BUT when June picked himself up and turned about, he found a very
curious looking man sitting up glaring at him. He had a long pointed
nose, and fierce little eyes that glowed like red hot cinders, and a
drooping white mustache so long that it almost touched the lapels of his
shabby French uniform.
"What do you mean by falling over me like that?" he demanded
indignantly.
"I--I--thought you was somebody else," June faltered lamely.
The man glared more fiercely than ever: "You were looking for some one!
You were sent here to watch someone! Who did you think I was? Answer me
this moment."
He had caught June by the arm and was glaring at him so savagely that
June blurted out in terror.
"I thought you was the Sleeping Beauty."
For a moment, suspicion lingered in the man's face, then his eyes went
to and his mouth went open, and he laughed until June thought he would
never get the wrinkles smoothed out of his face again.
"The Sleeping Beauty, eh?" he said. "Well, whom do you think I am now?"
June smiled in embarrassment. "I know who you look like," he said, half
doubtfully.
"Who?"
"The White Knight," said June.
"Who is he?"
"In 'Alice in Wonderland,'" explained June. Then when he saw the man's
look of perplexity, he added incredulously, "Didn't you _never_ hear of
'Alice in Wonderland'?"
The man shook his head.
June was astounded; he didn't know that such ignorance existed in the
world.
"Didn't you never go to school?" he asked sympathetically.
"Oh yes, a little," said the man, with a funny smile, "but tell me about
this White Knight."
June sat down quite close to him and began confidentially:
"He was the one that met Alice in the wood. Don't you remember just
before she was going to be queen? He kept falling off his horse first on
one side and then on the other, and he would have to climb up again by
the mouse traps."
"The mouse traps, on horse-back?"
"Yes, the Knight was afraid the mice _might_ come and he didn't want
them to run over him. Besides he invented the mouse traps and course,
you know, somebody had to use them."
"Of course," said the man taking June's hand and looking at it as a
person looks at something that he has not seen for a very long time.
"He invented lots of things," went on June earnestly, "bracelets for the
horse's feet to keep off shark-bites, and something else to keep your
hair from falling out."
"Eh! what's that?" said his companion rubbing his hand over his own bald
head.
June's eyes twinkled. "You ought to train it up on a stick," he said,
"like a vine. That was what the White Knight said, that hair fell off
because it hung down. It couldn't fall up, could it?"
At this they both had a great laugh and the man said:
"So I am the White Knight, am I?"
"Just your mustache," said June; "it was when you was mad that you
looked like him most. You're lots gooder looking than the picture.
What's your real name?"
"Monsieur Garnier,--no, Carre," he corrected himself quickly. "What is
your name?"
"June," then he added formally, "Robert Rogers Royston, Junior's the
rest of it."
"How did you come here?" asked Monsieur.
June told him at length; it was delightful to find some one beside Seki
San who understood English, and it was good fun to be telling all about
himself just as if he were some other little boy.
"So your father is a soldier!" said Monsieur, and June noticed that a
curious wild look came into his eyes and that his fingers, which had
knots on them, plucked excitedly at his collar. "Ah! yes, I, too, was a
soldier, a soldier of France, one time attache of the French Legation,
at Tokyo, later civil engineer in the employ of the Japanese Government,
now----!" he shrugged his shoulders and his nostrils quivered with
anger. "Now a cast-off garment, a thing useless, undesired." He tried to
rise and June saw that he used crutches and that it was very difficult
for him to walk.
"Do you want me to help you?" he asked.
[Illustration: "'Do you want me to help you?'"]
The man waved him aside. His eyes had changed into red hot cinders
again, and he seemed to have forgotten that June was there. "I ask help
from nobody," he muttered fiercely, "I live my own life. The beggarly
Japanese I would never accept from, and my own country does not see fit
to help me." His chest heaved with wrath, and he twisted his mustache
indignantly.
"Why don't you go home?" asked June.
Monsieur turned on him fiercely: "Go home? Mon Dieu, do you suppose
there is a waking hour that I am not thinking, longing, praying to be
back in France? Do you suppose I have left any stone unturned? Any plan
unmade that might take me away from this hateful place? It has been
fourteen, fifteen years since I came away. It was a Japanese that had me
dismissed from the service; he bore tales to the minister, he told what
was not true. Oh, then I had honor, I was too proud to explain, but
now!" he lifted a pair of crippled hands to Heaven, and shook them
violently at the trees above, "now I know that honor does not pay, it is
not worth while. I will give anything to get back to France!"
June sat still and watched him. He had never seen anyone behave so
queerly, and he was very much mixed up as to what it was all about.
"I guess I have to go now," he said, "Toro's waiting."
Monsieur's eyes flashed suspiciously. "Who's waiting?" he asked.
"Toro, he is Seki's brother, he knows how to build awful nice houses and
blockades too."
"Blockades?" repeated Monsieur, "what kind of blockades?"
"Like the soldiers make, we watch them all the time; come on, I will
show you."
The two made their way down the steps slowly, for Monsieur could go only
a little way at a time. Toro looked mildly surprised when June came back
with a companion, but he did not give a second glance at Monsieur, who
was evidently a familiar figure about the town.
For a long time the two children played in the sand, and Monsieur sat
beside them and acted as interpreter, speaking first to one in Japanese,
and then to the other in English, giving directions and suggestions and
proving a first-rate play-fellow.
"Why, you know a lot about forts and mines and blockades and things,
don't you?" asked June.
Monsieur looked absently across the lake. "Alas!" he said grimly, half
to himself, "I know too much for their good and for mine."
When the temple bell from the hillside boomed the supper hour, the boys
gathered up their things and started home.
"Good-by," said June to Monsieur, "I hope you'll come back and play with
us another day."
Monsieur bowed very politely, but he did not answer, his half-closed
eyes still rested on the little forts that the boys had been making in
the sand, and his thoughts seemed to be far away.
When June reached the street, he turned to wave a good-by, but Monsieur
was hobbling down the hill, his figure, in spite of the crutches,
looking very straight and stiff against the evening sky.