing she cried
for, and that a hug from her splendid Peter would quickly make
her to smile.  Oh, he felt sure of it, and so eager was he to be
nestling in her arms that this time he flew straight to the
window, which was always to be open for him.

But the window was closed, and there were iron bars on it, and
peering inside he saw his mother sleeping peacefully with her arm
round another little boy.

Peter called, "Mother! mother!" but she heard him not; in vain he
beat his little limbs against the iron bars.  He had to fly back,
sobbing, to the Gardens, and he never saw his dear again.  What a
glorious boy he had meant to be to her.  Ah, Peter, we who have
made the great mistake, how differently we should all act at the
second chance.  But Solomon was right; there is no second chance,
not for most of us.  When we reach the window it is Lock-out
Time. The iron bars are up for life.


XVII

The Little House

Everybody has heard of the Little House in the Kensington
Gardens, which is the only house in the whole world that the
fairies have built for humans.  But no one has really seen it,
except just three or four, and they have not only seen it but
slept in it, and unless you sleep in it you never see it.  This
is because it is not there when you lie down, but it is there
when you wake up and step outside.

In a kind of way everyone may see it, but what you see is not
really it, but only the light in the windows.  You see the light
after Lock-out Time.  David, for instance, saw it quite
distinctly far away among the trees as we were going home from
the pantomime, and Oliver Bailey saw it the night he stayed so
late at the Temple, which is the name of his father's office.
Angela Clare, who loves to have a tooth extracted because then
she is treated to tea in a shop, saw more than one light, she saw
hundreds of them all together, and this must have been the
fairies building the house, for they build it every night and
always in a different part of the Gardens.  She thought one of
the lights was bigger than the others, though she was not quite
sure, for they jumped about so, and it might have been another
one that was bigger.  But if it was the same one, it was Peter
Pan's light. Heaps of children have seen the light, so that is
nothing.  But Maimie Mannering was the famous one for whom the
house was first built.

Maimie was always rather a strange girl, and it was at night that
she was strange.  She was four years of age, and in the daytime
she was the ordinary kind.  She was pleased when her brother
Tony, who was a magnificent fellow of six, took notice of her,
and she looked up to him in the right way, and tried in vain to
imitate him and was flattered rather than annoyed when he shoved
her about.  Also, when she was batting she would pause though the
ball was in the air to point out to you that she was wearing new
shoes. She was quite the ordinary kind in the daytime.

But as the shades of night fell, Tony, the swaggerer, lost his
contempt for Maimie and eyed her fearfully, and no wonder, for
with dark there came into her face a look that I can describe
only as a leary look.  It was also a serene look that contrasted
grandly with Tony's uneasy glances.  Then he would make her
presents of his favourite toys (which he always took away from
her next morning) and she accepted them with a disturbing smile.
The reason he was now become so wheedling and she so mysterious
was (in brief) that they knew they were about to be sent to bed.
It was then that Maimie was terrible.  Tony entreated her not to
do it to-night, and the mother and their coloured nurse
threatened her, but Maimie merely smiled her agitating smile.
And by-and-by when they were alone with their night-light she
would start up in bed crying "Hsh! what was that?"  Tony
beseeches her!  "It was nothing--don't, Maimie, don't!" and pulls
the sheet over his head. "It is coming nearer!" she cries; "Oh,
look at it, Tony!  It is feeling your bed with its horns--it is
boring for you, oh, Tony, oh!" and she desists not until he
rushes downstairs in his combinations, screeching.  When they
came up to whip Maimie they usually found her sleeping
tranquilly, not shamming, you know, but really sleeping, and
looking like the sweetest little angel, which seems to me to make
it almost worse.

But of course it was daytime when they were in the Gardens, and
then Tony did most of the talking.  You could gather from his
talk that he was a very brave boy, and no one was so proud of it
as Maimie.  She would have loved to have a ticket on her saying
that she was his sister.  And at no time did she admire him more
than when he told her, as he often did with splendid firmness,
that one day he meant to remain behind in the Gardens after the
gates were closed.

"Oh, Tony," she would say, with awful respect, "but the fairies
will be so angry!"

"I daresay," replied Tony, carelessly.

"Perhaps," she said, thrilling, "Peter Pan will give you a sail
in his boat!"

"I shall make him," replied Tony; no wonder she was proud of him.

But they should not have talked so loudly, for one day they were
overheard by a fairy who had been gathering skeleton leaves, from
which the little people weave their summer curtains, and after
that Tony was a marked boy.  They loosened the rails before he
sat on them, so that down he came on the back of his head; they
tripped him up by catching his boot-lace and bribed the ducks to
sink his boat.  Nearly all the nasty accidents you meet with in
the Gardens occur because the fairies have taken an ill-will to
you, and so it behoves you to be careful what you say about them.

Maimie was one of the kind who like to fix a day for doing
things, but Tony was not that kind, and when she asked him which
day he was to remain behind in the Gardens after Lock-out he
merely replied, "Just some day;" he was quite vague about which
day except when she asked "Will it be to-day?" and then he could
always say for certain that it would not be to-day.  So she saw
that he was waiting for a real good chance.

This brings us to an afternoon when the Gardens were white with
snow, and there was ice on the Round Pond, not thick enough to
skate on but at least you could spoil it for to-morrow by
flinging stones, and many bright little boys and girls were doing
that.

When Tony and his sister arrived they wanted to go straight to
the pond, but their ayah said they must take a sharp walk first,
and as she said this she glanced at the time-board to see when
the Gardens closed that night.  It read half-past five.  Poor
ayah! she is the one who laughs continuously because there are so
many white children in the world, but she was not to laugh much
more that day.

Well, they went up the Baby Walk and back, and when they returned
to the time-board she was surprised to see that it now read five
o'clock for closing time.  But she was unacquainted with the
tricky ways of the fairies, and so did not see (as Maimie and
Tony saw at once) that they had changed the hour because there
was to be a ball to-night.  She said there was only time now to
walk to the top of the Hump and back, and as they trotted along
with her she little guessed what was thrilling their little
breasts.  You see the chance had come of seeing a fairy ball.
Never, Tony felt, could he hope for a better chance.

He had to feel this, for Maimie so plainly felt it for him.  Her
eager eyes asked the question, "Is it to-day?" and he gasped and
then nodded.  Maimie slipped her hand into Tony's, and hers was
hot, but his was cold.  She did a very kind thing; she took off
her scarf and gave it to him!  "In case you should feel cold,"
she whispered.  Her face was aglow, but Tony's was very gloomy.

As they turned on the top of the Hump he whispered to her, "I'm
afraid Nurse would see me, so I sha'n't be able to do it."

Maimie admired him more than ever for being afraid of nothing but
their ayah, when there were so many unknown terrors to fear, and
she said aloud, "Tony, I shall race you to the gate," and in a
whisper, "Then you can hide," and off they ran.

Tony could always outdistance her easily, but never had she known
him speed away so quickly as now, and she was sure he hurried
that he might have more time to hide.  "Brave, brave!" her doting
eyes were crying when she got a dreadful shock; instead of
hiding, her hero had run out at the gate!  At this bitter sight
Maimie stopped blankly, as if all her lapful of darling treasures
were suddenly spilled, and then for very disdain she could not
sob; in a swell of protest against all puling cowards she ran to
St. Govor's Well and hid in Tony's stead.

When the ayah reached the gate and saw Tony far in front she
thought her other charge was with him and passed out.  Twilight
came on, and scores and hundreds of people passed out, including
the last one, who always has to run for it, but Maimie saw them
not.  She had shut her eyes tight and glued them with passionate
tears.  When she opened them something very cold ran up her legs
and up her arms and dropped into her heart.  It was the stillness
of the Gardens.  Then she heard clang, then from another part
clang, then clang, clang far away.  It was the Closing of the
Gates.

Immediately the last clang had died away Maimie distinctly heard
a voice say, "So that's all right."  It had a wooden sound and
seemed to come from above, and she looked up in time to see an
elm tree stretching out its arms and yawning.

She was about to say, "I never knew you could speak!" when a
metallic voice that seemed to come from the ladle at the well
remarked to the elm, "I suppose it is a bit coldish up there?"
and the elm replied, "Not particularly, but you do get numb
standing so long on one leg," and he flapped his arms vigorously
just as the cabmen do before they drive off.  Maimie was quite
surprised to see that a number of other tall trees were doing the
same sort of thing, and she stole away to the Baby Walk and
crouched observantly under a Minorca Holly which shrugged its
shoulders but did not seem to mind her.

She was not in the least cold.  She was wearing a russet-coloured
pelisse and had the hood over her head, so that nothing of her
showed except her dear little face and her curls.  The rest of
her real self was hidden far away inside so many warm garments
that in shape she seemed rather like a ball.  She was about forty
round the waist.

There was a good deal going on in the Baby Walk, when Maimie
arrived in time to see a magnolia and a Persian lilac step over
the railing and set off for a smart walk.  They moved in a jerky
sort of way certainly, but that was because they used crutches.
An elderberry hobbled across the walk, and stood chatting with
some young quinces, and they all had crutches.  The crutches were
the sticks that are tied to young trees and shrubs.  They were
quite familiar objects to Maimie, but she had never known what
they were for until to-night.

She peeped up the walk and saw her first fairy.  He was a street
boy fairy who was running up the walk closing the weeping trees.
The way he did it was this, he pressed a spring in the trunk and
they shut like umbrellas, deluging the little plants beneath with
snow.  "Oh, you naughty, naughty child!" Maimie cried
indignantly, for she knew what it was to have a dripping umbrella
about your ears.

Fortunately the mischievous fellow was out of earshot, but the
chrysanthemums heard her, and they all said so pointedly "Hoity-
toity, what is this?" that she had to come out and show herself.
Then the whole vegetable kingdom was rather puzzled what to do.

"Of course it is no affair of ours," a spindle tree said after
they had whispered together, "but you know quite well you ought
not to be here, and perhaps our duty is to report you to the
fairies; what do you think yourself?"

"I think you should not," Maimie replied, which so perplexed them
that they said petulantly there was no arguing with her.  "I
wouldn't ask it of you," she assured them, "if I thought it was
wrong," and of course after this they could not well carry tales.
They then said, "Well-a-day," and "Such is life!" for they can be
frightfully sarcastic, but she felt sorry for those of them who
had no crutches, and she said good-naturedly, "Before I go to the
fairies' ball, I should like to take you for a walk one at a
time; you can lean on me, you know."

At this they clapped their hands, and she escorted them up to the
Baby Walk and back again, one at a time, putting an arm or a
finger round the very frail, setting their leg right when it got
too ridiculous, and treating the foreign ones quite as
courteously as the English, though she could not understand a
word they said.

They behaved well on the whole, though some whimpered that she
had not taken them as far as she took Nancy or Grace or Dorothy,
and others jagged her, but it was quite unintentional, and she
was too much of a lady to cry out.  So much walking tired her and
she was anxious to be off to the ball, but she no longer felt
afraid.  The reason she felt no more fear was that it was now
night-time, and in the dark, you remember, Maimie was always
rather strange.

They were now loath to let her go, for, "If the fairies see you,"
they warned her, "they will mischief you, stab you to death or
compel you to nurse their children or turn you into something
tedious, like an evergreen oak."  As they said this they looked
with affected pity at an evergreen oak, for in winter they are
very envious of the evergreens.

"Oh, la!" replied the oak bitingly, "how deliciously cosy it is
to stand here buttoned to the neck and watch you poor naked
creatures shivering!"

This made them sulky though they had really brought it on
themselves, and they drew for Maimie a very gloomy picture of the
perils that faced her if she insisted on going to the ball.

She learned from a purple filbert that the court was not in its
usual good temper at present, the cause being the tantalising
heart of the Duke of Christmas Daisies.  He was an Oriental
fairy, very poorly of a dreadful complaint, namely, inability to
love, and though he had tried many ladies in many lands he could
not fall in love with one of them.  Queen Mab, who rules in the
Gardens, had been confident that her girls would bewitch him, but
alas, his heart, the doctor said, remained cold.  This rather
irritating doctor, who was his private physician, felt the Duke's
heart immediately after any lady was presented, and then always
shook his bald head and murmured, "Cold, quite cold!"  Naturally
Queen Mab felt disgraced, and first she tried the effect of
ordering the court into tears for nine minutes, and then she
blamed the Cupids and decreed that they should wear fools' caps
until they thawed the Duke's frozen heart.

"How I should love to see the Cupids in their dear little fools'
caps!" Maimie cried, and away she ran to look for them very
recklessly, for the Cupids hate to be laughed at.

It is always easy to discover where a fairies' ball is being
held, as ribbons are stretched between it and all the populous
parts of the Gardens, on which those invited may walk to the
dance without wetting their pumps.  This night the ribbons were
red and looked very pretty on the snow.

Maimie walked alongside one of them for some distance without
meeting anybody, but at last she saw a fairy cavalcade
approaching.  To her surprise they seemed to be returning from
the ball, and she had just time to hide from them by bending her
knees and holding out her arms and pretending to be a garden
chair. There were six horsemen in front and six behind, in the
middle walked a prim lady wearing a long train held up by two
pages, and on the train, as if it were a couch, reclined a lovely
girl, for in this way do aristocratic fairies travel about.  She
was dressed in golden rain, but the most enviable part of her was
her neck, which was blue in colour and of a velvet texture, and
of course showed off her diamond necklace as no white throat
could have glorified it.  The high-born fairies obtain this
admired effect by pricking their skin, which lets the blue blood
come through and dye them, and you cannot imagine anything so
dazzling unless you have seen the ladies' busts in the jewellers'
windows.

Maimie also noticed that the whole cavalcade seemed to be in a
passion, tilting their noses higher than it can be safe for even
fairies to tilt them, and she concluded that this must be another
case in which the doctor had said "Cold, quite cold!"

Well, she followed the ribbon to a place where it became a bridge
over a dry puddle into which another fairy had fallen and been
unable to climb out.  At first this little damsel was afraid of
Maimie, who most kindly went to her aid, but soon she sat in her
hand chatting gaily and explaining that her name was Brownie, and
that though only a poor street singer she was on her way to the
ball to see if the Duke would have her.

"Of course," she said, "I am rather plain," and this made Maimie
uncomfortable, for indeed the simple little creature was almost
quite plain for a fairy.

It was difficult to know what to reply.

"I see you think I have no chance," Brownie said falteringly.

"I don't say that," Maimie answered politely, "of course your
face is just a tiny bit homely, but--"  Really it was quite
awkward for her.

Fortunately she remembered about her father and the bazaar.  He
had gone to a fashionable bazaar where all the most beautiful
ladies in London were on view for half-a-crown the second day,
but on his return home instead of being dissatisfied with
Maimie's mother he had said, "You can't think, my dear, what a
relief it is to see a homely face again."

