IV

She gave a sort of gurgling cry, as though she were being strangled. Angel

and The Seraph faced about to look at her in consternation, their hair wild

in the wind, and the rising sun making an aureole about them. The four of

us stared at each other in silence for a space, while the attic-room, with

its cobwebs reeled--the sun rose, and sank, like a floundering ship, and

Mrs. Handsomebody resembling, in my fancy, a hungry spider, in curl papers,

considered which victim was ripest for slaughter.

"You--and you--and you--" she gobbled. "Oh, to think of it! No place safe!

What you need is a _strong_ man. _We_ shall see! The very windows--burst

from their bolts!" She slammed the casement and secured it, Angel and The

Seraph darting from her path.

"Even a dead woman's clothes--to make a scarecrow of!" She pounced--I hid

my face while she did it, but I heard a sinister rustling and the snap of a

trunk lid. It was over. "Bide the time."

Ignominiously she herded us down the stairs; The Seraph making only one

step at a time, led the way. Far down the drab vista of the back stairs

that ended in the scullery, Mary Ellen's red, round face was seen for a

moment, like a second rising sun, but vanished as suddenly as it had

appeared, at a shout from Mrs. Handsomebody.

We were in the schoolroom now, placed before her in a row, as was her wont

in times of retribution. Seated behind her desk she wore her purple

dressing gown with magisterial dignity; the wart upon her chin quivered as

she prepared to speak.

"Now, David," she said, rapping Angel smartly on the head, "can you say

anything in explanation of this outrage upon my property? Hold your head up

and toe out, please."

Angel looked at his hands. "Nuffin' to explain," he said sulkily. "Just

went an' did it."

"Oh I thought so," said our governess. "It was just one of these seemingly

irresistible impulses that have so often proved disastrous for all

concerned. If your father knew--" she bit off the words as though they had

a pleasant, if acrid taste--"if your poor father knew of your criminal

proclivities, he would be a _crushed_ man. A _crushed man_."

The Seraph was staring at her chin.

Then--"I have one too," he said gently.

"One _what_?" Her tone should have warned him. "One wart," he went on, with

easy modesty. "It's just a little one. It can't wiggle--like yours--but

it's gwowing nicely. Would you care to see it?"

Mrs. Handsomebody affected not to hear him. She stared sombrely at Angel

and me, but I believe The Seraph sealed our fate, for, after a moment's

deliberation, she said curtly; "I shall have to beat you for this."

She gave us six apiece, and I could not help noticing that, though The

Seraph was the youngest and tenderest, his six were the most stinging.

When we had been sent to our bedroom to say our prayers, and change our

pitifully inadequate night clothes for day things, I put the question that

was burning in my mind.

"Did either of you see _her_?"

"Who?"

"Lucy, sitting there in the chair."

Angel's brown eyes were blank.

"I saw her _clothes_. What sickens me is that the dragon took that

spy-glass. You see if I don't get it yet." (Mrs. Handsomebody was "the

dragon" in our vernacular.)

"Did _you_ see her, Seraph?"

The Seraph was sitting on the floor, his head on his knees. He raised a

tear-flushed face.

"I'm 'most too cwushed to wemember," he said, huskily. "But I _fink_ Lucy

was fat. It's a vewy bad fing to be fat, 'cos the cane hurts worser."

I turned from such infantile imbecility to the exhilarating reflection that

I was the only one to whom Lucy had shown herself--her chosen knight!

I was burning to do her service, yet the passage that led to the attic

stronghold was well guarded. Two days had passed before I made the attempt.

I had been sent upstairs from the tea-table to wash my hands--though they

were only comfortably soiled--and after I had dipped them in a basin of

water that had done service for both Angel and The Seraph, I gave them a

good rub on my trouser legs, as I tip-toed to the foot of the attic stairs.

Cautiously, with fast-beating heart, I mounted, and tried the door. It was

locked fast. I pressed my eye against the keyhole, and made out in the

gloom the dark shape of the trunk, sinister, forbidding, inaccessible. No

rustle of lilac silk, no faintest perfume, no appealing sigh from the

gentle Lucy greeted me. All was dark and quiet. "Bide the time!" Who knew

but that some day I might set her free?

Yet my throat ached as I slowly made my way back to the table, presented my

hands for a rather sceptical inspection by Mrs. Handsomebody, and dropped

languidly into my seat.

The Seraph gave me a look of sympathy--even understanding--perhaps he had

heard me mount the distant attic stairs; his hearing was wonderfully acute.

He chewed in silence for a moment and then he made one of those seemingly

irrelevant remarks of his that, somehow, always set our little world

a-rocking.

"One fing about Lucy," he said, "she was always sweet-tempud."

"Who?" snapped Mrs. Handsomebody.

"Lucy--" repeated The Seraph. "Such a sweet-tempud gell."

