My nephew Rupert has been spending part of his Easter holidays with me.
There is nothing like a boy of fifteen for adding an atmosphere to a
house--in which term I include a garden. It is a special atmosphere, hard
to define, but quite unmistakable when you have once lived in it. It is
compounded of football, cricket, hockey--these are not actual, but
conversational--of visits to the stables, romps with dogs in a library,
tousled hair, muddy trousers, a certain contempt for time, the loan of my
collar-stud, an insatiable desire to look through the back volumes of
_Punch_, long rides on a bicycle and an irresistible tendency of ink to the
fingers, presumably caused by the terrible duty of writing letters to
parents. There may be other ingredients, but these are the chief. I am
bound to add that he is a very amiable boy, with a strong sense of humour,
and that he associates on very friendly terms with the little girls, his
cousins, who form the majority of this household, it being quite understood
that, for the time, they become boys while he remains what he is.
The other morning Rupert evidently had something on his mind. He made
various half-hearted and thoroughly unsuccessful efforts to leave the room,
twiddled his cap in his hands, tripped over the rug and finally spoke.
"Thanks awfully, Uncle Harry, for lending me your bicycle."
"That's all right," I said. "You're very welcome to it. It's a good thing
for it to be used."
"Yes," he said, "but I shan't want it again."
"Tired of it?" I said. "Well, there's no compulsion."
"Oh, I know that--thanks awfully--but it isn't that. It's a ripping
bicycle. I should like to ride it for ever, but----"
"Well, what is it? Out with it."
"I've got one of my own."
"One of your own!" I said. "How's that? You hadn't got one yesterday."
"No, but I've got one now. I bought it this morning at Hickleden. There's a
bicycle shop there, and I heard there was a good bicycle for sale cheap, so
I went over this morning and had a ride on it, and it suited me splendidly,
so I bought it, and I've got it here."
"Bought it?" I said. "That's all very well; but how did you pay for it?"
"That," he said, "is where all the bother comes in."
"It generally does," I said. "Either you've got the money, and then it
seems such a waste; or you haven't got it, and then it's a lifetime of
misery. Debt, my boy, is an awful thing."
"Don't rag, Uncle Harry; I've got the money all right."
"Then be a man and shell out."
"Yes, but that's just what I can't do. It's this way: the price of the
bicycle is five pounds seventeen and sixpence."
"And a very good price too."
"It's got three gears and a lamp and everything complete. Well, I've got
three pounds ten in the Post-Office Savings Bank. I put it in in London."
"That's a good beginning, anyhow."
"Yes, and Aunt Mary gave me a pound for my birthday, and I put that in at
the post-office here yesterday. It's better not to keep pounds in your
pocket."
"Quite right," I said; "we have now got to four pounds ten."
"And Grandma sent me a pound this morning in a postal-order."
"We're all but up to it now," I said. "The excitement is becoming intense."
"Isn't it? And I've got the rest in shillings and sixpences and coppers."
"Away you go, then, and pay for the bicycle."
"Ah, but it isn't as easy as all that. I can't get the money out of the
Post-Office."
"What," I said--"they won't let you have your own money? They calmly take
the savings of a lifetime and then refuse to give them up?"
"I went round there this morning and they said I'd put the money in in
London and there were various formalities to be gone through before I could
draw it out here."
"The official mind," I said, "delights in technicalities. Let us see how
you stand:--
To save you from the silly game of playing drakes and ducks
You banked the cash in Middlesex--but asked for it in Bucks.