Maimie repeated this story, and it fortified Brownie
tremendously, indeed she had no longer the slightest doubt that
the Duke would choose her.  So she scudded away up the ribbon,
calling out to Maimie not to follow lest the Queen should
mischief her.

But Maimie's curiosity tugged her forward, and presently at the
seven Spanish chestnuts, she saw a wonderful light.  She crept
forward until she was quite near it, and then she peeped from
behind a tree.

The light, which was as high as your head above the ground, was
composed of myriads of glow-worms all holding on to each other,
and so forming a dazzling canopy over the fairy ring.  There were
thousands of little people looking on, but they were in shadow
and drab in colour compared to the glorious creatures within that
luminous circle who were so bewilderingly bright that Maimie had
to wink hard all the time she looked at them.

It was amazing and even irritating to her that the Duke of
Christmas Daisies should be able to keep out of love for a
moment: yet out of love his dusky grace still was: you could see
it by the shamed looks of the Queen and court (though they
pretended not to care), by the way darling ladies brought forward
for his approval burst into tears as they were told to pass on,
and by his own most dreary face.

Maimie could also see the pompous doctor feeling the Duke's heart
and hear him give utterance to his parrot cry, and she was
particularly sorry for the Cupids, who stood in their fools' caps
in obscure places and, every time they heard that "Cold, quite
cold," bowed their disgraced little heads.

She was disappointed not to see Peter Pan, and I may as well tell
you now why he was so late that night.  It was because his boat
had got wedged on the Serpentine between fields of floating ice,
through which he had to break a perilous passage with his trusty
paddle.

The fairies had as yet scarcely missed him, for they could not
dance, so heavy were their hearts.  They forget all the steps
when they are sad and remember them again when they are merry.
David tells me that fairies never say "We feel happy": what they
say is, "We feel dancey."

Well, they were looking very undancey indeed, when sudden
laughter broke out among the onlookers, caused by Brownie, who
had just arrived and was insisting on her right to be presented
to the Duke.

Maimie craned forward eagerly to see how her friend fared, though
she had really no hope; no one seemed to have the least hope
except Brownie herself, who, however, was absolutely confident.
She was led before his grace, and the doctor putting a finger
carelessly on the ducal heart, which for convenience sake was
reached by a little trapdoor in his diamond shirt, had begun to
say mechanically, "Cold, qui--," when he stopped abruptly.

"What's this?" he cried, and first he shook the heart like a
watch, and then put his ear to it.

"Bless my soul!" cried the doctor, and by this time of course the
excitement among the spectators was tremendous, fairies fainting
right and left.

Everybody stared breathlessly at the Duke, who was very much
startled and looked as if he would like to run away.  "Good
gracious me!" the doctor was heard muttering, and now the heart
was evidently on fire, for he had to jerk his fingers away from
it and put them in his mouth.

The suspense was awful!

Then in a loud voice, and bowing low, "My Lord Duke," said the
physician elatedly, "I have the honour to inform your excellency
that your grace is in love."

You can't conceive the effect of it.  Brownie held out her arms
to the Duke and he flung himself into them, the Queen leapt into
the arms of the Lord Chamberlain, and the ladies of the court
leapt into the arms of her gentlemen, for it is etiquette to
follow her example in everything.  Thus in a single moment about
fifty marriages took place, for if you leap into each other's
arms it is a fairy wedding.  Of course a clergyman has to be
present.

How the crowd cheered and leapt!  Trumpets brayed, the moon came
out, and immediately a thousand couples seized hold of its rays
as if they were ribbons in a May dance and waltzed in wild
abandon round the fairy ring.  Most gladsome sight of all, the
Cupids plucked the hated fools' caps from their heads and cast
them high in the air.  And then Maimie went and spoiled
everything.  She couldn't help it.  She was crazy with delight
over her little friend's good fortune, so she took several steps
forward and cried in an ecstasy, "Oh, Brownie, how splendid!"

Everybody stood still, the music ceased, the lights went out, and
all in the time you may take to say "Oh dear!"  An awful sense of
her peril came upon Maimie, too late she remembered that she was
a lost child in a place where no human must be between the
locking and the opening of the gates, she heard the murmur of an
angry multitude, she saw a thousand swords flashing for her
blood, and she uttered a cry of terror and fled.

How she ran! and all the time her eyes were starting out of her
head.  Many times she lay down, and then quickly jumped up and
ran on again.  Her little mind was so entangled in terrors that
she no longer knew she was in the Gardens.  The one thing she was
sure of was that she must never cease to run, and she thought she
was still running long after she had dropped in the Figs and gone
to sleep.  She thought the snowflakes falling on her face were
her mother kissing her good-night.  She thought her coverlet of
snow was a warm blanket, and tried to pull it over her head.  And
when she heard talking through her dreams she thought it was
mother bringing father to the nursery door to look at her as she
slept. But it was the fairies.

I am very glad to be able to say that they no longer desired to
mischief her.  When she rushed away they had rent the air with
such cries as "Slay her!"  "Turn her into something extremely
unpleasant!" and so on, but the pursuit was delayed while they
discussed who should march in front, and this gave Duchess
Brownie time to cast herself before the Queen and demand a boon.

Every bride has a right to a boon, and what she asked for was
Maimie's life.  "Anything except that," replied Queen Mab
sternly, and all the fairies chanted "Anything except that."  But
when they learned how Maimie had befriended Brownie and so
enabled her to attend the ball to their great glory and renown,
they gave three huzzas for the little human, and set off, like an
army, to thank her, the court advancing in front and the canopy
keeping step with it.  They traced Maimie easily by her
footprints in the snow.

But though they found her deep in snow in the Figs, it seemed
impossible to thank Maimie, for they could not waken her.  They
went through the form of thanking her, that is to say, the new
King stood on her body and read her a long address of welcome,
but she heard not a word of it.  They also cleared the snow off
her, but soon she was covered again, and they saw she was in
danger of perishing of cold.

"Turn her into something that does not mind the cold," seemed a
good suggestion of the doctor's, but the only thing they could
think of that does not mind cold was a snowflake.  "And it might
melt," the Queen pointed out, so that idea had to be given up.

A magnificent attempt was made to carry her to a sheltered spot,
but though there were so many of them she was too heavy.  By this
time all the ladies were crying in their handkerchiefs, but
presently the Cupids had a lovely idea.  "Build a house round
her," they cried, and at once everybody perceived that this was
the thing to do; in a moment a hundred fairy sawyers were among
the branches, architects were running round Maimie, measuring
her; a bricklayer's yard sprang up at her feet, seventy-five
masons rushed up with the foundation stone and the Queen laid it,
overseers were appointed to keep the boys off, scaffoldings were
run up, the whole place rang with hammers and chisels and turning
lathes, and by this time the roof was on and the glaziers were
putting in the windows.

The house was exactly the size of Maimie and perfectly lovely.
One of her arms was extended and this had bothered them for a
second, but they built a verandah round it, leading to the front
door.  The windows were the size of a coloured picture-book and
the door rather smaller, but it would be easy for her to get out
by taking off the roof.  The fairies, as is their custom, clapped
their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were all
so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear
to think they had finished it.  So they gave it ever so many
little extra touches, and even then they added more extra
touches.

For instance, two of them ran up a ladder and put on a chimney.

"Now we fear it is quite finished," they sighed.  But no, for
another two ran up the ladder, and tied some smoke to the
chimney.

"That certainly finishes it," they cried reluctantly.

"Not at all," cried a glow-worm, "if she were to wake without
seeing a night-light she might be frightened, so I shall be her
night-light."

"Wait one moment," said a china merchant, "and I shall make you a
saucer."

Now alas, it was absolutely finished.

Oh, dear no!

"Gracious me," cried a brass manufacturer, "there's no handle on
the door," and he put one on.

An ironmonger added a scraper and an old lady ran up with a door-
mat.  Carpenters arrived with a water-butt, and the painters
insisted on painting it.

Finished at last!

"Finished! how can it be finished," the plumber demanded
scornfully, "before hot and cold are put in?" and he put in hot
and cold.  Then an army of gardeners arrived with fairy carts and
spades and seeds and bulbs and forcing-houses, and soon they had
a flower garden to the right of the verandah and a vegetable
garden to the left, and roses and clematis on the walls of the
house, and in less time than five minutes all these dear things
were in full bloom.

Oh, how beautiful the little house was now!  But it was at last
finished true as true, and they had to leave it and return to the
dance.  They all kissed their hands to it as they went away, and
the last to go was Brownie.  She stayed a moment behind the
others to drop a pleasant dream down the chimney.

All through the night the exquisite little house stood there in
the Figs taking care of Maimie, and she never knew.  She slept
until the dream was quite finished and woke feeling deliciously
cosy just as morning was breaking from its egg, and then she
almost fell asleep again, and then she called out, "Tony," for
she thought she was at home in the nursery.  As Tony made no
answer, she sat up, whereupon her head hit the roof, and it
opened like the lid of a box, and to her bewilderment she saw all
around her the Kensington Gardens lying deep in snow.  As she was
not in the nursery she wondered whether this was really herself,
so she pinched her cheeks, and then she knew it was herself, and
this reminded her that she was in the middle of a great
adventure.  She remembered now everything that had happened to
her from the closing of the gates up to her running away from the
fairies, but however, she asked herself, had she got into this
funny place? She stepped out by the roof, right over the garden,
and then she saw the dear house in which she had passed the
night.  It so entranced her that she could think of nothing else.

"Oh, you darling, oh, you sweet, oh, you love!" she cried.

Perhaps a human voice frightened the little house, or maybe it
now knew that its work was done, for no sooner had Maimie spoken
than it began to grow smaller; it shrank so slowly that she could
scarce believe it was shrinking, yet she soon knew that it could
not contain her now.  It always remained as complete as ever, but
it became smaller and smaller, and the garden dwindled at the
same time, and the snow crept closer, lapping house and garden
up.  Now the house was the size of a little dog's kennel, and now
of a Noah's Ark, but still you could see the smoke and the
door-handle and the roses on the wall, every one complete.  The
glow-worm light was waning too, but it was still there.
"Darling, loveliest, don't go!" Maimie cried, falling on her
knees, for the little house was now the size of a reel of thread,
but still quite complete.  But as she stretched out her arms
imploringly the snow crept up on all sides until it met itself,
and where the little house had been was now one unbroken expanse
of snow.

Maimie stamped her foot naughtily, and was putting her fingers to
her eyes, when she heard a kind voice say, "Don't cry, pretty
human, don't cry," and then she turned round and saw a beautiful
little naked boy regarding her wistfully.  She knew at once that
he must be Peter Pan.


XVIII

Peter's Goat

Maimie felt quite shy, but Peter knew not what shy was.

"I hope you have had a good night," he said earnestly.

"Thank you," she replied, "I was so cosy and warm.  But you"--and
she looked at his nakedness awkwardly--"don't you feel the least
bit cold?"

Now cold was another word Peter had forgotten, so he answered, "I
think not, but I may be wrong: you see I am rather ignorant.  I
am not exactly a boy, Solomon says I am a Betwixt-and-Between."

"So that is what it is called," said Maimie thoughtfully.

"That's not my name," he explained, "my name is Peter Pan."

"Yes, of course," she said, "I know, everybody knows."

You can't think how pleased Peter was to learn that all the
people outside the gates knew about him.  He begged Maimie to
tell him what they knew and what they said, and she did so.  They
were sitting by this time on a fallen tree; Peter had cleared off
the snow for Maimie, but he sat on a snowy bit himself.

"Squeeze closer," Maimie said.

"What is that?" he asked, and she showed him, and then he did it.
They talked together and he found that people knew a great deal
about him, but not everything, not that he had gone back to his
mother and been barred out, for instance, and he said nothing of
this to Maimie, for it still humiliated him.

"Do they know that I play games exactly like real boys?" he asked
very proudly.  "Oh, Maimie, please tell them!"  But when he
revealed how he played, by sailing his hoop on the Round Pond,
and so on, she was simply horrified.

"All your ways of playing," she said with her big eyes on him,
"are quite, quite wrong, and not in the least like how boys
play!"

Poor Peter uttered a little moan at this, and he cried for the
first time for I know not how long.  Maimie was extremely sorry
for him, and lent him her handkerchief, but he didn't know in the
least what to do with it, so she showed him, that is to say, she
wiped her eyes, and then gave it back to him, saying "Now you do
it," but instead of wiping his own eyes he wiped hers, and she
thought it best to pretend that this was what she had meant.

She said, out of pity for him, "I shall give you a kiss if you
like," but though he once knew he had long forgotten what kisses
are, and he replied, "Thank you," and held out his hand, thinking
she had offered to put something into it.  This was a great shock
to her, but she felt she could not explain without shaming him,
so with charming delicacy she gave Peter a thimble which happened
to be in her pocket, and pretended that it was a kiss.  Poor
little boy! he quite believed her, and to this day he wears it on
his finger, though there can be scarcely anyone who needs a
thimble so little.  You see, though still a tiny child, it was
really years and years since he had seen his mother, and I
daresay the baby who had supplanted him was now a man with
whiskers.

But you must not think that Peter Pan was a boy to pity rather
than to admire; if Maimie began by thinking this, she soon found
she was very much mistaken.  Her eyes glistened with admiration
when he told her of his adventures, especially of how he went to
and fro between the island and the Gardens in the Thrush's Nest.

"How romantic," Maimie exclaimed, but it was another unknown
word, and he hung his head thinking she was despising him.

"I suppose Tony would not have done that?" he said very humbly.

"Never, never!" she answered with conviction, "he would have been
afraid."

"What is afraid?" asked Peter longingly.  He thought it must be
some splendid thing.  "I do wish you would teach me how to be
afraid, Maimie," he said.

"I believe no one could teach that to you," she answered
adoringly, but Peter thought she meant that he was stupid.  She
had told him about Tony and of the wicked thing she did in the
dark to frighten him (she knew quite well that it was wicked),
but Peter misunderstood her meaning and said, "Oh, how I wish I
was as brave as Tony."

It quite irritated her.  "You are twenty thousand times braver
than Tony," she said, "you are ever so much the bravest boy I
ever knew!"

He could scarcely believe she meant it, but when be did believe
he screamed with joy.

"And if you want very much to give me a kiss," Maimie said, "you
can do it."

Very reluctantly Peter began to take the thimble off his finger.
He thought she wanted it back.

"I don't mean a kiss," she said hurriedly, "I mean a thimble."

"What's that?" Peter asked.

"It's like this," she said, and kissed him.

"I should love to give you a thimble," Peter said gravely, so he
gave her one.  He gave her quite a number of thimbles, and then a
delightful idea came into his head!  "Maimie," he said, "will you
marry me?"

