“A COWARD’S TRICK.”
“Wait a minute, Aaron,” shouted Tubbs, a minute after his son had
disappeared. “I’ll come and help you with that bird.”
Throwing aside his tools and scrooping back his wooden stool, the old
cobbler vanished in his turn into the back regions of the establishment.
“I wish between them they’d be a little quicker,” sighed Fay, who
regretted the delay in the winding up of this transaction.
She was terribly afraid that the boys, finding no outlet for the warlike
intentions they had been nursing so zealously, would relieve their
disappointment by indulging in a little civil war amongst themselves of
a singularly uncivil type. “I do wish they wouldn’t be so slow,” she
repeated.
“I suppose they _will_ bring it,” said Phoena.
“I say, are you hatching the thrush?” shouted Jack.
“All in good time, young gentlemen,” came the cool answer.
“Look here,” called Phil, going to the inner door, “we’re not going to
stand this any more; if you’re going to humbug us about that bird it
will be the worse for you.”
“If you don’t bring up that bird by the time I’ve counted fifty,” said
Andrew, “we’ll make hay of your shop.”
“Come on, Aaron,” Tubbs was next heard to say--he spoke in aggressively
loud tones--“don’t do to keep little squeakers too long without their
pap and their playthings, so best see to them now.”
“Little squeakers, indeed,” cried Phil, “he ought to be knocked into the
middle of next week for daring to speak like that;” whilst Andrew
remarked, with a withering sneer at Gaston and Hubert, “That’s the sort
of remark we must expect if we go about with babies.”
“I’m not a baby,” cried Hubert, flaring up with indignation, “a baby’s a
horrid little thing that always seems crying out of its mouth, instead
of its eyes.”
At that moment Jonas appeared with the cage, cabbage-leaf and all tucked
under his arm. Aaron, with a broad grin on his face, followed close on
his parent’s heels.
“Now give me the bird,” said Andrew, stepping forward, “let me have it,
just as it is in its cage, do you hear?”
“Certainly, my young sir, by all manner of means,” said the cobbler.
“You mind, Aaron, he says he’ll have it ‘_just as it is in its cage_!’”
And as Aaron nodded assent, Jonas, with much show of deference, placed
the wicker cage in Andrew’s out-stretched hands.
The children clustered round Andrew at once, eagerly peering into the
cage.
“Let Phoena have the first peep,” said Di, and all agreed thereto.
“Oh! thank you,” she said, “but we won’t open the cage here, he shall be
set free out of doors, poor darling; you see----”
Her voice changed suddenly into an angry scream. “Oh! you wicked, wicked
man, the poor darling’s dead, quite dead!”
Yes, there was no doubt of it! With its head hanging limply on one side,
so that his beak just ruffled the pretty speckled plumage of his
breast--such a still motionless breast it was--and with his little
claws, looking like tiny stiffened
[Illustration: “Oh! you wicked man. The poor darling’s dead!”
_p. 90._]
hooks, the poor thrush lay on its back on the floor of the cage, just a
small heap of feathers.
“Do yer still think he was worth the money?” enquired Jonas.
Aaron burst into a loud laugh, moved to the display of this unseemly
merriment by the blank disappointment depicted on all the children’s
faces. But he didn’t laugh long.
For Andrew, who was standing nearest to him, struck him such a blow
across his shoulders, that Aaron, unsteady on his legs at the best of
times, stumbled, tried to save himself, and finally fell with a crash to
the floor.
At the same moment, a handful of leather bootlaces whistled round
Andrew’s ears, their brass tags making themselves felt unmercifully on
his neck and face, for the cobbler was wielding this original scourge
with a will. But, instead of attacking the cobbler, as most other boys
would have done, Andrew continued his assault upon Aaron, kicking at him
with all his might as he lay prone on the floor.
“Shut up, Andrew,” cried Phil and Jack, in one breath.
Furious as they were at the way in which they had been tricked, they
would have scorned to strike such a poor creature as Aaron.
“How can you be such a cad as to touch such a poor chap?” they said.
“Hope you like yer dead bird,” came in a muffled, jeering voice from
Aaron, who had evidently more spirit than strength, “hurry ’ome, I
would, and make a pie of him.”
Then, as he felt himself released from his oppressor, he went on, “Ah!
that’s better now, hold him off, young gentlemen.” For Jack and Phil had
pinioned Andrew from behind, and were dragging him back. In his rage,
Andrew was kicking out right and left, so that had his fellow knights
been wearing any visible armour, he would certainly have inflicted many
dints upon it.
His cousins, however, were well used to schoolboys’ mills and stuck to
their guns. Even Gaston and Hubert, at a wink from them, had risen to
the occasion. Each had seized one of Andrew’s feet and was hanging on to
it, like little terriers to a rat.
But the girls were pale and tearful. Phoena was absorbed by her grief
for the thrush’s death, but Fay and Di were ashamed of the whole
business.
“You had no right to deceive us about the bird,” said Fay to the
cobbler, who was now calmly resuming his cobbling, leaving the “young
uns” to square up accounts by themselves; “you ought to have told us it
was dead, when we first asked you about it.”
“You ought to have asked if it was alive, if you were particular on that
point,” retorted Jonas, catching the end of his long thread between his
teeth, and suiting it to the length he desired.
“Of course, we supposed it was.”
“Never should suppose anything without knowing it for sartin.”
“But we’d seen it alive so lately,” began Phoena.
“Well, and if you had happened to have come an hour earlier, you’d have
seen it alive then. ’Twasn’t my fault, it died.”
“No, but it was your fault not to tell us that it was dead,” said Di.
“Now, blow me, if I think it was,” cried Jonas, “a civil question gets a
civil answer, that’s what I’ve always learnt. And if you’d spoken civil
to me, first go off--them boys, I mean--I’d have spoken civil too, and
acted straight with you. But, as it is, I’ve given you all a lesson in
manners, and not charged over highly for it either. And now I’ll ask you
to clear out of my place; quick march, I say.”
“You’re a werry rude old man,” cried Hubert, waxing bold; but Andrew
broke in, his tongue being the only member left free, he meant to use it
for a final onslaught.
“Now, my good man,” he began, intending to be dignified and opening his
mouth extraordinarily wide, after a manner peculiar to himself, “now my
goo----”
His mouth shut with a snap, amidst the hearty laughter of all around
him. For with an aim so direct that it could not err, and with such
promptness that no interference would have been possible, Jonas had
thrown a big lump of cobbler’s wax straight into Andrew’s pompously
parted jaws.
And so this episode, which the boys had fondly hoped might end perhaps
in a little bloodshed, was concluded by this comical finale, which
provoked all the spectators from sober Faith down to little Gaston to
ungovernable merriment.
Only Andrew looked as black as the offending missile itself.
“And as that last attention wasn’t reckoned for in the bargain, you can
have your money back again,” laughed the old cobbler, producing the
half-crown, “and my best wishes along with it; that when you next try to
set the world to rights, you’ll make a better job of it. And, as for
you,” nodding at Andrew, “don’t you pick out a lame dog again to show
your strength on. Coward’s trick, I call that.”
“Ay, ay,” echoed Aaron’s voice from the background, where he had
disappeared, “a coward’s trick, and no mistake.”
So coward was the last sound that pursued the young knights as they
retreated in doubtful good order from the field of this, their maiden
essay in redressing wrong.