The snow cleared as swiftly as it had begun, and David saw that he was
standing in the High Street of the village near which he lived. It was
all quite ordinary, and he was afraid that he had somehow been popped
back through the blue door during the snowstorm, and was again in the
stupid dull world. Just opposite him was the post and telegraph office,
and next to that the bank, and beyond that the girls’ school. There were
the same old shops too, Mr. Winfall the tailor’s, and the confectioner’s
and the bootmaker’s, and at the bottom of the street was the bridge over
the river.
‘Well, if I am back in the world again,’ said David, ‘it would be a pity
to let all this good snow go to waste without its being tobogganed on.
I’ll go home, I think, and get my toboggan. I wonder how they did it.’
He started to go down the street to the bridge across which was the lane
which presently passed by the bottom of the field beyond the lake, on
the other side of which was the garden, where was the summer-house in
which he had left his toboggan yesterday. But he happened to look a
little more closely at the bootmaker’s shop, and instead of the card in
the window which said, ‘Boots and shoes neatly repaired,’ there was
another one on which was written ‘Uncles and Aunts recovered and
repaired.’
‘I suppose they recover them when they’re lost, and repair them when
they’re found,’ thought David. ‘But it’s not a bit usual.’
He found it no more usual when he looked at the girls’ school, for
instead of the brass plate on which was written ‘Miss Milligan’s school
for Young Ladies,’ he saw written there ‘Happy Families’ Institute,’ and
in the window of the bank a notice ‘Sovereigns are cheap to-day.’
‘I’ll go in there at once,’ thought David, ‘and buy some. I wonder how
much money I’ve got.’
He found four pennies in his pocket, and went in with them to the bank.
The manager was there talking in a low voice to a very stout gentleman
with a meat-chopper in his hand, whom David knew to be the Mint-man from
London, just as certainly as if he had had it written all over him. What
made it absolutely sure was the fact that sovereigns kept oozing out of
his clothes and dropping on the floor. There was quite a pile of them
round his feet, which the porter who opened the door to David kept
sweeping up, and putting down his neck again.
‘So it’s only the same sovereigns all over again,’ thought David, ‘but
there must be a lot of them. No wonder they’re cheap.’
He walked up to where they were standing.
‘Please, can you let me have four penny-worth of sovereigns,’ he said.
The Mint-man blew his nose before he answered, and some thirty or forty
sovereigns rattled out of his handkerchief. ‘Do you want them new-laid
or only for cooking?’ he asked.
[Illustration: David finds the Mint-man in the bank]
David had no intention of cooking them, so he said:
‘New-laid, please.’
The Mint-man picked off one that was coming out of his right elbow,
another from his tie, another from his bottom waistcoat button, and the
fourth from his knee, and gave them to David.
‘It’ll never do if other people get to know about it,’ he said. ‘We
shall be having all the happy families in, though I don’t suppose
they’ve got much money. Have another notice put up at once.’
The manager took an enormous quill pen from behind the counter. It
reached right up to the ceiling of the room, and he had to hold it in
both hands. Up the side of it was printed, ‘Rod, pole or perch.’
‘What shall I say?’ he asked.
‘You may say whatever you like,’ said the Mint-man, ‘but you must write
whatever I like. Now begin’—
‘Sovereigns are five pounds two ounces each to-day, but they’ll be
dearer to-morrow.’
‘Then will you please give me five pounds for each of my sovereigns?’
asked the greedy David. ‘Never mind about the ounces.’
The Mint-man and manager whispered together for a little while, and
David could hear fragments of their talk like ‘financial stringency,’
‘tight tendency,’ ‘collapse of credit,’ which meant nothing to him. All
the time the porter was shovelling sovereigns down the back of the
Mint-man’s neck.
‘The only thing to be done,’ he said, ‘is to write another notice. Write
“The Bank has suspended payment altogether. The deposits are therefore
forfeited by square root, rule of three, and compound interest.” What do
you make of that?’ he asked David triumphantly.
David knew that compound interest and square root came a long way on in
the arithmetic book, and that he couldn’t be properly expected to make
anything of it. Evidently they were not going to pay him five sovereigns
for each of his, but he had done pretty well already, with his four
sovereigns instead of four pence.
‘I don’t make anything of it yet,’ he said, ‘because I haven’t got as
far.’
‘When I was your age,’ said the manager severely, ‘I’d got so far past
it that it was quite out of sight.’
The Mint-man nudged him, and said behind his hand:
‘Never irritate the young. Keep them pleased and simmering.’