Now, strange to tell, the same idea had come at exactly the same
time into Maimie's head.  "I should like to," she answered, "but
will there be room in your boat for two?"

"If you squeeze close," he said eagerly.

"Perhaps the birds would be angry?"

He assured her that the birds would love to have her, though I am
not so certain of it myself.  Also that there were very few birds
in winter.  "Of course they might want your clothes," he had to
admit rather falteringly.

She was somewhat indignant at this.

"They are always thinking of their nests," he said
apologetically, "and there are some bits of you"--he stroked the
fur on her pelisse--"that would excite them very much."

"They sha'n't have my fur," she said sharply.

"No," he said, still fondling it, however, "no!  Oh, Maimie," he
said rapturously, "do you know why I love you?  It is because you
are like a beautiful nest."

Somehow this made her uneasy.  "I think you are speaking more
like a bird than a boy now," she said, holding back, and indeed
he was even looking rather like a bird.  "After all," she said,
"you are only a Betwixt-and-Between."  But it hurt him so much
that she immediately added, "It must be a delicious thing to be."

"Come and be one then, dear Maimie," he implored her, and they
set off for the boat, for it was now very near Open-Gate time.
"And you are not a bit like a nest," he whispered to please her.

"But I think it is rather nice to be like one," she said in a
woman's contradictory way.  "And, Peter, dear, though I can't
give them my fur, I wouldn't mind their building in it.  Fancy a
nest in my neck with little spotty eggs in it!  Oh, Peter, how
perfectly lovely!"

But as they drew near the Serpentine, she shivered a little, and
said, "Of course I shall go and see mother often, quite often.
It is not as if I was saying good-bye for ever to mother, it is
not in the least like that."

"Oh, no," answered Peter, but in his heart he knew it was very
like that, and he would have told her so had he not been in a
quaking fear of losing her.  He was so fond of her, he felt he
could not live without her.  "She will forget her mother in time,
and be happy with me," he kept saying to himself, and he hurried
her on, giving her thimbles by the way.

But even when she had seen the boat and exclaimed ecstatically
over its loveliness, she still talked tremblingly about her
mother.  "You know quite well, Peter, don't you," she said, "that
I wouldn't come unless I knew for certain I could go back to
mother whenever I want to?  Peter, say it!"

He said it, but he could no longer look her in the face.

"If you are sure your mother will always want you," he added
rather sourly.

"The idea of mother's not always wanting me!" Maimie cried, and
her face glistened.

"If she doesn't bar you out," said Peter huskily.

"The door," replied Maimie, "will always, always be open, and
mother will always be waiting at it for me."

"Then," said Peter, not without grimness, "step in, if you feel
so sure of her," and he helped Maimie into the Thrush's Nest.

"But why don't you look at me?" she asked, taking him by the arm.

Peter tried hard not to look, he tried to push off, then he gave
a great gulp and jumped ashore and sat down miserably in the
snow.

She went to him.  "What is it, dear, dear Peter?" she said,
wondering.

"Oh, Maimie," he cried, "it isn't fair to take you with me if you
think you can go back.  Your mother"--he gulped again--"you don't
know them as well as I do."

And then he told her the woful story of how he had been barred
out, and she gasped all the time.  "But my mother," she said, "my
mother"--

"Yes, she would," said Peter, "they are all the same.  I daresay
she is looking for another one already."

Maimie said aghast, "I can't believe it.  You see, when you went
away your mother had none, but my mother has Tony, and surely
they are satisfied when they have one."

Peter replied bitterly, "You should see the letters Solomon gets
from ladies who have six."

Just then they heard a grating creak, followed by creak, creak,
all round the Gardens.  It was the Opening of the Gates, and
Peter jumped nervously into his boat.  He knew Maimie would not
come with him now, and he was trying bravely not to cry.  But
Maimie was sobbing painfully.

"If I should be too late," she called in agony, "oh, Peter, if
she has got another one already!"

Again he sprang ashore as if she had called him back.  "I shall
come and look for you to-night," he said, squeezing close, "but
if you hurry away I think you will be in time."

Then he pressed a last thimble on her sweet little mouth, and
covered his face with his hands so that he might not see her go.

"Dear Peter!" she cried.

"Dear Maimie!" cried the tragic boy.

She leapt into his arms, so that it was a sort of fairy wedding,
and then she hurried away.  Oh, how she hastened to the gates!
Peter, you may be sure, was back in the Gardens that night as
soon as Lock-out sounded, but he found no Maimie, and so he knew
she had been in time.  For long he hoped that some night she
would come back to him; often he thought he saw her waiting for
him by the shore of the Serpentine as his bark drew to land, but
Maimie never went back.  She wanted to, but she was afraid that
if she saw her dear Betwixt-and-Between again she would linger
with him too long, and besides the ayah now kept a sharp eye on
her.  But she often talked lovingly of Peter and she knitted a
kettle- holder for him, and one day when she was wondering what
Easter present he would like, her mother made a suggestion.

"Nothing," she said thoughtfully, "would be so useful to him as a
goat."

"He could ride on it," cried Maimie, "and play on his pipe at the
same time!"

"Then," her mother asked, "won't you give him your goat, the one
you frighten Tony with at night?"

"But it isn't a real goat," Maimie said.

"It seems very real to Tony," replied her mother.

"It seems frightfully real to me too," Maimie admitted, "but how
could I give it to Peter?"

Her mother knew a way, and next day, accompanied by Tony (who was
really quite a nice boy, though of course he could not compare),
they went to the Gardens, and Maimie stood alone within a fairy
ring, and then her mother, who was a rather gifted lady, said,

    "My daughter, tell me, if you can,
     What have you got for Peter Pan?"

To which Maimie replied,

    "I have a goat for him to ride,
     Observe me cast it far and wide."

She then flung her arms about as if she were sowing seed, and
turned round three times.

Next Tony said,

    "If P. doth find it waiting here,
     Wilt ne'er again make me to fear?"

And Maimie answered,

    "By dark or light I fondly swear
     Never to see goats anywhere."

She also left a letter to Peter in a likely place, explaining
what she had done, and begging him to ask the fairies to turn the
goat into one convenient for riding on.  Well, it all happened
just as she hoped, for Peter found the letter, and of course
nothing could be easier for the fairies than to turn the goat
into a real one, and so that is how Peter got the goat on which
he now rides round the Gardens every night playing sublimely on
his pipe.  And Maimie kept her promise and never frightened Tony
with a goat again, though I have heard that she created another
animal.  Until she was quite a big girl she continued to leave
presents for Peter in the Gardens (with letters explaining how
humans play with them), and she is not the only one who has done
this.  David does it, for instance, and he and I know the
likeliest place for leaving them in, and we shall tell you if you
like, but for mercy's sake don't ask us before Porthos, for were
he to find out the place he would take every one of them.

Though Peter still remembers Maimie he is become as gay as ever,
and often in sheer happiness he jumps off his goat and lies
kicking merrily on the grass.  Oh, he has a joyful time!  But he
has still a vague memory that he was a human once, and it makes
him especially kind to the house-swallows when they revisit the
island, for house-swallows are the spirits of little children who
have died.  They always build in the eaves of the houses where
they lived when they were humans, and sometimes they try to fly
in at a nursery window, and perhaps that is why Peter loves them
best of all the birds.

And the little house?  Every lawful night (that is to say, every
night except ball nights) the fairies now build the little house
lest there should be a human child lost in the Gardens, and Peter
rides the marshes looking for lost ones, and if he finds them he
carries them on his goat to the little house, and when they wake
up they are in it and when they step out they see it.  The
fairies build the house merely because it is so pretty, but Peter
rides round in memory of Maimie and because he still loves to do
just as he believes real boys would do.

But you must not think that, because somewhere among the trees
the little house is twinkling, it is a safe thing to remain in
the Gardens after Lock-out Time.  If the bad ones among the
fairies happen to be out that night they will certainly mischief
you, and even though they are not, you may perish of cold and
dark before Peter Pan comes round.  He has been too late several
times, and when he sees he is too late he runs back to the
Thrush's Nest for his paddle, of which Maimie had told him the
true use, and he digs a grave for the child and erects a little
tombstone and carves the poor thing's initials on it.  He does
this at once because he thinks it is what real boys would do, and
you must have noticed the little stones and that there are always
two together.  He puts them in twos because it seems less lonely.
 I think that quite the most touching sight in the Gardens is the
two tombstones of Walter Stephen Matthews and Phoebe Phelps.  They
stand together at the spot where the parishes of Westminster St.
Mary's is said to meet the parish of Paddington.  Here Peter
found the two babes, who had fallen unnoticed from their
perambulators, Phoebe aged thirteen months and Walter probably
still younger, for Peter seems to have felt a delicacy about
putting any age on his stone.  They lie side by side, and the
simple inscriptions read

               +-----------+     +-----------+
               |           |     |           |
               |     W     |     |    13a.   |
               |           |     |    P.P.   |
               |   St. M   |     |   1841    |
               |           |     |           |
               +-----------+     +-----------+

David sometimes places white flowers on these two innocent
graves.

But how strange for parents, when they hurry into the Gardens at
the opening of the gates looking for their lost one, to find the
sweetest little tombstone instead.  I do hope that Peter is not
too ready with his spade.  It is all rather sad.


XIX

An Interloper

David and I had a tremendous adventure.  It was this, he passed
the night with me.  We had often talked of it as a possible
thing, and at last Mary consented to our having it.

The adventure began with David's coming to me at the unwonted
hour of six P.M., carrying what looked like a packet of
sandwiches, but proved to be his requisites for the night done up
in a neat paper parcel.  We were both so excited that, at the
moment of greeting, neither of us could be apposite to the
occasion in words, so we communicated our feelings by signs; as
thus, David half sat down in a place where there was no chair,
which is his favourite preparation for being emphatic, and is
borrowed, I think, from the frogs, and we then made the
extraordinary faces which mean, "What a tremendous adventure!"

We were to do all the important things precisely as they are done
every evening at his own home, and so I am in a puzzle to know
how it was such an adventure to David.  But I have now said
enough to show you what an adventure it was to me.

For a little while we played with my two medals, and, with the
delicacy of a sleeping companion, David abstained on this
occasion from asking why one of them was not a Victoria Cross.
He is very troubled because I never won the Victoria Cross, for
it lowers his status in the Gardens.  He never says in the
Gardens that I won it, but he fights any boy of his year who says
I didn't.  Their fighting consists of challenging each other.

At twenty-five past six I turned on the hot water in the bath,
and covertly swallowed a small glass of brandy.  I then said,
"Half- past six; time for little boys to be in bed."  I said it
in the matter-of-fact voice of one made free of the company of
parents, as if I had said it often before, and would have to say
it often again, and as if there was nothing particularly
delicious to me in hearing myself say it.  I tried to say it in
that way.

And David was deceived.  To my exceeding joy he stamped his
little foot, and was so naughty that, in gratitude, I gave him
five minutes with a matchbox.  Matches, which he drops on the
floor when lighted, are the greatest treat you can give David;
indeed, I think his private heaven is a place with a roaring
bonfire.

Then I placed my hand carelessly on his shoulder, like one a
trifle bored by the dull routine of putting my little boys to
bed, and conducted him to the night nursery, which had lately
been my private chamber.  There was an extra bed in it tonight,
very near my own, but differently shaped, and scarcely less
conspicuous was the new mantel-shelf ornament: a tumbler of milk,
with a biscuit on top of it, and a chocolate riding on the
biscuit.  To enter the room without seeing the tumbler at once
was impossible.  I had tried it several times, and David saw and
promptly did his frog business, the while, with an indescribable
emotion, I produced a night-light from my pocket and planted it
in a saucer on the wash- stand.

David watched my preparations with distasteful levity, but anon
made a noble amend by abruptly offering me his foot as if he had
no longer use for it, and I knew by intuition that he expected me
to take off his boots.  I took them off with all the coolness of
an old hand, and then I placed him on my knee and removed his
blouse.  This was a delightful experience, but I think I remained
wonderfully calm until I came somewhat too suddenly to his little
braces, which agitated me profoundly.

I cannot proceed in public with the disrobing of David.

Soon the night nursery was in darkness, but for the glimmer from
the night-light, and very still save when the door creaked as a
man peered in at the little figure on the bed.  However softly I
opened the door, an inch at a time, his bright eyes turned to me
at once, and he always made the face which means, "What a
tremendous adventure!"

"Are you never to fall asleep, David?" I always said.

"When are you coming to bed?" he always replied, very brave but
in a whisper, as if he feared the bears and wolves might have
him. When little boys are in bed there is nothing between them
and bears and wolves but the night-light.

I returned to my chair to think, and at last he fell asleep with
his face to the wall, but even then I stood many times at the
door, listening.

Long after I had gone to bed a sudden silence filled the chamber,
and I knew that David had awaked.  I lay motionless, and, after
what seemed a long time of waiting, a little far-away voice said
in a cautious whisper, "Irene!"

"You are sleeping with me to-night, you know, David," I said.

"I didn't know," he replied, a little troubled but trying not to
be a nuisance.

"You remember you are with me?" I asked.

After a moment's hesitation he replied, "I nearly remember," and
presently he added very gratefully, as if to some angel who had
whispered to him, "I remember now."

I think he had nigh fallen asleep again when he stirred and said,
"Is it going on now?"

"What?"

"The adventure."

"Yes, David."

Perhaps this disturbed him, for by-and-by I had to inquire, "You
are not frightened, are you?"

"Am I not?" he answered politely, and I knew his hand was groping
in the darkness, so I put out mine and he held on tightly to one
finger.

"I am not frightened now," he whispered.

"And there is nothing else you want?"

"Is there not?" he again asked politely.  "Are you sure there's
not?" he added.

"What can it be, David?"

"I don't take up very much room," the far-away voice said.

"Why, David," said I, sitting up, "do you want to come into my
bed?"

"Mother said I wasn't to want it unless you wanted it first," he
squeaked.

"It is what I have been wanting all the time," said I, and then
without more ado the little white figure rose and flung itself at
me.  For the rest of the night he lay on me and across me, and
sometimes his feet were at the bottom of the bed and sometimes on
the pillow, but he always retained possession of my finger, and
occasionally he woke me to say that he was sleeping with me.  I
had not a good night.  I lay thinking.

Of this little boy, who, in the midst of his play while I
undressed him, had suddenly buried his head on my knees.

Of the woman who had been for him who could be sufficiently
daring.

Of David's dripping little form in the bath, and how when I
essayed to catch him he had slipped from my arms like a trout.

Of how I had stood by the open door listening to his sweet
breathing, had stood so long that I forgot his name and called
him Timothy.