Mrs. Handsomebody leaned over him, and gobbled and threatened. The Seraph

preserved a remarkable calm, considering that he was the storm centre. He

even raised his small forefinger before his face and looked at it

thoughtfully. His speculative gaze travelled from it to Mrs. Handsomebody's

chin. I perceived then that he was comparing warts!

_Chapter IV: A Merry Interlude_

I

My brothers and I were hanging over the gate that barred our way to the

outer world, and singing, as loudly as we could, considering the pressure

of the top bar on our young stomachs. We sang to keep warm, for Mrs.

Handsomebody had decreed that no reefers were to be worn till the first of

December. So, though November was raw, she maintained her discipline and

refused to mollycoddle us.

It was the fifth, and Angel chanted in that flute-like treble of his, that

made passersby turn and smile at him:

"Remember, remember the fifth of November,

Gunpowder, treason and plot--"

Then The Seraph added his little pipe:

"I see no weason why gunpowder tweason

Should ever be forgot."

Then we shouted it all together.

Our neighbour, Mr. Mortimer Pegg, who had never forgiven us for our share

in the treasure hunt, came out of his house at that moment, and drew up

before us.

"This noise, you know," he said, in his precise way, "is affecting my

wife's health deleteriously. She has gone to bed with a migraine."

"Why don't you put him out," suggested The Seraph.

Mr. Pegg eyed him severely, yet I thought I perceived a twinkle in his eye.

"It's Guy Fawkes day," I explained. "You see, it must never be forgot."

"It is a mistake in these enlightened days to keep up such old

animosities," replied our neighbour. "For all you know I might be his

direct descendant. If you must celebrate his undoing, better take these

three sixpences and make yourselves ill on lemon fizz, or pink

marshmallows, or vile licorice cigars."

He placed a coin in each outstretched hand, and, without waiting for

thanks, strode briskly down the street. We gazed after him, knocked

speechless by this great beaker of bounty that had rolled in upon the flat

expanse of our afternoon. Mr. Pegg, in his shiny top hat and neat Prince

Albert moved away in the ruddy November sunlight as in a halo of opulence.

Never before had we appreciated the princely turn of his toes beneath their

drab spats, the flash of his twirled walking-stick. We resolved to keep him

in mind. He was a neighbour worth having. Angel even suggested certain

time-honoured ditties of boyhood, which, shouted in chorus, would be almost

certain to have a disastrous effect on a female addicted to migraine.

A deputation, consisting of The Seraph, then waited on Mrs. Handsomebody,

to explain that our neighbour, Mr. Pegg, having been charmed by our

singing, had presented us each with a sixpence, with the earnest injunction

that the coin be expended on currant buns at the grocer's. The Seraph came

back triumphant with the necessary consent.

"We can go," he said, "but we're not to take a bite till we're back home.

It's suppwising she'd let us do it."

"Not a bit," said Angel cynically, "she knows they'll spoil our appetite

for tea."

The grocer was a fierce, red-bearded man who kept his wife in a little

wooden stall, where she took in the constant flow of wealth extorted from

his customers.

We had told The Seraph that she was thus confined by her gloomy spouse, in

order that she might be fattened for slaughter, and his eyes were large

with pity as he stood on tiptoe to hand our three sixpences through the

little wicket. The grocer's wife leaned forward to look at him, her plump

underlip, after two futile attempts to form a chin, subsiding into a large

white neck.

The Seraph's look of pity deepened to horror. "You must be almost weady,"

he gasped.

"Ready? Ready for what, my little love?"

"Stickin'--oo, will it hurt vewy much?"

"Bless the child. What _does_ he mean?"

"He's not very well," I explained. "I think he's delirious."

"That's why we brought him here to get a cool drink," added Angel,

hurriedly, and between us we led the recreant to the little table in the

rear of the shop where the grocer had set out three glasses of ginger beer

and a plate of mixed cakes. Five minutes of unalloyed bliss followed and we

were just draining off the last dregs and cleaning up the crumbs, when a

bullet-headed boy stuck his head in at the door.

"Dorg's 'ere again," he said, laconically. "Nosin' abaht in the gabbage

'eap."

"Tie a can on 'is tile," said the grocer.

The boy disappeared, and the three of us pushed back our chairs and

followed in his wake, scenting adventure in the littered yard behind the

shop with its strange odours of bygone fruit and greens.

The dog, a small, black, Scottish terrier, was dragging an end of Boulogna

sausage from the garbage heap. The bullet-headed boy winked at us, selected

an empty can from the heap, produced a piece of string from his pocket, and

grasped the terrier by the collar. But only for a moment. With a rush of

concentrated fury it flew at his legs, gave him a sharp snap, and darted

back to its sausage, with a warning glean of its eyes in our direction.

"Ow," yelled the boy, doubling up, "'e's bit me sumpfin' cruel! You see if

I daon't brain 'im for that!"

He snatched up an axe and brandished it. The terrier dropped its sausage

and showed its little pointed teeth.

We three, with one impulse, flung ourselves between it and the boy.

"You dare touch that dog," shouted Angel.