He turned to David with a smile, and patted him on the head. Two cold
sovereigns went down the front of David’s jersey.
‘We have read your references,’ he said, ‘and find them quite
satisfactory. You are therefore appointed honorary errand-boy, and your
duties begin immediately. So go straight across to the shop where they
repair uncles and aunts, and see if there’s a golden uncle being
repaired. If there is, tell him that his nephew—that’s you—wants him
to come out to tea—that’s here—and that the motor will be round
immediately—and that’s where.’
David felt that he didn’t want to be errand-boy to the bank at all, but
somehow he seemed to remember having sent in references. What was even
more convincing was that he found his sailor clothes had disappeared,
and that he was dressed in a jacket that came close up to his neck, and
was covered with brass buttons. He had black trousers, rather tight, and
a peaked cap, round the rim of which was written: ‘David Blaize,
Esquire. To be returned to the bank immediately. This side up.’
But after he had received his appointment as honorary errand-boy, nobody
attended to David any more, for they were all most busily engaged. The
manager wheeled in a tea-table, and began arranging tea-things and
muffin-dishes on it, then when he had done that, brought in easy chairs,
and a piano and all the things that you usually find in drawing-rooms,
while the Mint-man made up a huge fire in the fire-place, and put a
large saucepan as big as a bath upon it, into which he dropped the
sovereigns that oozed out of him. Meantime, the porter had gone out
carrying a ladder and a pot of paint, and when David went out too on his
errand, he had already painted over the signboard outside the house,
which said it was the bank, and had written on it:
‘This is the house of David Blaize, the nephew of Uncle Popacatapetl.’
‘So that’s the uncle who’s coming to tea with me,’ thought David. ‘I
wonder if he knows who he is yet.’
The snow had already melted, so that he did not again consider whether
he should go tobogganing. It had gone very quickly, but everything
seemed to happen quickly here. It could hardly have been five minutes
since he had gone into the bank with fourpence in his pocket, and here
he was with four sovereigns instead, a complete suit of new clothes, an
uncle, and a position as honorary errand-boy. He crossed the street, and
entered the shop where boots and shoes used to be repaired, but where
now they repaired uncles and aunts.
[Illustration: The recovering of Uncle Popacatapetl]
On the counter there lay a very odd-looking old gentleman, dressed in
rags and tatters in about equal proportions. His hands and face were
quite yellow, and wherever there was a tatter, or there wasn’t a rag,
and he showed through, he was yellow there too. His boots were in very
bad repair, and a great golden toe stuck out of one, and a golden heel
out of the other: in fact, there could be no doubt at all that he was
made of pure gold, and as he was being repaired, he was also either an
aunt or an uncle. But though one of David’s aunts had a slight
moustache, he had never yet seen an aunt with a long beard and whiskers,
and so without doubt there was Uncle Popacatapetl.
The bootmaker and his wife were repairing him, which they did by driving
nails into him, so as to tack down the rags over the tatters. If there
was a very big tatter, which they could not cover with the rag, they
nailed on anything else that was handy. In some places they had filled
up the gaps with pieces of newspaper, match-boxes, and bits of leather
and sealing-wax, and balls of wool, and apples and photographs. While
this was going on, Uncle Popacatapetl kept up a stream of conversation,
interspersed with laughing.
‘Anyhow it can’t hurt him much,’ said David to himself.
‘Delicious, delicious!’ said Uncle Popacatapetl. ‘Nail the toe of my
boot a little more firmly on to the toe of me. Put a paper-knife there
if you can’t cover up the hole. Now my gloves.’
He put on a pair of thick white woollen gloves that came up to his
elbow.
‘Would you like them nailed on too, sir?’ asked the shoemaker.
‘By all means. Put a nail in each finger, and three on the wrist, and
ninety-eight round my elbows. Did you gum the gloves inside, before I
put them on?’
‘I glued them well,’ said the shoemaker’s wife.
‘That’ll glue then,’ said Uncle Popacatapetl. ‘I think when I’ve put my
mask on the disguise will be complete. What fun it all is! To think of
the Mint-man having traced me all the way here, only to find I’m not in
the least like me any more. Or is it ever more?’
‘Never more, ever more, any more,’ said the shoemaker, with his mouth
full of nails.
‘It’s every-more, I _think_,’ said Uncle Popacatapetl, ‘though it
doesn’t matter. When I’m finished, and when you’re finished, they won’t
think I am anything, still less an uncle. I don’t suppose they ever saw
anything the least like me, so _why_,’ he added argumentatively, ’should
they pitch upon uncle?’