XX

David and Porthos Compared

But Mary spoilt it all, when I sent David back to her in the
morning, by inquiring too curiously into his person and
discovering that I had put his combinations on him with the
buttons to the front.  For this I wrote her the following
insulting letter.  When Mary does anything that specially annoys
me I send her an insulting letter.  I once had a photograph taken
of David being hanged on a tree.  I sent her that.  You can't
think of all the subtle ways of grieving her I have.  No woman
with the spirit of a crow would stand it.

"Dear Madam [I wrote], It has come to my knowledge that when you
walk in the Gardens with the boy David you listen avidly for
encomiums of him and of your fanciful dressing of him by passers-
by, storing them in your heart the while you make vain pretence
to regard them not: wherefore lest you be swollen by these very
small things I, who now know David both by day and by night, am
minded to compare him and Porthos the one with the other, both in
this matter and in other matters of graver account.  And touching
this matter of outward show, they are both very lordly, and
neither of them likes it to be referred to, but they endure in
different ways.  For David says 'Oh, bother!' and even at times
hits out, but Porthos droops his tail and lets them have their
say.  Yet is he extolled as beautiful and a darling ten times for
the once that David is extolled.

"The manners of Porthos are therefore prettier than the manners
of David, who when he has sent me to hide from him behind a tree
sometimes comes not in search, and on emerging tamely from my
concealment I find him playing other games entirely forgetful of
my existence.  Whereas Porthos always comes in search.  Also if
David wearies of you he scruples not to say so, but Porthos, in
like circumstances, offers you his paw, meaning 'Farewell,' and
to bearded men he does this all the time (I think because of a
hereditary distaste for goats), so that they conceive him to be
enamoured of them when he is only begging them courteously to go.
Thus while the manners of Porthos are more polite it may be
argued that those of David are more efficacious.

"In gentleness David compares ill with Porthos.  For whereas the
one shoves and has been known to kick on slight provocation, the
other, who is noisily hated of all small dogs by reason of his
size, remonstrates not, even when they cling in froth and fury to
his chest, but carries them along tolerantly until they drop off
from fatigue.  Again, David will not unbend when in the company
of babies, expecting them unreasonably to rise to his level, but
contrariwise Porthos, though terrible to tramps, suffers all
things of babies, even to an exploration of his mouth in an
attempt to discover what his tongue is like at the other end.
The comings and goings of David are unnoticed by perambulators,
which lie in wait for the advent of Porthos.  The strong and
wicked fear Porthos but no little creature fears him, not the
hedgehogs he conveys from place to place in his mouth, nor the
sparrows that steal his straw from under him.

"In proof of which gentleness I adduce his adventure with the
rabbit.  Having gone for a time to reside in a rabbit country
Porthos was elated to discover at last something small that ran
from him, and developing at once into an ecstatic sportsman he
did pound hotly in pursuit, though always over-shooting the mark
by a hundred yards or so and wondering very much what had become
of the rabbit.  There was a steep path, from the top of which the
rabbit suddenly came into view, and the practice of Porthos was
to advance up it on tiptoe, turning near the summit to give me a
knowing look and then bounding forward.  The rabbit here did
something tricky with a hole in the ground, but Porthos tore
onwards in full faith that the game was being played fairly, and
always returned panting and puzzling but glorious.

"I sometimes shuddered to think of his perplexity should he catch
the rabbit, which however was extremely unlikely; nevertheless he
did catch it, I know not how, but presume it to have been another
than the one of which he was in chase.  I found him with it, his
brows furrowed in the deepest thought.  The rabbit, terrified but
uninjured, cowered beneath him.  Porthos gave me a happy look and
again dropped into a weighty frame of mind.  'What is the next
thing one does?' was obviously the puzzle with him, and the
position was scarcely less awkward for the rabbit, which several
times made a move to end this intolerable suspense.  Whereupon
Porthos immediately gave it a warning tap with his foot, and
again fell to pondering.  The strain on me was very great.

"At last they seemed to hit upon a compromise.  Porthos looked
over his shoulder very self-consciously, and the rabbit at first
slowly and then in a flash withdrew.  Porthos pretended to make a
search for it, but you cannot think how relieved he looked.  He
even tried to brazen out his disgrace before me and waved his
tail appealingly.  But he could not look me in the face, and when
he saw that this was what I insisted on he collapsed at my feet
and moaned.  There were real tears in his eyes, and I was
touched, and swore to him that he had done everything a dog could
do, and though he knew I was lying he became happy again.  For so
long as I am pleased with him, ma'am, nothing else greatly
matters to Porthos.  I told this story to David, having first
extracted a promise from him that he would not think the less of
Porthos, and now I must demand the same promise of you.  Also, an
admission that in innocence of heart, for which David has been
properly commended, he can nevertheless teach Porthos nothing,
but on the contrary may learn much from him.

"And now to come to those qualities in which David excels over
Porthos--the first is that he is no snob but esteems the girl
Irene (pretentiously called his nurse) more than any fine lady,
and envies every ragged boy who can hit to leg.  Whereas Porthos
would have every class keep its place, and though fond of going
down into the kitchen, always barks at the top of the stairs for
a servile invitation before he graciously descends.  Most of the
servants in our street have had the loan of him to be
photographed with, and I have but now seen him stalking off for
that purpose with a proud little housemaid who is looking up to
him as if he were a warrior for whom she had paid a shilling.

"Again, when David and Porthos are in their bath, praise is due
to the one and must be withheld from the other.  For David, as I
have noticed, loves to splash in his bath and to slip back into
it from the hands that would transfer him to a towel.  But
Porthos stands in his bath drooping abjectly like a shamed figure
cut out of some limp material.

"Furthermore, the inventiveness of David is beyond that of
Porthos, who cannot play by himself, and knows not even how to
take a solitary walk, while David invents playfully all day long.
Lastly, when David is discovered of some offence and expresses
sorrow therefor, he does that thing no more for a time, but looks
about him for other offences, whereas Porthos incontinently
repeats his offence, in other words, he again buries his bone in
the backyard, and marvels greatly that I know it, although his
nose be crusted with earth.

"Touching these matters, therefore, let it be granted that David
excels Porthos; and in divers similar qualities the one is no
more than a match for the other, as in the quality of curiosity;
for, if a parcel comes into my chambers Porthos is miserable
until it is opened, and I have noticed the same thing of David.

"Also there is the taking of medicine.  For at production of the
vial all gaiety suddenly departs from Porthos and he looks the
other way, but if I say I have forgotten to have the vial
refilled he skips joyfully, yet thinks he still has a right to a
chocolate, and when I remarked disparagingly on this to David he
looked so shy that there was revealed to me a picture of a
certain lady treating him for youthful maladies.

"A thing to be considered of in both is their receiving of
punishments, and I am now reminded that the girl Irene (whom I
take in this matter to be your mouthpiece) complains that I am
not sufficiently severe with David, and do leave the chiding of
him for offences against myself to her in the hope that he will
love her less and me more thereby.  Which we have hotly argued in
the Gardens to the detriment of our dignity.  And I here say that
if I am slow to be severe to David, the reason thereof is that I
dare not be severe to Porthos, and I have ever sought to treat
the one the same with the other.

"Now I refrain from raising hand or voice to Porthos because his
great heart is nigh to breaking if he so much as suspects that
all is not well between him and me, and having struck him once
some years ago never can I forget the shudder which passed
through him when he saw it was I who had struck, and I shall
strike him, ma'am, no more.  But when he is detected in any
unseemly act now, it is my stern practice to cane my writing
table in his presence, and even this punishment is almost more
than he can bear. Wherefore if such chastisement inflicted on
David encourages him but to enter upon fresh trespasses (as the
girl Irene avers), the reason must be that his heart is not like
unto that of the noble Porthos.

"And if you retort that David is naturally a depraved little boy,
and so demands harsher measure, I have still my answer, to wit,
what is the manner of severity meted out to him at home?  And
lest you should shuffle in your reply I shall mention a notable
passage that has come to my ears.

"As thus, that David having heard a horrid word in the street,
uttered it with unction in the home.  That the mother threatened
corporal punishment, whereat the father tremblingly intervened.
That David continuing to rejoice exceedingly in his word, the
father spoke darkly of a cane, but the mother rushed between the
combatants.  That the problematical chastisement became to David
an object of romantic interest.  That this darkened the happy
home.  That casting from his path a weeping mother, the goaded
father at last dashed from the house yelling that he was away to
buy a cane.  That he merely walked the streets white to the lips
because of the terror David must now be feeling.  And that when
he returned, it was David radiant with hope who opened the door
and then burst into tears because there was no cane.  Truly,
ma'am, you are a fitting person to tax me with want of severity.
Rather should you be giving thanks that it is not you I am
comparing with Porthos.

"But to make an end of this comparison, I mention that Porthos is
ever wishful to express gratitude for my kindness to him, so that
looking up from my book I see his mournful eyes fixed upon me
with a passionate attachment, and then I know that the well-nigh
unbearable sadness which comes into the face of dogs is because
they cannot say Thank you to their masters.  Whereas David takes
my kindness as his right.  But for this, while I should chide him
I cannot do so, for of all the ways David has of making me to
love him the most poignant is that he expects it of me as a
matter of course.  David is all for fun, but none may plumb the
depths of Porthos.  Nevertheless I am most nearly doing so when I
lie down beside him on the floor and he puts an arm about my
neck.  On my soul, ma'am, a protecting arm.  At such times it is
as if each of us knew what was the want of the other.

"Thus weighing Porthos with David it were hard to tell which is
the worthier.  Wherefore do you keep your boy while I keep my
dog, and so we shall both be pleased."


XXI

William Paterson

We had been together, we three, in my rooms, David telling me
about the fairy language and Porthos lolling on the sofa
listening, as one may say.  It is his favourite place of a dull
day, and under him were some sheets of newspaper, which I spread
there at such times to deceive my housekeeper, who thinks dogs
should lie on the floor.

Fairy me tribber is what you say to the fairies when you want
them to give you a cup of tea, but it is not so easy as it looks,
for all the r's should be pronounced as w's, and I forget this so
often that David believes I should find difficulty in making
myself understood.

"What would you say," he asked me, "if you wanted them to turn
you into a hollyhock?"  He thinks the ease with which they can
turn you into things is their most engaging quality.

The answer is Fairy me lukka, but though he had often told me
this I again forgot the lukka.

"I should never dream," I said (to cover my discomfiture), "of
asking them to turn me into anything.  If I was a hollyhock I
should soon wither, David."

He himself had provided me with this objection not long before,
but now he seemed to think it merely silly.  "Just before the
time to wither begins," he said airily, "you say to them Fairy me
bola."

Fairy me bola means "Turn me back again," and David's discovery
made me uncomfortable, for I knew he had hitherto kept his
distance of the fairies mainly because of a feeling that their
conversions are permanent.

So I returned him to his home.  I send him home from my rooms
under the care of Porthos.  I may walk on the other side unknown
to them, but they have no need of me, for at such times nothing
would induce Porthos to depart from the care of David.  If anyone
addresses them he growls softly and shows the teeth that crunch
bones as if they were biscuits.  Thus amicably the two pass on to
Mary's house, where Porthos barks his knock-and-ring bark till
the door is opened.  Sometimes he goes in with David, but on this
occasion he said good-bye on the step.  Nothing remarkable in
this, but he did not return to me, not that day nor next day nor
in weeks and months.  I was a man distraught; and David wore his
knuckles in his eyes.  Conceive it, we had lost our dear Porthos--
at least--well--something disquieting happened.  I don't quite know
what to think of it even now.  I know what David thinks.
However, you shall think as you choose.

My first hope was that Porthos had strolled to the Gardens and
got locked in for the night, and almost as soon as Lock-out was
over I was there to make inquiries.  But there was no news of
Porthos, though I learned that someone was believed to have spent
the night in the Gardens, a young gentleman who walked out
hastily the moment the gates were opened.  He had said nothing,
however, of having seen a dog.  I feared an accident now, for I
knew no thief could steal him, yet even an accident seemed
incredible, he was always so cautious at crossings; also there
could not possibly have been an accident to Porthos without there
being an accident to something else.

David in the middle of his games would suddenly remember the
great blank and step aside to cry.  It was one of his qualities
that when he knew he was about to cry he turned aside to do it
and I always respected his privacy and waited for him.  Of course
being but a little boy he was soon playing again, but his sudden
floods of feeling, of which we never spoke, were dear to me in
those desolate days.

We had a favourite haunt, called the Story-seat, and we went back
to that, meaning not to look at the grass near it where Porthos
used to squat, but we could not help looking at it sideways, and
to our distress a man was sitting on the acquainted spot.  He
rose at our approach and took two steps toward us, so quick that
they were almost jumps, then as he saw that we were passing
indignantly I thought I heard him give a little cry.

I put him down for one of your garrulous fellows who try to lure
strangers into talk, but next day, when we found him sitting on
the Story-seat itself, I had a longer scrutiny of him.  He was
dandiacally dressed, seemed to tell something under twenty years
and had a handsome wistful face atop of a heavy, lumbering,
almost corpulent figure, which however did not betoken
inactivity; for David's purple hat (a conceit of his mother's of
which we were both heartily ashamed) blowing off as we neared him
he leapt the railings without touching them and was back with it
in three seconds; only instead of delivering it straightway he
seemed to expect David to chase him for it.

You have introduced yourself to David when you jump the railings
without touching them, and William Paterson (as proved to be his
name) was at once our friend.  We often found him waiting for us
at the Story-seat, and the great stout fellow laughed and wept
over our tales like a three-year-old.  Often he said with
extraordinary pride, "You are telling the story to me quite as
much as to David, ar'n't you?"  He was of an innocence such as
you shall seldom encounter, and believed stories at which even
David blinked.  Often he looked at me in quick alarm if David
said that of course these things did not really happen, and
unable to resist that appeal I would reply that they really did.
I never saw him irate except when David was still sceptical, but
then he would say quite warningly "He says it is true, so it must
be true."  This brings me to that one of his qualities, which at
once gratified and pained me, his admiration for myself.  His
eyes, which at times had a rim of red, were ever fixed upon me
fondly except perhaps when I told him of Porthos and said that
death alone could have kept him so long from my side.  Then
Paterson's sympathy was such that he had to look away.  He was
shy of speaking of himself so I asked him no personal questions,
but concluded that his upbringing must have been lonely, to
account for his ignorance of affairs, and loveless, else how
could he have felt such a drawing to me?

I remember very well the day when the strange, and surely
monstrous, suspicion first made my head tingle.  We had been
blown, the three of us, to my rooms by a gust of rain; it was
also, I think, the first time Paterson had entered them.  "Take
the sofa, Mr. Paterson," I said, as I drew a chair nearer to the
fire, and for the moment my eyes were off him.  Then I saw that,
before sitting down on the sofa, he was spreading the day's paper
over it.  "Whatever makes you do that?" I asked, and he started
like one bewildered by the question, then went white and pushed
the paper aside.