"Oo's goin' to stop me, Mister Nosey Parker?" sneered the boy, with a

flourish of his axe.

"I am," said Angel, "'cos it's _my_ dog, see?" He coolly turned his back on

the boy and bent over the terrier, who came to him cautiously, sniffing his

legs.

"Your dorg!" scoffed the boy, "w'y daon't yer feed 'im then? 'E's arf

starved, 'e is. Yer ought to be 'ad up fer perwention of cruelty to

hanimals. It's a disgrice."

"We've only owned him a little while," explained Angel, "and he strayed

away. He'll be jolly glad to get home again--won't you, Rover? Give us that

bit of string and I'll lead him."

The boy, suddenly friendly, in one of those swiftly changing moods of

boyhood, assisted in the tying of the string to the little dog's collar,

though he cast a longing look at its stout fringed tail that was so

admirably built to further the riotous bouncings of an empty tin can.

We led him triumphantly through the shop into the street, and we trotted in

silence for a space, staring in rapt admiration of the little black paws

that padded along in such a business-like fashion beside us, the

knowingly-pointed ears, and valiant tail carried at a jaunty angle above

the sturdy hind-quarters.

When we reached our own quiet street we stopped. The Seraph looked in the

bag of buns.

"May I give him mine?" he asked.

"Good boy," said Angel, and The Seraph presented the little dog with the

large currant bun. We were charmed indeed when he sat up for it in the most

approved trained-animal posture, with short fore-legs crossed on his plump

hairy breast. How often had we longed for the joyous companionship of our

old four-footed friends, the comfort of a soft warm tongue on one's cheek,

the sensitive muzzle pressed into one's palm, the look of loving confidence

in the deep brown eyes.

But our governess hated dogs, and we were expressly forbidden to so much as

pat the head of any stray canine that thrust an inquiring nose between the

bars of her gate. Therefore, it was with sad foreboding that we watched the

bun disappear. The Scotty held it between his forepaws and bit off decent

mouthfuls, without sign of greed or haste. By his bearing and by his

shining silver collar we knew that he was, or had been some one's cherished

pet.

The bun had cheered him wonderfully, for, as we moved homeward, he leaped

playfully at his leash, and catching it in his teeth, worried it in an

abandon of glee.

We made no plans. We had no hopes. We merely were drawn by habit and

necessity to the place where, we knew, desperate trouble awaited us. At the

gate we halted.

"We might take him into the yard to play for a little while," I said.

"P'raps we could carry him upstairs wrapped in my coat, and hide him under

the bed. Maybe he'd get so awful good he'd live under the bed, and we could

save our food for him, and get up nights to play with him."

As if to show his appreciation of the plan, the Scotty raised himself on

his hind quarters, paddling the air with his forepaws in excited appeal,

and giving vent to sharp, staccato barks.

The next instant the front door was thrown open, and Mary Ellen, her cap

askew, dashed down the steps to meet us.

"Wheriver have ye been so long?" she ejaculated. "An' have ye been tould

the news? 'Tis hersilf has taken a tumble, an' put her knee out so the

doctor says. I'd jist been clanin' up the panthry shelves, an' _she_ got up

on a chair to see whether I'd maybe missed the top one, an' I must have

left a knob of soap on the chair, for the next thing I knew she was

stretched on the flure, an' I had to fetch the doctor, an' he says she'll

have to kape to her room for a fortnight or more, an' the lord only knows

how I'm to wait on her an' manage the three av ye, wid yer pranks an' all!"

The Seraph turned a somersault; then I turned a somersault; then Angel

turned two; then the Scotty sat up, paddled the air with his forepaws, and

sneezed twice.

Mary Ellen was genuinely shocked.

"I do belave," she said, solemnly, "that you've stones in your breasts

instid av hearts--but you're jist like all men folk--if they think there's

a good time in sthore for them, the women can suffer all they like, more

shame to them." She was so worked up that she did not notice that the

little dog had followed us into the house, until he was sitting up in the

kitchen, his forepaws paddling the air, his tail thudding on the floor.

Then she said, brimming over with admiration, though she tried to look

severe;

"And if you think I'll have sthray dawgs in my kitchen you're very much

mistook.... Aw, it's a darlin' wee thing, isn't it?" For the Scotty, seeing

that she had seated herself, had jumped to her lap and now sat there, nose

in air, looking superbly at home.

We closed about her, telling, in chorus, the story of the bullet-headed

boy, and the garbage heap, and enlarging dramatically on the episode of the

tin can.

"And may we please keep him?" we entreated, "just for a few days till we

find the owner of it! Mrs. Handsomebody will never know, for he can live in

the coal cellar 'cept when we take him little walks on a string!"

"If you don't let me do this I'll never marry you, so there!" This from

Angel.

"Have it your own way, thin," moaned Mary Ellen, capitulating, as usual,

under the fire of Angel's pleading, "but moind, if she iver finds us out,

it's mesilf will be walkin' the streets widout a character."