They had none of them appeared to notice David at all as yet, and, as he
was an errand-boy, he thought he had better proceed with his errand.
‘If you please,’ he said, ‘I think you’re my uncle, and I should like to
have you come to tea with me. It’s quite a short way, in fact it’s only
across the road, but the motor will be here in a minute, so that you can
get in at one door and out at the other.’
Uncle Popacatapetl sat up so suddenly that David knew he must have a
hinge in his back. He looked at David, but he couldn’t speak, because
the last nail the shoemaker had driven into him had fixed his beard to
his chest, which naturally prevented him moving his mouth. But he
wrenched off the pair of scissors which had been nailed into his knee,
and cut a piece of his beard off, so that he could talk again. He had
turned quite pale in the face, which was the only part of him visible,
just as if he had been made of silver.
‘Say it again,’ he said.
David said it again, upon which Uncle Popacatapetl jumped up and looked
out of the window.
‘It’s a plot,’ he said. ‘That used to be the bank. Now it’s David
Blaize. Has it been disguising itself too? Because if so, we’re as we
were, and I’ve had all the trouble and hammering for nothing.’
He began to cry in a helpless golden sort of manner. The shoemaker had
followed him to the window to repair an enormous tatter with very little
rag on his shoulder, and was nailing bananas on to it to cover it up.
But he was so much affected by Uncle Popacatapetl’s misery that he hit
his fingers instead of the nail and began to cry too, sucking his
injured finger and dropping nails out of his mouth. As for his wife, she
gave one loud sob, and tore out of the room, leaving the door open. They
heard her falling downstairs, bumpity, bumpity, bumpity, till she came
BUMP against the cellar door.
‘Bumpity, crumpity, rumpity, numpity, squmpity, zumpity,’ said the
shoemaker, with a sob between each word. ‘There she goes. I don’t
rightly know if it’s her crying that makes her fall down, or her falling
down that makes her cry, but it don’t make home happy, and it’s a great
expense in sticking-plaster. The sticking-plaster that’s come into this
house would be enough to paper it.’
David was determined not to cry whatever happened, for it never did any
good to cry, and besides something must be done at once, only he had not
the least idea what that something was. It was perfectly clear that the
Mint-man wanted to get Uncle Popacatapetl into the bank, and no wonder,
since he was worth his weight in gold, with all the bananas and
match-boxes thrown in. And he thought with a shudder of the meat-axe and
the saucepan heating over the fire. Without the least doubt Uncle
Popacatapetl was going to be chopped up and melted down into sovereigns.
‘It’s all too sad,’ sobbed Uncle Popacatapetl, ‘and too true and
too tiresome. I knew they had tracked me down here—wow—wow—but
when I saw that there was this nice respectable shop, where
uncles and aunts—wow—wow—wow—could be recovered and repaired,
I thought I could have myself recovered and repaired out of all
knowledge—wow—wow—wow—wow—and diddle the whole lot of them. Instead
of which, they send in my beastly nephew to ask me to tea, and then
they’ll chop me up, and make sovereigns of me. I’ve seen their signs and
notices. They tried to put me off the scent by saying that sovereigns
were cheap, and make me think they didn’t want me. And then that was
changed, and they said sovereigns were dearer. And then that was
changed, and they suspended payment to make me think that they weren’t
collecting gold any more, never more at all. Oh, I know their
cussedness. And just when everything was going so well, and I was going
to walk across the street as cool as carrots or cucumbers, and I should
have left by the next telegram that was sent from the office. Look at
them all flying in! And there’s one going out with its mackintosh on,
and I could have caught it as easy as a subtraction sum if it hadn’t
been for this upset. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.’
David felt dreadfully sorry for him, but what he said about telegrams
was quite as dreadfully interesting, and he looked out.
It was quite true: there was a whole string of telegrams rushing down
the wires towards the post-office, each in a neat mackintosh. It had
begun to snow again, and was getting dark.
‘But why have they got mackintoshes on?’ he asked.
‘Well, of all the silly nephews that ever I had,’ said Uncle
Popacatapetl, who had stopped crying as suddenly as if a tap had been
turned off, ‘this one takes the cake. Why do you wear a mackintosh?’
‘To keep me dry,’ said David.
‘Well, and mayn’t telegrams do the same?’ asked his uncle. ‘They come
from America and Australia and Jerusalem, and did you ever see a wet
telegram, though it had gone for hundreds and billions and millions and
thousands of miles under the sea?’