David had noticed nothing, but I was strangely uncomfortable,
and, despite my efforts at talk, often lapsed into silence, to be
roused from it by a feeling that Paterson was looking at me
covertly.  Pooh!  what vapours of the imagination were these.  I
blew them from me, and to prove to myself, so to speak, that they
were dissipated, I asked him to see David home.  As soon as I was
alone, I flung me down on the floor laughing, then as quickly
jumped up and was after them, and very sober too, for it was come
to me abruptly as an odd thing that Paterson had set off without
asking where David lived.

Seeing them in front of me, I crossed the street and followed.
They were walking side by side rather solemnly, and perhaps
nothing remarkable happened until they reached David's door.  I
say perhaps, for something did occur.  A lady, who has several
pretty reasons for frequenting the Gardens, recognised David in
the street, and was stooping to address him, when Paterson did
something that alarmed her.  I was too far off to see what it
was, but had he growled "Hands off!" she could not have scurried
away more precipitately.  He then ponderously marched his charge
to the door, where, assuredly, he did a strange thing.  Instead
of knocking or ringing, he stood on the step and called out
sharply, "Hie, hie, hie!" until the door was opened.

The whimsy, for it could be nothing more, curtailed me of my
sleep that night, and you may picture me trying both sides of the
pillow.

I recalled other queer things of Paterson, and they came back to
me charged with new meanings.  There was his way of shaking
hands. He now did it in the ordinary way, but when first we knew
him his arm had described a circle, and the hand had sometimes
missed mine and come heavily upon my chest instead.  His walk,
again, might more correctly have been called a waddle.

There were his perfervid thanks.  He seldom departed without
thanking me with an intensity that was out of proportion to the
little I had done for him.  In the Gardens, too, he seemed ever
to take the sward rather than the seats, perhaps a wise
preference, but he had an unusual way of sitting down.  I can
describe it only by saying that he let go of himself and went
down with a thud.

I reverted to the occasion when he lunched with me at the Club.
We had cutlets, and I noticed that he ate his in a somewhat
finicking manner; yet having left the table for a moment to
consult the sweets-card, I saw, when I returned, that there was
now no bone on his plate.  The waiters were looking at him rather
curiously.

David was very partial to him, but showed it in a somewhat
singular manner, used to pat his head, for instance.  I
remembered, also, that while David shouted to me or Irene to
attract our attention, he usually whistled to Paterson, he could
not explain why.

These ghosts made me to sweat in bed, not merely that night, but
often when some new shock brought them back in force, yet,
unsupported, they would have disturbed me little by day.  Day,
however, had its reflections, and they came to me while I was
shaving, that ten minutes when, brought face to face with the
harsher realities of life, we see things most clearly as they
are. Then the beautiful nature of Paterson loomed offensively,
and his honest eyes insulted over me.  No one come to nigh twenty
years had a right to such faith in his fellow-creatures.  He
could not backbite, nor envy, nor prevaricate, nor jump at mean
motives for generous acts.  He had not a single base story about
women.  It all seemed inhuman.

What creatures we be!  I was more than half ashamed of Paterson's
faith in me, but when I saw it begin to shrink I fought for it.
An easy task, you may say, but it was a hard one, for gradually a
change had come over the youth.  I am now arrived at a time when
the light-heartedness had gone out of him; he had lost his zest
for fun, and dubiety sat in the eyes that were once so certain.
He was not doubtful of me, not then, but of human nature in
general; that whilom noble edifice was tottering.  He mixed with
boys in the Gardens; ah, mothers, it is hard to say, but how
could he retain his innocence when he had mixed with boys?  He
heard your talk of yourselves, and so, ladies, that part of the
edifice went down.  I have not the heart to follow him in all his
discoveries.  Sometimes he went in flame at them, but for the
most part he stood looking on, bewildered and numbed, like one
moaning inwardly.

He saw all, as one fresh to the world, before he had time to
breathe upon the glass.  So would your child be, madam, if born
with a man's powers, and when disillusioned of all else, he would
cling for a moment longer to you, the woman of whom, before he
saw you, he had heard so much.  How you would strive to cheat
him, even as I strove to hide my real self from Paterson, and
still you would strive as I strove after you knew the game was
up.

The sorrowful eyes of Paterson stripped me bare.  There were days
when I could not endure looking at him, though surely I have long
ceased to be a vain man.  He still met us in the Gardens, but for
hours he and I would be together without speaking.  It was so
upon the last day, one of those innumerable dreary days when
David, having sneezed the night before, was kept at home in
flannel, and I sat alone with Paterson on the Story-seat.  At
last I turned to address him.  Never had we spoken of what
chained our tongues, and I meant only to say now that we must go,
for soon the gates would close, but when I looked at him I saw
that he was more mournful than ever before; he shut his eyes so
tightly that a drop of blood fell from them.

"It was all over, Paterson, long ago," I broke out harshly, "why
do we linger?"

He beat his hands together miserably, and yet cast me appealing
looks that had much affection in them.

"You expected too much of me," I told him, and he bowed his head.
"I don't know where you brought your grand ideas of men and women
from.  I don't want to know," I added hastily.

"But it must have been from a prettier world than this," I said:
"are you quite sure that you were wise in leaving it?"

He rose and sat down again.  "I wanted to know you," he replied
slowly, "I wanted to be like you."

"And now you know me," I said, "do you want to be like me still?
I am a curious person to attach oneself to, Paterson; don't you
see that even David often smiles at me when he thinks he is
unobserved.  I work very hard to retain that little boy's love;
but I shall lose him soon; even now I am not what I was to him;
in a year or two at longest, Paterson, David will grow out of
me."

The poor fellow shot out his hand to me, but "No," said I, "you
have found me out.  Everybody finds me out except my dog, and
that is why the loss of him makes such a difference to me.  Shall
we go, Paterson?"

He would not come with me, and I left him on the seat; when I was
far away I looked back, and he was still sitting there forlornly.

For long I could not close my ears that night: I lay listening, I
knew not what for.  A scare was on me that made me dislike the
dark, and I switched on the light and slept at last.  I was
roused by a great to-do in the early morning, servants knocking
excitedly, and my door opened, and the dear Porthos I had mourned
so long tore in.  They had heard his bark, but whence he came no
one knew.

He was in excellent condition, and after he had leaped upon me
from all points I flung him on the floor by a trick I know, and
lay down beside him, while he put his protecting arm round me and
looked at me with the old adoring eyes.

But we never saw Paterson again.  You may think as you choose.


XXII

Joey

Wise children always choose a mother who was a shocking flirt in
her maiden days, and so had several offers before she accepted
their fortunate papa.  The reason they do this is because every
offer refused by their mother means another pantomime to them.
You see you can't trust to your father's taking you to the
pantomime, but you can trust to every one of the poor frenzied
gentlemen for whom that lady has wept a delicious little tear on
her lovely little cambric handkerchief.  It is pretty (but
dreadfully affecting) to see them on Boxing Night gathering
together the babies of their old loves.  Some knock at but one
door and bring a hansom, but others go from street to street in
private 'buses, and even wear false noses to conceal the
sufferings you inflict upon them as you grew more and more like
your sweet cruel mamma.

So I took David to the pantomime, and I hope you follow my
reasoning, for I don't.  He went with the fairest anticipations,
pausing on the threshold to peer through the hole in the little
house called "Pay Here," which he thought was Red Riding Hood's
residence, and asked politely whether he might see her, but they
said she had gone to the wood, and it was quite true, for there
she was in the wood gathering a stick for her grandmother's fire.
She sang a beautiful song about the Boys and their dashing ways,
which flattered David considerably, but she forgot to take away
the stick after all.  Other parts of the play were not so nice,
but David thought it all lovely, he really did.

Yet he left the place in tears.  All the way home he sobbed in
the darkest corner of the growler, and if I tried to comfort him
he struck me.

The clown had done it, that man of whom he expected things so
fair.  He had asked in a loud voice of the middling funny
gentleman (then in the middle of a song) whether he thought Joey
would be long in coming, and when at last Joey did come he
screamed out, "How do you do, Joey!" and went into convulsions of
mirth.

Joey and his father were shadowing a pork-butcher's shop,
pocketing the sausages for which their family has such a fatal
weakness, and so when the butcher engaged Joey as his assistant
there was soon not a sausage left.  However, this did not matter,
for there was a box rather like an ice-cream machine, and you put
chunks of pork in at one end and turned a handle and they came
out as sausages at the other end.  Joey quite enjoyed doing this,
and you could see that the sausages were excellent by the way he
licked his fingers after touching them, but soon there were no
more pieces of pork, and just then a dear little Irish
terrier-dog came trotting down the street, so what did Joey do
but pop it into the machine and it came out at the other end as
sausages.

It was this callous act that turned all David's mirth to woe, and
drove us weeping to our growler.

Heaven knows I have no wish to defend this cruel deed, but as
Joey told me afterward, it is very difficult to say what they
will think funny and what barbarous.  I was forced to admit to
him that David had perceived only the joyous in the pokering of
the policeman's legs, and had called out heartily "Do it again!"
every time Joey knocked the pantaloon down with one kick and
helped him up with another.

"It hurts the poor chap," I was told by Joey, whom I was
agreeably surprised to find by no means wanting in the more
humane feelings, "and he wouldn't stand it if there wasn't the
laugh to encourage him."

He maintained that the dog got that laugh to encourage him also.

However, he had not got it from David, whose mother and father
and nurse combined could not comfort him, though they swore that
the dog was still alive and kicking, which might all have been
very well had not David seen the sausages.  It was to inquire
whether anything could be done to atone that in considerable
trepidation I sent in my card to the clown, and the result of our
talk was that he invited me and David to have tea with him on
Thursday next at his lodgings.

"I sha'n't laugh," David said, nobly true to the memory of the
little dog, "I sha'n't laugh once," and he closed his jaws very
tightly as we drew near the house in Soho where Joey lodged.  But
he also gripped my hand, like one who knew that it would be an
ordeal not to laugh.

The house was rather like the ordinary kind, but there was a
convenient sausage-shop exactly opposite (trust Joey for that)
and we saw a policeman in the street looking the other way, as
they always do look just before you rub them.  A woman wearing
the same kind of clothes as people in other houses wear, told us
to go up to the second floor, and she grinned at David, as if she
had heard about him; so up we went, David muttering through his
clenched teeth, "I sha'n't laugh," and as soon as we knocked a
voice called out, "Here we are again!" at which a shudder passed
through David as if he feared that he had set himself an
impossible task.  In we went, however, and though the voice had
certainly come from this room we found nobody there.  I looked in
bewilderment at David, and he quickly put his hand over his
mouth.

It was a funny room, of course, but not so funny as you might
expect; there were droll things in it, but they did nothing
funny, you could see that they were just waiting for Joey.  There
were padded chairs with friendly looking rents down the middle of
them, and a table and a horse-hair sofa, and we sat down very
cautiously on the sofa but nothing happened to us.

The biggest piece of furniture was an enormous wicker trunk, with
a very lively coloured stocking dangling out at a hole in it, and
a notice on the top that Joey was the funniest man on earth.
David tried to pull the stocking out of the hole, but it was so
long that it never came to an end, and when it measured six times
the length of the room he had to cover his mouth again.

"I'm not laughing," he said to me, quite fiercely.  He even
managed not to laugh (though he did gulp) when we discovered on
the mantelpiece a photograph of Joey in ordinary clothes, the
garments he wore before he became a clown.  You can't think how
absurd he looked in them.  But David didn't laugh.

Suddenly Joey was standing beside us, it could not have been more
sudden though he had come from beneath the table, and he was
wearing his pantomime clothes (which he told us afterward were
the only clothes he had) and his red and white face was so funny
that David made gurgling sounds, which were his laugh trying to
force a passage.

I introduced David, who offered his hand stiffly, but Joey,
instead of taking it, put out his tongue and waggled it, and this
was so droll that David had again to save himself by clapping his
hand over his mouth.  Joey thought he had toothache, so I
explained what it really meant, and then Joey said, "Oh, I shall
soon make him laugh," whereupon the following conversation took
place between them:

"No, you sha'n't," said David doggedly.

"Yes, I shall."

"No, you sha'n't not."

"Yes, I shall so."

"Sha'n't, sha'n't, sha'n't."

"Shall, shall, shall."

"You shut up."

"You're another."

By this time Joey was in a frightful way (because he saw he was
getting the worst of it), and he boasted that he had David's
laugh in his pocket, and David challenged him to produce it, and
Joey searched his pockets and brought out the most unexpected
articles, including a duck and a bunch of carrots; and you could
see by his manner that the simple soul thought these were things
which all boys carried loose in their pockets.

I daresay David would have had to laugh in the end, had there not
been a half-gnawed sausage in one of the pockets, and the sight
of it reminded him so cruelly of the poor dog's fate that he
howled, and Joey's heart was touched at last, and he also wept,
but he wiped his eyes with the duck.

It was at this touching moment that the pantaloon hobbled in,
also dressed as we had seen him last, and carrying,
unfortunately, a trayful of sausages, which at once increased the
general gloom, for he announced, in his squeaky voice, that they
were the very sausages that had lately been the dog.

Then Joey seemed to have a great idea, and his excitement was so
impressive that we stood gazing at him.  First, he counted the
sausages, and said that they were two short, and he found the
missing two up the pantaloon's sleeve.  Then he ran out of the
room and came back with the sausage-machine; and what do you
think he did?  He put all the sausages into the end of the
machine that they had issued from, and turned the handle
backward, and then out came the dog at the other end!

Can you picture the joy of David?

He clasped the dear little terrier in his arms; and then we
noticed that there was a sausage adhering to its tail.  The
pantaloon said we must have put in a sausage too many, but Joey
said the machine had not worked quite smoothly and that he feared
this sausage was the dog's bark, which distressed David, for he
saw how awkward it must be to a dog to have its bark outside, and
we were considering what should be done when the dog closed the
discussion by swallowing the sausage.

After that, David had the most hilarious hour of his life,
entering into the childish pleasures of this family as heartily
as if he had been brought up on sausages, and knocking the
pantaloon down repeatedly.  You must not think that he did this
viciously; he did it to please the old gentleman, who begged him
to do it, and always shook hands warmly and said "Thank you,"
when he had done it.  They are quite a simple people.

Joey called David and me "Sonny," and asked David, who addressed
him as "Mr. Clown," to call him Joey.  He also told us that the
pantaloon's name was old Joey, and the columbine's Josy, and the
harlequin's Joeykin.

We were sorry to hear that old Joey gave him a good deal of
trouble.  This was because his memory is so bad that he often
forgets whether it is your head or your feet you should stand on,
and he usually begins the day by standing on the end that happens
to get out of bed first.  Thus he requires constant watching, and
the worst of it is, you dare not draw attention to his mistake,
he is so shrinkingly sensitive about it.  No sooner had Joey told
us this than the poor old fellow began to turn upside down and
stood on his head; but we pretended not to notice, and talked
about the weather until he came to.

Josy and Joeykin, all skirts and spangles, were with us by this
time, for they had been invited to tea.  They came in dancing,
and danced off and on most of the time.  Even in the middle of
what they were saying they would begin to flutter; it was not so
much that they meant to dance as that the slightest thing set
them going, such as sitting in a draught; and David found he
could blow them about the room like pieces of paper.  You could
see by the shortness of Josy's dress that she was very young
indeed, and at first this made him shy, as he always is when
introduced formally to little girls, and he stood sucking his
thumb, and so did she, but soon the stiffness wore off and they
sat together on the sofa, holding each other's hands.

All this time the harlequin was rotating like a beautiful fish,
and David requested him to jump through the wall, at which he is
such an adept, and first he said he would, and then he said
better not, for the last time he did it the people in the next
house had made such a fuss.  David had to admit that it must be
rather startling to the people on the other side of the wall, but
he was sorry.

By this time tea was ready, and Josy, who poured out, remembered
to ask if you took milk with just one drop of tea in it, exactly
as her mother would have asked.  There was nothing to eat, of
course, except sausages, but what a number of them there were!
hundreds at least, strings of sausages, and every now and then
Joey jumped up and played skipping rope with them.  David had
been taught not to look greedy, even though he felt greedy, and
he was shocked to see the way in which Joey and old Joey and even
Josy eyed the sausages they had given him.  Soon Josy developed
nobler feelings, for she and Joeykin suddenly fell madly in love
with each other across the table, but unaffected by this pretty
picture, Joey continued to put whole sausages in his mouth at a
time, and then rubbed himself a little lower down, while old Joey
secreted them about his person; and when David wasn't looking
they both pounced on his sausages, and yet as they gobbled they
were constantly running to the top of the stair and screaming to
the servant to bring up more sausages.

You could see that Joey (if you caught him with his hand in your
plate) was a bit ashamed of himself, and he admitted to us that
sausages were a passion with him.

He said he had never once in his life had a sufficient number of
sausages.  They had maddened him since he was the smallest boy.
He told us how, even in those days, his mother had feared for
him, though fond of a sausage herself; how he had bought a
sausage with his first penny, and hoped to buy one with his last
(if they could not be got in any other way), and that he always
slept with a string of them beneath his pillow.

While he was giving us these confidences, unfortunately, his eyes
came to rest, at first accidentally, then wistfully, then with a
horrid gleam in them, on the little dog, which was fooling about
on the top of the sausage-machine, and his hands went out toward
it convulsively, whereat David, in sudden fear, seized the dog in
one arm and gallantly clenched his other fist, and then Joey
begged his pardon and burst into tears, each one of which he
flung against the wall, where it exploded with a bang.

David refused to pardon him unless he promised on wood never to
look in that way at the dog again, but Joey said promises were
nothing to him when he was short of sausages, and so his wisest
course would be to present the dog to David.  Oh, the joy of
David when he understood that the little dog he had saved was his
very own!  I can tell you he was now in a hurry to be off before
Joey had time to change his mind.

"All I ask of you," Joey said with a break in his voice, "is to
call him after me, and always to give him a sausage, sonny, of a
Saturday night."

There was a quiet dignity about Joey at the end, which showed
that he might have risen to high distinction but for his fatal
passion.

The last we saw of him was from the street.  He was waving his
tongue at us in his attractive, foolish way, and Josy was poised
on Joeykin's hand like a butterfly that had alighted on a flower.
We could not exactly see old Joey, but we saw his feet, and so
feared the worst.  Of course they are not everything they should
be, but one can't help liking them.


XXIII

Pilkington's

On attaining the age of eight, or thereabout, children fly away
from the Gardens, and never come back.  When next you meet them
they are ladies and gentlemen holding up their umbrellas to hail
a hansom.

Where the girls go to I know not, to some private place, I
suppose, to put up their hair, but the boys have gone to
Pilkington's.  He is a man with a cane.  You may not go to
Pilkington's in knickerbockers made by your mother, make she ever
so artfully.  They must be real knickerbockers.  It is his stern
rule.  Hence the fearful fascination of Pilkington's.

He may be conceived as one who, baiting his hook with real
knickerbockers, fishes all day in the Gardens, which are to him
but a pool swarming with small fry.

Abhorred shade!  I know not what manner of man thou art in the
flesh, sir, but figure thee bearded and blackavised, and of a
lean tortuous habit of body, that moves ever with a swish.  Every
morning, I swear, thou readest avidly the list of male births in
thy paper, and then are thy hands rubbed gloatingly the one upon
the other.  'Tis fear of thee and thy gown and thy cane, which
are part of thee, that makes the fairies to hide by day; wert
thou to linger but once among their haunts between the hours of
Lock-out and Open Gates there would be left not one single gentle
place in all the Gardens.  The little people would flit.  How
much wiser they than the small boys who swim glamoured to thy
crafty hook. Thou devastator of the Gardens, I know thee,
Pilkington.

I first heard of Pilkington from David, who had it from Oliver
Bailey.

This Oliver Bailey was one of the most dashing figures in the
Gardens, and without apparent effort was daily drawing nearer the
completion of his seventh year at a time when David seemed unable
to get beyond half-past five.  I have to speak of him in the past
tense, for gone is Oliver from the Gardens (gone to Pilkington's)
but he is still a name among us, and some lordly deeds are
remembered of him, as that his father shaved twice a day.  Oliver
himself was all on that scale.

His not ignoble ambition seems always to have been to be wrecked
upon an island, indeed I am told that he mentioned it
insinuatingly in his prayers, and it was perhaps inevitable that
a boy with such an outlook should fascinate David.  I am proud,
therefore, to be able to state on wood that it was Oliver himself
who made the overture.

On first hearing, from some satellite of Oliver's, of Wrecked
Islands, as they are called in the Gardens, David said wistfully
that he supposed you needed to be very very good before you had
any chance of being wrecked, and the remark was conveyed to
Oliver, on whom it made an uncomfortable impression.  For a time
he tried to evade it, but ultimately David was presented to him
and invited gloomily to say it again.  The upshot was that Oliver
advertised the Gardens of his intention to be good until he was
eight, and if he had not been wrecked by that time, to be as
jolly bad as a boy could be.  He was naturally so bad that at the
Kindergarten Academy, when the mistress ordered whoever had done
the last naughty deed to step forward, Oliver's custom had been
to step forward, not necessarily because he had done it, but
because he presumed he very likely had.

The friendship of the two dated from this time, and at first I
thought Oliver discovered generosity in hasting to David as to an
equal; he also walked hand in hand with him, and even reproved
him for delinquencies like a loving elder brother.  But 'tis a
gray world even in the Gardens, for I found that a new
arrangement had been made which reduced Oliver to life-size.  He
had wearied of well-doing, and passed it on, so to speak, to his
friend.  In other words, on David now devolved the task of being
good until he was eight, while Oliver clung to him so closely
that the one could not be wrecked without the other.

When this was made known to me it was already too late to break
the spell of Oliver, David was top-heavy with pride in him, and,
faith, I began to find myself very much in the cold, for Oliver
was frankly bored by me and even David seemed to think it would
be convenient if I went and sat with Irene.  Am I affecting to
laugh? I was really distressed and lonely, and rather bitter; and
how humble I became.  Sometimes when the dog Joey is unable, by
frisking, to induce Porthos to play with him, he stands on his
hind legs and begs it of him, and I do believe I was sometimes as
humble as Joey.  Then David would insist on my being suffered to
join them, but it was plain that he had no real occasion for me.

It was an unheroic trouble, and I despised myself.  For years I
had been fighting Mary for David, and had not wholly failed
though she was advantaged by the accident of relationship; was I
now to be knocked out so easily by a seven year old?  I
reconsidered my weapons, and I fought Oliver and beat him.
Figure to yourself those two boys become as faithful to me as my
coat-tails.

With wrecked islands I did it.  I began in the most unpretentious
way by telling them a story which might last an hour, and
favoured by many an unexpected wind it lasted eighteen months.
It started as the wreck of the simple Swiss family who looked up
and saw the butter tree, but soon a glorious inspiration of the
night turned it into the wreck of David A---- and Oliver Bailey.
At first it was what they were to do when they were wrecked, but
imperceptibly it became what they had done.  I spent much of my
time staring reflectively at the titles of the boys' stories in
the booksellers' windows, whistling for a breeze, so to say, for
I found that the titles were even more helpful than the stories.
We wrecked everybody of note, including all Homer's most taking
characters and the hero of Paradise Lost.  But we suffered them
not to land.  We stripped them of what we wanted and left them to
wander the high seas naked of adventure.  And all this was merely
the beginning.

By this time I had been cast upon the island.  It was not my own
proposal, but David knew my wishes, and he made it all right for
me with Oliver.  They found me among the breakers with a large
dog, which had kept me afloat throughout that terrible night.  I
was the sole survivor of the ill-fated Anna Pink.  So exhausted
was I that they had to carry me to their hut, and great was my
gratitude when on opening my eyes, I found myself in that
romantic edifice instead of in Davy Jones's locker.  As we walked
in the Gardens I told them of the hut they had built; and they
were inflated but not surprised.  On the other hand they looked
for surprise from me.

"Did we tell you about the turtle we turned on its back?" asked
Oliver, reverting to deeds of theirs of which I had previously
told them.

"You did."

"Who turned it?" demanded David, not as one who needed
information but after the manner of a schoolmaster.

"It was turned," I said, "by David A----, the younger of the two
youths."

"Who made the monkeys fling cocoa-nuts at him?" asked the older
of the two youths.

"Oliver Bailey," I replied.

"Was it Oliver," asked David sharply, "that found the cocoa-nut-
tree first?"

"On the contrary," I answered, "it was first observed by David,
who immediately climbed it, remarking, 'This is certainly the
cocos-nucifera, for, see, dear Oliver, the slender columns
supporting the crown of leaves which fall with a grace that no
art can imitate.'"

"That's what I said," remarked David with a wave of his hand.

"I said things like that, too," Oliver insisted.

"No, you didn't then," said David.

"Yes, I did so."

"No, you didn't so."

"Shut up."

"Well, then, let's hear one you said."

Oliver looked appealingly at me.  "The following," I announced,
"is one that Oliver said: 'Truly dear comrade, though the perils
of these happenings are great, and our privations calculated to
break the stoutest heart, yet to be rewarded by such fair sights
I would endure still greater trials and still rejoice even as the
bird on yonder bough.'"

"That's one I said!" crowed Oliver.

"I shot the bird," said David instantly.

"What bird?"

"The yonder bird."

"No, you didn't."

"Did I not shoot the bird?"

"It was David who shot the bird," I said, "but it was Oliver who
saw by its multi-coloured plumage that it was one of the
Psittacidae, an excellent substitute for partridge."

"You didn't see that," said Oliver, rather swollen.

"Yes, I did."

"What did you see?"

"I saw that."

"What?"

"You shut up."

"David shot it," I summed up, "and Oliver knew its name, but I
ate it.  Do you remember how hungry I was?"

"Rather!" said David.

"I cooked it," said Oliver.

"It was served up on toast," I reminded them.

"I toasted it," said David.

"Toast from the bread-fruit-tree," I said, "which (as you both
remarked simultaneously) bears two and sometimes three crops in a
year, and also affords a serviceable gum for the pitching of
canoes."

"I pitched mine best," said Oliver.

"I pitched mine farthest," said David.

"And when I had finished my repast," said I, "you amazed me by
handing me a cigar from the tobacco-plant."

"I handed it," said Oliver.

"I snicked off the end," said David.

"And then," said I, "you gave me a light."

"Which of us?" they cried together.

"Both of you," I said.  "Never shall I forget my amazement when I
saw you get that light by rubbing two sticks together."

At this they waggled their heads.  "You couldn't have done it!"
said David.

"No, David," I admitted, "I can't do it, but of course I know
that all wrecked boys do it quite easily.  Show me how you did
it."

But after consulting apart they agreed not to show me.  I was not
shown everything.

David was now firmly convinced that he had once been wrecked on
an island, while Oliver passed his days in dubiety.  They used to
argue it out together and among their friends.  As I unfolded the
story Oliver listened with an open knife in his hand, and David
who was not allowed to have a knife wore a pirate-string round
his waist.  Irene in her usual interfering way objected to this
bauble and dropped disparaging remarks about wrecked islands
which were little to her credit.  I was for defying her, but
David, who had the knack of women, knew a better way; he craftily
proposed that we "should let Irene in," in short, should wreck
her, and though I objected, she proved a great success and
recognised the yucca filamentosa by its long narrow leaves the
very day she joined us. Thereafter we had no more scoffing from
Irene, who listened to the story as hotly as anybody.

This encouraged us in time to let in David's father and mother,
though they never knew it unless he told them, as I have no doubt
he did.  They were admitted primarily to gratify David, who was
very soft-hearted and knew that while he was on the island they
must be missing him very much at home.  So we let them in, and
there was no part of the story he liked better than that which
told of the joyous meeting.  We were in need of another woman at
any rate, someone more romantic looking than Irene, and Mary, I
can assure her now, had a busy time of it.  She was constantly
being carried off by cannibals, and David became quite an adept
at plucking her from the very pot itself and springing from cliff
to cliff with his lovely burden in his arms.  There was seldom a
Saturday in which David did not kill his man.

I shall now provide the proof that David believed it all to be as
true as true.  It was told me by Oliver, who had it from our hero
himself.  I had described to them how the savages had tattooed
David's father, and Oliver informed me that one night shortly
afterward David was discovered softly lifting the blankets off
his father's legs to have a look at the birds and reptiles etched
thereon.

Thus many months passed with no word of Pilkington, and you may
be asking where he was all this time.  Ah, my friends, he was
very busy fishing, though I was as yet unaware of his existence.
Most suddenly I heard the whirr of his hated reel, as he struck a
fish. I remember that grim day with painful vividness, it was a
wet day, indeed I think it has rained for me more or less ever
since.  As soon as they joined me I saw from the manner of the
two boys that they had something to communicate.  Oliver nudged
David and retired a few paces, whereupon David said to me
solemnly,

"Oliver is going to Pilkington's."

I immediately perceived that it was some school, but so little
did I understand the import of David's remark that I called out
jocularly, "I hope he won't swish you, Oliver."

Evidently I had pained both of them, for they exchanged glances
and retired for consultation behind a tree, whence David returned
to say with emphasis,

"He has two jackets and two shirts and two knickerbockers, all
real ones."