‘No, they all seem dry,’ said David.
‘And there you are, sitting there,’ said the golden uncle, ‘and wanting
to deprive them of their mackintoshes. Crool, I call it. They puts them
on when they starts, and they takes them off when they arrives and cools
themselves.’
Uncle Popacatapetl had begun to talk so like David’s father’s gardener,
that again he was afraid he had got back into the stupid world.
‘I sees them coming, and I sees them going,’ said his uncle, ‘and who so
free I arsk, as a little ninepenny telegram? They’re cheap at the price,
they are, going where they please like that——’
He gave a wild shriek, like Miss Muffet when the spider came, and
snatched the mask that the shoemaker was holding.
‘There’s the motor come for me,’ he sobbed, ‘and what is a poor old man
to do? Nail my mask on quickly. Don’t mind my eyes or my ears or
anythink.’
He lay down in the window-seat, and David and the shoemaker drove nails
in all over his face. Sometimes the mask, which was that of a young lady
with pink cheeks, tore, and then they tacked on buttons from David’s
jacket, or bits of the window-curtain.
‘Don’t mine me,’ Uncle Popacatapetl kept whimpering. ‘There goes one
eye, and there goes the other, but make it safe whatever you do. Cut off
my head, if that would make me look more like a young lady—but I won’t,
I won’t, I won’t look like anybody’s uncle. They may take me for an aunt
if they like, or a nephew, or a niece, but I won’t be a golden uncle.’
The mask was nailed on at last, and Uncle Popacatapetl sat up.
‘Now go outside, David,’ he said, ‘and find out exactly what sort of
motor-car it is.’
David very obediently went out into the street. It looked quite
different now, for there were flags flying from every house with the
inscription, ‘David Blaize, the fireman’s son,’ which was very
gratifying, and showed a pleasant interest in him on the part of the
happy families. He felt that he had seen a card of himself as the
fireman’s son, but he could not remember his mother as Mrs. Blaize, the
fireman’s wife, or his father as Mr. Blaize, the fireman.
But that was not the immediate business in hand. As the whole street was
decked out in honour of himself, he naturally bowed right and left, but
since nobody was there, it did not matter much whether he bowed or not.
Still it was better to be polite. Then he looked in front of him. There
stood an immense motor-car, that buzzed in a most sumptuous manner. It
was pointing down the street towards the bridge over the river, but it
did not much matter which way it pointed, because the bank was
immediately opposite. There were two cords attached to the roof of it,
and attached to the cords were a couple of aeroplanes, which were
pointing in the opposite direction. On the pavement were standing the
chauffeur and two pilots of the flying-corps. They all saluted smartly
as David came out.
‘Three cheers for David Blaize,’ said one of them. ‘Hip, hip, hip—I’m
blowed if I know how it goes on.’
‘You must all say “Hurrah,”’ said David.
They all said ‘Hurrah,’ in a very depressed sort of voice, and one of
the airmen said, ‘Lor’, these civilians.’
‘Lor’, yourself,’ said David, rather rudely. ‘I want to hear about the
motor-car.’
The chauffeur stroked the side of the bonnet which contained the
engines.
‘She’s a good thing,’ he said. ‘She’s a good going concern. But throttle
her up never so, she won’t go less than a hundred miles an hour. So I
made so free, your honour, since that was above speed-limit, to harness
these two silly aeroplanes which between ’em go ninety miles an hour in
the other direction. That brings she down to ten miles an hour, and no
one can say a word against her.’
And then the two airmen threw their caps in the air, and shouted
‘Hurrah.’
This was all very clever on the part of the chauffeur, but as the bank
was just opposite, and all that the motor-car had got to do was to stand
quite still while Uncle Popacatapetl stepped in at one side and got out
at the other, it seemed a little superfluous. But David appreciated kind
intentions, and next minute he found himself hand-in-hand with the
chauffeur and the airmen, and they were all dancing in a circle, singing
‘Ninety miles one ways, and a hundred miles the others,
And some of us are nephews, and all of us are brothers.’
‘Then are you ready to start, your honour?’ said the chauffeur, when
they had finished dancing.
David pulled himself together.
‘Yes, but I am taking an invalid with me,’ he said. ‘It’s my uncle, who
is far from well, like the spider!’
‘The one that sat down next that old woman?’ asked the chauffeur,
pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘He’s all right again, he
is.’
‘It’s that sort of illness,’ said David. ‘He’s coming to tea with me,
but he had better have a little drive first, to give him an appetite.
We’ll go along some road with plenty of telegraph wires. They make him
feel better.’