"Well done, Oliver!" said I, but it was the wrong thing again,
and once more they disappeared behind the tree.  Evidently they
decided that the time for plain speaking was come, for now David
announced bluntly:

"He wants you not to call him Oliver any longer."

"What shall I call him?"

"Bailey."

"But why?"

"He's going to Pilkington's.  And he can't play with us any more
after next Saturday."

"Why not?"

"He's going to Pilkington's."

So now I knew the law about the thing, and we moved on together,
Oliver stretching himself consciously, and methought that even
David walked with a sedater air.

"David," said I, with a sinking, "are you going to Pilkington's?"

"When I am eight," he replied.

"And sha'n't I call you David then, and won't you play with me in
the Gardens any more?"

He looked at Bailey, and Bailey signalled him to be firm.

"Oh, no," said David cheerily.

Thus sharply did I learn how much longer I was to have of him.
Strange that a little boy can give so much pain.  I dropped his
hand and walked on in silence, and presently I did my most
churlish to hurt him by ending the story abruptly in a very cruel
way.  "Ten years have elapsed," said I, "since I last spoke, and
our two heroes, now gay young men, are revisiting the wrecked
island of their childhood.  'Did we wreck ourselves,' said one,
'or was there someone to help us?'  And the other who was the
younger, replied, 'I think there was someone to help us, a man
with a dog.  I think he used to tell me stories in the Kensington
Gardens, but I forget all about him; I don't remember even his
name.'"

This tame ending bored Bailey, and he drifted away from us, but
David still walked by my side, and he was grown so quiet that I
knew a storm was brewing.  Suddenly he flashed lightning on me.
"It's not true," he cried, "it's a lie!"  He gripped my hand.  "I
sha'n't never forget you, father."

Strange that a little boy can give so much pleasure.

Yet I could go on.  "You will forget, David, but there was once a
boy who would have remembered."

"Timothy?" said he at once.  He thinks Timothy was a real boy,
and is very jealous of him.  He turned his back to me, and stood
alone and wept passionately, while I waited for him.  You may be
sure I begged his pardon, and made it all right with him, and had
him laughing and happy again before I let him go.  But
nevertheless what I said was true.  David is not my boy, and he
will forget. But Timothy would have remembered.


XXIV

Barbara

Another shock was waiting for me farther down the story.

For we had resumed our adventures, though we seldom saw Bailey
now.  At long intervals we met him on our way to or from the
Gardens, and, if there was none from Pilkington's to mark him,
methought he looked at us somewhat longingly, as if beneath his
real knickerbockers a morsel of the egg-shell still adhered.
Otherwise he gave David a not unfriendly kick in passing, and
called him "youngster."  That was about all.

When Oliver disappeared from the life of the Gardens we had
lofted him out of the story, and did very well without him,
extending our operations to the mainland, where they were on so
vast a scale that we were rapidly depopulating the earth.  And
then said David one day,

"Shall we let Barbara in?"

We had occasionally considered the giving of Bailey's place to
some other child of the Gardens, divers of David's year having
sought election, even with bribes; but Barbara was new to me.

"Who is she?" I asked.

"She's my sister."

You may imagine how I gaped.

"She hasn't come yet," David said lightly, "but she's coming."



I was shocked, not perhaps so much shocked as disillusioned, for
though I had always suspicioned Mary A---- as one who harboured the
craziest ambitions when she looked most humble, of such
presumption as this I had never thought her capable.

I wandered across the Broad Walk to have a look at Irene, and she
was wearing an unmistakable air.  It set me reflecting about
Mary's husband and his manner the last time we met, for though I
have had no opportunity to say so, we still meet now and again,
and he has even dined with me at the club.  On these occasions
the subject of Timothy is barred, and if by any unfortunate
accident Mary's name is mentioned, we immediately look opposite
ways and a silence follows, in which I feel sure he is smiling,
and wonder what the deuce he is smiling at.  I remembered now
that I had last seen him when I was dining with him at his club
(for he is become member of a club of painter fellows, and Mary
is so proud of this that she has had it printed on his card),
when undoubtedly he had looked preoccupied.  It had been the
look, I saw now, of one who shared a guilty secret.

As all was thus suddenly revealed to me I laughed unpleasantly at
myself, for, on my soul, I had been thinking well of Mary of
late. Always foolishly inflated about David, she had been
grudging him even to me during these last weeks, and I had
forgiven her, putting it down to a mother's love.  I knew from
the poor boy of unwonted treats she had been giving him; I had
seen her embrace him furtively in a public place, her every act,
in so far as they were known to me, had been a challenge to
whoever dare assert that she wanted anyone but David.  How could
I, not being a woman, have guessed that she was really saying
good-bye to him?

Reader, picture to yourself that simple little boy playing about
the house at this time, on the understanding that everything was
going on as usual.  Have not his toys acquired a new pathos,
especially the engine she bought him yesterday?

Did you look him in the face, Mary, as you gave him that engine?
I envy you not your feelings, ma'am, when with loving arms he
wrapped you round for it.  That childish confidence of his to me,
in which unwittingly he betrayed you, indicates that at last you
have been preparing him for the great change, and I suppose you
are capable of replying to me that David is still happy, and even
interested.  But does he know from you what it really means to
him?  Rather, I do believe, you are one who would not scruple to
give him to understand that B (which you may yet find stands for
Benjamin) is primarily a gift for him.  In your heart, ma'am,
what do you think of this tricking of a little boy?

Suppose David had known what was to happen before he came to you,
are you sure he would have come?  Undoubtedly there is an
unwritten compact in such matters between a mother and her first-
born, and I desire to point out to you that he never breaks it.
Again, what will the other boys say when they know?  You are
outside the criticism of the Gardens, but David is not.  Faith,
madam, I believe you would have been kinder to wait and let him
run the gauntlet at Pilkington's.

You think your husband is a great man now because they are
beginning to talk of his foregrounds and middle distances in the
newspaper columns that nobody reads.  I know you have bought him
a velvet coat, and that he has taken a large, airy and commodious
studio in Mews Lane, where you are to be found in a soft material
on first and third Wednesdays.  Times are changing, but shall I
tell you a story here, just to let you see that I am acquainted
with it?

Three years ago a certain gallery accepted from a certain artist
a picture which he and his wife knew to be monstrous fine.  But
no one spoke of the picture, no one wrote of it, and no one made
an offer for it.  Crushed was the artist, sorry for the denseness
of connoisseurs was his wife, till the work was bought by a
dealer for an anonymous client, and then elated were they both,
and relieved also to discover that I was not the buyer.  He came
to me at once to make sure of this, and remained to walk the
floor gloriously as he told me what recognition means to
gentlemen of the artistic callings.  O, the happy boy!

But months afterward, rummaging at his home in a closet that is
usually kept locked, he discovered the picture, there hidden
away.  His wife backed into a corner and made trembling
confession.  How could she submit to see her dear's masterpiece
ignored by the idiot public, and her dear himself plunged into
gloom thereby?  She knew as well as he (for had they not been
married for years?) how the artistic instinct hungers for
recognition, and so with her savings she bought the great work
anonymously and stored it away in a closet.  At first, I believe,
the man raved furiously, but by-and-by he was on his knees at the
feet of this little darling.  You know who she was, Mary, but,
bless me, I seem to be praising you, and that was not the
enterprise on which I set out.  What I intended to convey was
that though you can now venture on small extravagances, you seem
to be going too fast.  Look at it how one may, this Barbara idea
is undoubtedly a bad business.

How to be even with her?  I cast about for a means, and on my
lucky day I did conceive my final triumph over Mary, at which I
have scarcely as yet dared to hint, lest by discovering it I
should spoil my plot.  For there has been a plot all the time.

For long I had known that Mary contemplated the writing of a
book, my informant being David, who, because I have published a
little volume on Military tactics, and am preparing a larger one
on the same subject (which I shall never finish), likes to watch
my methods of composition, how I dip, and so on, his desire being
to help her.  He may have done this on his own initiative, but it
is also quite possible that in her desperation she urged him to
it; he certainly implied that she had taken to book-writing
because it must be easy if I could do it.  She also informed him
(very inconsiderately), that I did not print my books myself, and
this lowered me in the eyes of David, for it was for the printing
he had admired me and boasted of me in the Gardens.

"I suppose you didn't make the boxes neither, nor yet the
labels," he said to me in the voice of one shorn of belief in
everything.

I should say here that my literary labours are abstruse, the
token whereof is many rows of boxes nailed against my walls, each
labelled with a letter of the alphabet.  When I take a note in A,
I drop its into the A box, and so on, much to the satisfaction of
David, who likes to drop them in for me.  I had now to admit that
Wheeler & Gibb made the boxes.

"But I made the labels myself, David."

"They are not so well made as the boxes," he replied.

Thus I have reason to wish ill to Mary's work of imagination, as
I presumed it to be, and I said to him with easy brutality, "Tell
her about the boxes, David, and that no one can begin a book
until they are all full.  That will frighten her."

Soon thereafter he announced to me that she had got a box.

"One box!" I said with a sneer.

"She made it herself," retorted David hotly.

I got little real information from him about the work, partly
because David loses his footing when he descends to the
practical, and perhaps still more because he found me
unsympathetic.  But when he blurted out the title, "The Little
White Bird," I was like one who had read the book to its last
page.  I knew at once that the white bird was the little daughter
Mary would fain have had.  Somehow I had always known that she
would like to have a little daughter, she was that kind of woman,
and so long as she had the modesty to see that she could not have
one, I sympathised with her deeply, whatever I may have said
about her book to David.

In those days Mary had the loveliest ideas for her sad little
book, and they came to her mostly in the morning when she was
only three-parts awake, but as she stepped out of bed they all
flew away like startled birds.  I gathered from David that this
depressed her exceedingly.

Oh, Mary, your thoughts are much too pretty and holy to show
themselves to anyone but yourself.  The shy things are hiding
within you.  If they could come into the open they would not be a
book, they would be little Barbara.

But that was not the message I sent her.  "She will never be able
to write it," I explained to David.  "She has not the ability.
Tell her I said that."

I remembered now that for many months I had heard nothing of her
ambitious project, so I questioned David and discovered that it
was abandoned.  He could not say why, nor was it necessary that
he should, the trivial little reason was at once so plain to me.
From that moment all my sympathy with Mary was spilled, and I
searched for some means of exulting over her until I found it.
It was this.  I decided, unknown even to David, to write the book
"The Little White Bird," of which she had proved herself
incapable, and then when, in the fulness of time, she held her
baby on high, implying that she had done a big thing, I was to
hold up the book.  I venture to think that such a devilish
revenge was never before planned and carried out.

Yes, carried out, for this is the book, rapidly approaching
completion.  She and I are running a neck-and-neck race.

I have also once more brought the story of David's adventures to
an abrupt end.  "And it really is the end this time, David," I
said severely.  (I always say that.)

It ended on the coast of Patagonia, whither we had gone to shoot
the great Sloth, known to be the largest of animals, though we
found his size to have been under-estimated.  David, his father
and I had flung our limbs upon the beach and were having a last
pipe before turning in, while Mary, attired in barbaric
splendour, sang and danced before us.  It was a lovely evening,
and we lolled manlike, gazing, well-content, at the pretty
creature.

The night was absolutely still save for the roaring of the Sloths
in the distance.

By-and-by Irene came to the entrance of our cave, where by the
light of her torch we could see her exploring a shark that had
been harpooned by David earlier in the day.

Everything conduced to repose, and a feeling of gentle peace
crept over us, from which we were roused by a shrill cry.  It was
uttered by Irene, who came speeding to us, bearing certain
articles, a watch, a pair of boots, a newspaper, which she had
discovered in the interior of the shark.  What was our surprise
to find in the newspaper intelligence of the utmost importance to
all of us.  It was nothing less than this, the birth of a new
baby in London to Mary.

How strange a method had Solomon chosen of sending us the news.

The bald announcement at once plunged us into a fever of
excitement, and next morning we set sail for England.  Soon we
came within sight of the white cliffs of Albion.  Mary could not
sit down for a moment, so hot was she to see her child.  She
paced the deck in uncontrollable agitation.

"So did I!" cried David, when I had reached this point in the
story.

On arriving at the docks we immediately hailed a cab.

"Never, David," I said, "shall I forget your mother's excitement.
She kept putting her head out of the window and calling to the
cabby to go quicker, quicker.  How he lashed his horse!  At last
he drew up at your house, and then your mother, springing out,
flew up the steps and beat with her hands upon the door."

David was quite carried away by the reality of it.  "Father has
the key!" he screamed.

"He opened the door," I said grandly, "and your mother rushed in,
and next moment her Benjamin was in her arms."

There was a pause.

"Barbara," corrected David.

"Benjamin," said I doggedly.

"Is that a girl's name?"

"No, it's a boy's name."

"But mother wants a girl," he said, very much shaken.

"Just like her presumption," I replied testily.  "It is to be a
boy, David, and you can tell her I said so."

He was in a deplorable but most unselfish state of mind.  A boy
would have suited him quite well, but he put self aside
altogether and was pertinaciously solicitous that Mary should be
given her fancy.

"Barbara," he repeatedly implored me.

"Benjamin," I replied firmly.

For long I was obdurate, but the time was summer, and at last I
agreed to play him for it, a two-innings match.  If he won it was
to be a girl, and if I won it was to be a boy.


XXV

The Cricket Match

I think there has not been so much on a cricket match since the
day when Sir Horace Mann walked about Broad Ha'penny agitatedly
cutting down the daisies with his stick.  And, be it remembered,
the heroes of Hambledon played for money and renown only, while
David was champion of a lady.  A lady!  May we not prettily say
of two ladies?  There were no spectators of our contest except
now and again some loiterer in the Gardens who little thought
what was the stake for which we played, but cannot we conceive
Barbara standing at the ropes and agitatedly cutting down the
daisies every time David missed the ball?  I tell you, this was
the historic match of the Gardens.

David wanted to play on a pitch near the Round Pond with which he
is familiar, but this would have placed me at a disadvantage, so
I insisted on unaccustomed ground, and we finally pitched stumps
in the Figs.  We could not exactly pitch stumps, for they are
forbidden in the Gardens, but there are trees here and there
which have chalk-marks on them throughout the summer, and when
you take up your position with a bat near one of these you have
really pitched stumps.  The tree we selected is a ragged yew
which consists of a broken trunk and one branch, and I viewed the
ground with secret satisfaction, for it falls slightly at about
four yards' distance from the tree, and this exactly suits my
style of bowling.

I won the toss and after examining the wicket decided to take
first knock.  As a rule when we play the wit at first flows free,
but on this occasion I strode to the crease in an almost eerie
silence.  David had taken off his blouse and rolled up his shirt-
sleeves, and his teeth were set, so I knew he would begin by
sending me down some fast ones.