The window of the shoemaker’s house was thrown open, and David’s uncle
looked out in his mask.
‘Much better,’ he said. ‘Better much, much better,’ and he closed it
again so violently that all the glass broke.
‘Crash!’ said the second of the airmen. He had a very long elastic sort
of nose, which David had not noticed before. Then both of them and the
chauffeur opened their mouths very wide, as if they were going to sing
again.
‘There must be no more singing,’ said David sternly, and they all shut
their mouths again with a snap.
There was evidently no time to lose, for David could hear the roaring of
the fire in the bank opposite, over which poor Uncle Popacatapetl was to
be melted after he had been cut up, and against the red glow of it he
could see the heads of the Mint-man and the manager pressed so tightly
against the glass that the tips of their noses were quite white, as they
looked out and wondered why the motor-car didn’t return.
‘Come on, uncle,’ he shouted, ‘the tea will be spoiled,’ and he gave him
a great wink to show that he had got an idea in his head.
So the chauffeur got into his place, and Uncle Popacatapetl came out
covered with apples and match-boxes and things like a Christmas-tree,
and at the very last moment David undid the buttons of the cords to the
aeroplanes, and away they flew, leaving the airmen gazing up at them.
Then he shut the door, and he and Uncle Popacatapetl drove off at a
hundred miles an hour down the street to the bridge.
‘Turn to the left when you get over the bridge,’ shouted David, ‘and
drive over the fields till you come to our lake. You’ll have to jump
that, but after that there’s only the garden.’
‘She ain’t been jumping much lately,’ said the chauffeur.
‘It can’t be helped,’ shouted David. ‘Then go to the garden door. I’ll
hide you in the game-cupboard,’ he explained to his uncle. ‘There’s lots
of room there now all the games have gone.’
Suddenly there came an awful crash. They had run into the railing of the
bridge, and the whole motor-car flew into several million small pieces,
and there were David and his uncle standing in the middle of the road.
Uncle Popacatapetl began whimpering again.
‘I’m a poor old man,’ he said, ‘and I don’t know whether I’m standing on
my head or my heels.’
David looked at him attentively.
‘I think you’re standing on your heels,’ he said, ‘but it’s so dark I
can’t tell you for certain. Wait till I light a match.’
There came a noise of running behind them, and, before David could be
sure whether his uncle was on his head or his heels, he saw the porter
and the Mint-man and the bank manager rushing down the street towards
them.
At that very moment the telegraph wires began to sing, as they always do
when a telegram is coming along them, and looking up he saw a very long
one with its mackintosh on sliding down the wires. It was so long that
it came within six or seven feet of the ground.
‘Quick, jump and catch hold of it,’ said David, ‘and then you’ll be
safe.’
Twice Uncle Popacatapetl tried to jump, but he couldn’t jump far because
he was so heavy, and the Mint-man with the meat-chopper in his hand was
close upon them. But the kind good telegram, which was reply-paid,
reached down a hand, and pulled him up at the very moment the Mint-man
and the manager were grabbing at him. They just missed him, and the
Mint-man being unable to stop himself flew over the railing of the
bridge, followed by the manager and the porter, and they all fell into
the river with three splashes, each louder than all the rest put
together.
[Illustration: The telegram rescues Uncle P. from the Mint-man]
By this time the telegram and Uncle Popacatapetl were far away out of
sight, and as the chauffeur had vanished too, there was little use in
David’s remaining on the bridge all alone. He tried, as long as his
match burned, to put together some pieces of the motor-car, but when
that went out, it was like doing the most awful jig-saw puzzle in the
dark.
So he walked back up the street, for there was a bright light coming out
of the door of the bank, which looked cheerful, and besides he
remembered that he had been sent to ask his Uncle Popacatapetl to tea,
so that probably there would be tea ready.
‘It must be time for tea,’ he thought, ‘because it has been dark quite a
long time, and I haven’t had it yet. Tea always comes soon after dark
even on the shortest days.’
By the bank door were standing the two airmen, whose machines he had
unbuttoned. They had got their caps on the side of their heads all
right, but they didn’t look quite like ordinary airmen. The nose of one
had grown enormously since David saw him last, and he waved it about,
turning up the end of it in a manner that reminded David not of an
airman at all, but of some quite different sort of creature. The other
had a large kind face, and kept moving his mouth round and round, and
out of his hair there distinctly stuck two horns, both broken.
As soon as they saw David they ran inside the bank, and shut the door in
his face, leaving him out in the dark and the cold.