His delivery is underarm and not inelegant, but he sometimes
tries a round-arm ball, which I have seen double up the fielder
at square leg.  He has not a good length, but he varies his
action bewilderingly, and has one especially teasing ball which
falls from the branches just as you have stepped out of your
ground to look for it.  It was not, however, with his teaser that
he bowled me that day.  I had notched a three and two singles,
when he sent me down a medium to fast which got me in two minds
and I played back to it too late.  Now, I am seldom out on a
really grassy wicket for such a meagre score, and as David and I
changed places without a word, there was a cheery look on his
face that I found very galling.  He ran in to my second ball and
cut it neatly to the on for a single, and off my fifth and sixth
he had two pretty drives for three, both behind the wicket.
This, however, as I hoped, proved the undoing of him, for he now
hit out confidently at everything, and with his score at nine I
beat him with my shooter.

The look was now on my face.

I opened my second innings by treating him with uncommon respect,
for I knew that his little arm soon tired if he was unsuccessful,
and then when he sent me loose ones I banged him to the railings.
What cared I though David's lips were twitching.

When he ultimately got past my defence, with a jumpy one which
broke awkwardly from the off, I had fetched twenty-three so that
he needed twenty to win, a longer hand than he had ever yet made.
As I gave him the bat he looked brave, but something wet fell on
my hand, and then a sudden fear seized me lest David should not
win.

At the very outset, however, he seemed to master the bowling, and
soon fetched about ten runs in a classic manner.  Then I tossed
him a Yorker which he missed and it went off at a tangent as soon
as it had reached the tree.  "Not out," I cried hastily, for the
face he turned to me was terrible.

Soon thereafter another incident happened, which I shall always
recall with pleasure.  He had caught the ball too high on the
bat, and I just missed the catch.  "Dash it all!" said I
irritably, and was about to resume bowling, when I noticed that
he was unhappy. He hesitated, took up his position at the wicket,
and then came to me manfully.  "I am a cad," he said in distress,
"for when the ball was in the air I prayed."  He had prayed that
I should miss the catch, and as I think I have already told you,
it is considered unfair in the Gardens to pray for victory.

My splendid David!  He has the faults of other little boys, but
he has a noble sense of fairness.  "We shall call it a no-ball,
David," I said gravely.

I suppose the suspense of the reader is now painful, and
therefore I shall say at once that David won the match with two
lovely fours, the one over my head and the other to leg all along
the ground.  When I came back from fielding this last ball I
found him embracing his bat, and to my sour congratulations he
could at first reply only with hysterical sounds.  But soon he
was pelting home to his mother with the glorious news.

And that is how we let Barbara in.


XXVI

The Dedication

It was only yesterday afternoon, dear reader, exactly three weeks
after the birth of Barbara, that I finished the book, and even
then it was not quite finished, for there remained the
dedication, at which I set to elatedly.  I think I have never
enjoyed myself more; indeed, it is my opinion that I wrote the
book as an excuse for writing the dedication.

"Madam" (I wrote wittily), "I have no desire to exult over you,
yet I should show a lamentable obtuseness to the irony of things
were I not to dedicate this little work to you.  For its
inception was yours, and in your more ambitious days you thought
to write the tale of the little white bird yourself.  Why you so
early deserted the nest is not for me to inquire.  It now appears
that you were otherwise occupied.  In fine, madam, you chose the
lower road, and contented yourself with obtaining the Bird.  May
I point out, by presenting you with this dedication, that in the
meantime I am become the parent of the Book?  To you the shadow,
to me the substance.  Trusting that you will accept my little
offering in a Christian spirit, I am, dear madam," etc.

It was heady work, for the saucy words showed their design
plainly through the varnish, and I was re-reading in an ecstasy,
when, without warning, the door burst open and a little boy
entered, dragging in a faltering lady.

"Father," said David, "this is mother."

Having thus briefly introduced us, he turned his attention to the
electric light, and switched it on and off so rapidly that, as
was very fitting, Mary and I may be said to have met for the
first time to the accompaniment of flashes of lightning.  I think
she was arrayed in little blue feathers, but if such a costume is
not seemly, I swear there were, at least, little blue feathers in
her too coquettish cap, and that she was carrying a muff to
match.  No part of a woman is more dangerous than her muff, and
as muffs are not worn in early autumn, even by invalids, I saw in
a twink, that she had put on all her pretty things to wheedle me.
 I am also of opinion that she remembered she had worn blue in
the days when I watched her from the club-window.  Undoubtedly
Mary is an engaging little creature, though not my style.  She
was paler than is her wont, and had the touching look of one whom
it would be easy to break.  I daresay this was a trick.  Her
skirts made music in my room, but perhaps this was only because
no lady had ever rustled in it before.  It was disquieting to me
to reflect that despite her obvious uneasiness, she was a very
artful woman.

With the quickness of David at the switch, I slipped a blotting-
pad over the dedication, and then, "Pray be seated," I said
coldly, but she remained standing, all in a twitter and very much
afraid of me, and I know that her hands were pressed together
within the muff.  Had there been any dignified means of escape, I
think we would both have taken it.

"I should not have come," she said nervously, and then seemed to
wait for some response, so I bowed.

"I was terrified to come, indeed I was," she assured me with
obvious sincerity.

"But I have come," she finished rather baldly.

"It is an epitome, ma'am," said I, seeing my chance, "of your
whole life," and with that I put her into my elbow-chair.

She began to talk of my adventures with David in the Gardens, and
of some little things I have not mentioned here, that I may have
done for her when I was in a wayward mood, and her voice was as
soft as her muff.  She had also an affecting way of pronouncing
all her r's as w's, just as the fairies do.  "And so," she said,
"as you would not come to me to be thanked, I have come to you to
thank you."  Whereupon she thanked me most abominably.  She also
slid one of her hands out of the muff, and though she was smiling
her eyes were wet.

"Pooh, ma'am," said I in desperation, but I did not take her
hand.

"I am not very strong yet," she said with low cunning.  She said
this to make me take her hand, so I took it, and perhaps I patted
it a little.  Then I walked brusquely to the window.  The truth
is, I begun to think uncomfortably of the dedication.

I went to the window because, undoubtedly, it would be easier to
address her severely from behind, and I wanted to say something
that would sting her.

"When you have quite done, ma'am," I said, after a long pause,
"perhaps you will allow me to say a word."

I could see the back of her head only, but I knew, from David's
face, that she had given him a quick look which did not imply
that she was stung.  Indeed I felt now, as I had felt before,
that though she was agitated and in some fear of me, she was also
enjoying herself considerably.

In such circumstances I might as well have tried to sting a sand-
bank, so I said, rather off my watch, "If I have done all this
for you, why did I do it?"

She made no answer in words, but seemed to grow taller in the
chair, so that I could see her shoulders, and I knew from this
that she was now holding herself conceitedly and trying to look
modest.  "Not a bit of it, ma'am," said I sharply, "that was not
the reason at all."

I was pleased to see her whisk round, rather indignant at last.

"I never said it was," she retorted with spirit, "I never thought
for a moment that it was."  She added, a trifle too late in the
story, "Besides, I don't know what you are talking of."

I think I must have smiled here, for she turned from me quickly,
and became quite little in the chair again.

"David," said I mercilessly, "did you ever see your mother
blush?"

"What is blush?"

"She goes a beautiful pink colour."

David, who had by this time broken my connection with the head
office, crossed to his mother expectantly.

"I don't, David," she cried.

"I think," said I, "she will do it now," and with the instinct of
a gentleman I looked away.  Thus I cannot tell what happened, but
presently David exclaimed admiringly, "Oh, mother, do it again!"

As she would not, he stood on the fender to see in the mantel-
glass whether he could do it himself, and then Mary turned a most
candid face on me, in which was maternity rather than reproach.
Perhaps no look given by woman to man affects him quite so much.
"You see," she said radiantly and with a gesture that disclosed
herself to me, "I can forgive even that.  You long ago earned the
right to hurt me if you want to."

It weaned me of all further desire to rail at Mary, and I felt an
uncommon drawing to her.

"And if I did think that for a little while--," she went on, with
an unsteady smile.

"Think what?" I asked, but without the necessary snap.

"What we were talking of," she replied wincing, but forgiving me
again.  "If I once thought that, it was pretty to me while it
lasted and it lasted but a little time.  I have long been sure
that your kindness to me was due to some other reason."

"Ma'am," said I very honestly, "I know not what was the reason.
My concern for you was in the beginning a very fragile and even a
selfish thing, yet not altogether selfish, for I think that what
first stirred it was the joyous sway of the little nursery
governess as she walked down Pall Mall to meet her lover.  It
seemed such a mighty fine thing to you to be loved that I thought
you had better continue to be loved for a little longer.  And
perhaps having helped you once by dropping a letter I was charmed
by the ease with which you could be helped, for you must know
that I am one who has chosen the easy way for more than twenty
years."

She shook her head and smiled.  "On my soul," I assured her, "I
can think of no other reason."

"A kind heart," said she.

"More likely a whim," said I.

"Or another woman," said she.

I was very much taken aback.

"More than twenty years ago," she said with a soft huskiness in
her voice, and a tremor and a sweetness, as if she did not know
that in twenty years all love stories are grown mouldy.

On my honour as a soldier this explanation of my early solicitude
for Mary was one that had never struck me, but the more I
pondered it now--.  I raised her hand and touched it with my lips,
as we whimsical old fellows do when some gracious girl makes us
to hear the key in the lock of long ago.  "Why, ma'am," I said,
"it is a pretty notion, and there may be something in it.  Let us
leave it at that."

But there was still that accursed dedication, lying, you
remember, beneath the blotting-pad.  I had no longer any desire
to crush her with it.  I wished that she had succeeded in writing
the book on which her longings had been so set.

"If only you had been less ambitious," I said, much troubled that
she should be disappointed in her heart's desire.

"I wanted all the dear delicious things," she admitted
contritely.

"It was unreasonable," I said eagerly, appealing to her
intellect.  "Especially this last thing."

"Yes," she agreed frankly, "I know."  And then to my amazement
she added triumphantly, "But I got it."

I suppose my look admonished her, for she continued
apologetically but still as if she really thought hers had been a
romantic career, "I know I have not deserved it, but I got it."

"Oh, ma'am," I cried reproachfully, "reflect.  You have not got
the great thing."  I saw her counting the great things in her
mind, her wondrous husband and his obscure success, David,
Barbara, and the other trifling contents of her jewel-box.

"I think I have," said she.

"Come, madam," I cried a little nettled, "you know that there is
lacking the one thing you craved for most of all."

Will you believe me that I had to tell her what it was?  And when
I had told her she exclaimed with extraordinary callousness, "The
book?  I had forgotten all about the book!"  And then after
reflection she added, "Pooh!"  Had she not added Pooh I might
have spared her, but as it was I raised the blotting-pad rather
haughtily and presented her with the sheet beneath it.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Ma'am," said I, swelling, "it is a Dedication," and I walked
majestically to the window.

There is no doubt that presently I heard an unexpected sound.
Yet if indeed it had been a laugh she clipped it short, for in
almost the same moment she was looking large-eyed at me and
tapping my sleeve impulsively with her fingers, just as David
does when he suddenly likes you.

"How characteristic of you," she said at the window.

"Characteristic," I echoed uneasily.  "Ha!"

"And how kind."

"Did you say kind, ma'am?"

"But it is I who have the substance and you who have the shadow,
as you know very well," said she.

Yes, I had always known that this was the one flaw in my
dedication, but how could I have expected her to have the wit to
see it?  I was very depressed.

"And there is another mistake," said she.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but that is the only one."

"It was never of my little white bird I wanted to write," she
said.

I looked politely incredulous, and then indeed she overwhelmed
me.  "It was of your little white bird," she said, "it was of a
little boy whose name was Timothy."

She had a very pretty way of saying Timothy, so David and I went
into another room to leave her alone with the manuscript of this
poor little book, and when we returned she had the greatest
surprise of the day for me.  She was both laughing and crying,
which was no surprise, for all of us would laugh and cry over a
book about such an interesting subject as ourselves, but said
she, "How wrong you are in thinking this book is about me and
mine, it is really all about Timothy."

At first I deemed this to be uncommon nonsense, but as I
considered I saw that she was probably right again, and I gazed
crestfallen at this very clever woman.

"And so," said she, clapping her hands after the manner of David
when he makes a great discovery, "it proves to be my book after
all."

"With all your pretty thoughts left out," I answered, properly
humbled.

She spoke in a lower voice as if David must not hear.  "I had
only one pretty thought for the book," she said, "I was to give
it a happy ending."  She said this so timidly that I was about to
melt to her when she added with extraordinary boldness, "The
little white bird was to bear an olive-leaf in its mouth."

For a long time she talked to me earnestly of a grand scheme on
which she had set her heart, and ever and anon she tapped on me
as if to get admittance for her ideas.  I listened respectfully,
smiling at this young thing for carrying it so motherly to me,
and in the end I had to remind her that I was forty-seven years
of age.

"It is quite young for a man," she said brazenly.

"My father," said I, "was not forty-seven when he died, and I
remember thinking him an old man."

"But you don't think so now, do you?" she persisted, "you feel
young occasionally, don't you?  Sometimes when you are playing
with David in the Gardens your youth comes swinging back, does it
not?"

"Mary A----," I cried, grown afraid of the woman, "I forbid you to
make any more discoveries to-day."

But still she hugged her scheme, which I doubt not was what had
brought her to my rooms.  "They are very dear women," said she
coaxingly.

"I am sure," I said, "they must be dear women if they are friends
of yours."

"They are not exactly young," she faltered, "and perhaps they are
not very pretty--"

But she had been reading so recently about the darling of my
youth that she halted abashed at last, feeling, I apprehend, a
stop in her mind against proposing this thing to me, who, in
those presumptuous days, had thought to be content with nothing
less than the loveliest lady in all the land.

My thoughts had reverted also, and for the last time my eyes saw
the little hut through the pine wood haze.  I met Mary there, and
we came back to the present together.

I have already told you, reader, that this conversation took
place no longer ago than yesterday.

"Very well, ma'am," I said, trying to put a brave face on it, "I
will come to your tea-parties, and we shall see what we shall
see."

It was really all she had asked for, but now that she had got
what she wanted of me the foolish soul's eyes became wet, she
knew so well that the youthful romances are the best.

It was now my turn to comfort her.  "In twenty years," I said,
smiling at her tears, "a man grows humble, Mary.  I have stored
within me a great fund of affection, with nobody to give it to,
and I swear to you, on the word of a soldier, that if there is
one of those ladies who can be got to care for me I shall be very
proud."  Despite her semblance of delight I knew that she was
wondering at me, and I wondered at myself, but it was true.





End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Little White Bird, by J.M. Barrie