He had read the article on stuffing beasts in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, which Briggs allowed him to refer to, little knowing the
reason; and he said that stuffing was simpler than embalming, and that
his brother, Mathers minor, had often stuffed bats and moles and other
things in the holidays at home. He told me that all you want for
bird-stuffing is wire, cotton-wool and pepper; and for sixpence he could
get all these things in great abundance.
Milly Dunstan knew where 'Joe' was buried, and the only difficulty, in
the opinion of Mathers, was digging him up. For some reason, though he
did not shrink from the horrors of getting 'Joe' ready for the stuffing
treatment, he hated the digging up; so I undertook to do this. There
was little danger, as 'Joe' had been buried in a secluded rockery under
a large fern, where nobody ever went. Milly showed me the spot on a
half-holiday, when I was supposed to be stopping in, owing to bronchitis
or something of that sort; and I popped out, got a trowel from the
gardener's potting-shed, and dug up 'Joe.' He had been very nicely
buried in a large, empty tobacco tin of Browne's; and I also made the
grave look all right again and put back the wooden gravestone. Minnie
had stuck this up, and on it Freckles had carved for her the rather sad
words--
"_To the memory of darling 'Joe,' died 7th February, 1901. Age unknown.
Regretted by all._"
Owing to the weather being frosty, and the ground simply full of
splinters of ice, 'Joe' had fortunately kept perfectly. This comforted
Mathers a good deal, and when I told him the poor old chap was not even
gamey, he was much pleased. He worked in fearful secrecy at night, and
kept 'Joe' in his play-box by day. Most of the actual work was done at
the passage window by moonlight; and when the moon was no good, which
happened in two days, we used a candle-end. Once the pepper got up our
noses, and we both sneezed in a way to wake half the dormitory; but
nobody suspected, and the work was gradually done.
[Illustration: MOST OF THE ACTUAL WORK WAS DONE BY MOONLIGHT]
I merely held things and advised. The actual stuffing was entirely the
work of Bunny. When 'Joe' was once ready for the cotton-wool, the
stuffing was as simple as possible; and owing to his toughness we easily
sewed up his chest afterwards; but the thing was to get him to look as
if he was alive. This is evidently the great difficulty in the
stuffer's art, and Mathers had not mastered it by any means from the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_. I said--
"For a first attempt it is spiffing; but all the same, 'Joe' never
looked like that in life or death. He is now, as it were, neither dead
or alive."
Mathers admitted this. He said he thought it was the want of the eyes,
and that all would come right when they were in.
I asked him where he was going to get the eyes, and he said he was going
to write to the great Rowland Ward for them. This he did do, and they
sent a pair of most lifelike parrot's eyes, and only charged three bob.
The eyes did a great deal for 'Joe,' and certainly made him look alive.
But it was a strange sort of unearthly life, I thought. They made him
look creepy, as if he was a ghost risen from the tomb to haunt somebody
who had killed him. Also about this time we had to get some Condy's
fluid to steady poor old 'Joe' down a bit. I thought this was serious,
but Mathers said not. He assured me that Condy's fluid is an everyday
thing in stuffing parrots and suchlike; and then I had an idea, and got
my 'anti-something' tooth-powder; which also helped, and so it came to
be some use after all, which tooth-powder seldom is. We varnished the
claws, and tried to stick back a lot of feathers that unfortunately came
out in the process of stuffing. Then I got a bit of wood and a stick
for a perch, and we wired 'Joe' on and put a walnut at his feet; which
was a good thought of Bunny's, because walnuts were always his favourite
food.
Then, from being very confident and hopeful and full Of the Doctor's joy
and gladness when he should see the parrot, Mathers sank suddenly into a
sort of state of despair. He couldn't get the wings right, and he said
the thought of them tortured him day and night and sent him down three
places in his class. At each attempt more feathers fell out, and
finally I got impatient with Mathers and told him that if he messed
about with the parrot any more the thing would fall to pieces and fail
utterly. I also reminded him that the matron, when passing by the
play-boxes the day before, had thought there must be a dead mouse behind
the wainscot. Things were, in fact, coming to a climax, and I said that
as he'd had the pluck to stuff 'Joe,' I hoped, after all the fearful
danger and swot we'd had, that he would keep on to the end and give him
to the Doctor and trust to luck that it would come off all right.
Then he lost all heart about it and said that Milly should decide; but
he was not fair to her, and only showed her the head. The rest he hid
from her in a bath-towel. Of course the head was the champion part,
owing to the eyes from Rowland Ward.
She cried first, but in a general way she was delighted. She praised
Mathers; and she also said that it would be well to present it quickly
to the Doctor, so that he could get some proper professional staffer to
finish it and put a glass case over it as soon as possible. Of course a
glass case was beyond our power.
Still Mathers hesitated; then, urged by me, he decided to have a second
opinion. He said--
"I don't like Steggles; but he is the oldest and therefore the wisest
boy in the school. I will show him the work and put myself entirely
into his hands."
"There's a fearful risk," I replied, "because Steggles doesn't care for
man or beast, and if he sees a chance to have some frightful score off
you, he will."
"No, he won't," answered Bunny. "I shall throw myself on his
sportsmanlike feeling."
"He hasn't got any," I said.
But he risked it; and for once Steggles behaved less like a common or
garden cad than usual. We showed him the parrot, after making him take
an oath of secrecy. The oath would have been merely a matter of form
with him generally, for I have known him to break a blood-oath as if it
was nothing; but somehow the excited state of Mathers and the
extraordinary thing that he had done took the fancy of Steggles, and he
showed a great deal of interest in the parrot, and gave us some jolly
good advice into the bargain.
Of course he rotted Mathers when he'd got over the shock of the
surprise. He struck an attitude of horror and fear and terror, and
said, "Great snakes! Is it loaded, sergeant?" Then he pretended it was
a ghost, and finally he held his nose and fainted. After all this
foolery Mathers asked him for his candid opinion, and Steggles very
kindly gave it. He said--
"If you take my advice you'll instantly bury it again: for two reasons.
Firstly, because if the Doctor sees it he'll probably expel you; and
secondly, because if you don't, the whole school will jolly soon be down
with a fell disease."
To show you what Mathers is, after hearing this, nothing in the world
would make him bury the parrot again. He said that it was a cruel
thing, after all the danger and trouble and expense of stuffing 'Joe,'
that Steggles should advise him just to bury him again; he also said
that the slight scent was purely medicinal; and that, as for expelling,
if the Doctor could really and truly go so far as to expel a boy who had
done nothing but try with all his might to give him a moment of great
and sudden happiness, then the sooner he was expelled and sent to
another sort of school the better.
In fact, he was so worked up by the idea of reburying the parrot that he
decided he would carry 'Joe' before the Doctor the very next day--either
immediately before or after prayers.
Steggles merely said that Mathers was young and headstrong, and he hoped
that he should be there to see. Then he went, and Bunny and I had a
long talk as to whether before or after prayers would be best. I said
after prayers on a Litany morning, because the Litany always leaves the
Doctor weak but in a very kind and gentle state; whereas before prayers
he is sometimes rather short.
Therefore it was so, and after the next Litany morning Mathers went up,
as bold as brass to the eye, and in his hand he carried 'Joe' hidden
under a clean pocket handkerchief lent by me.
The Doctor had just shut his big prayer-book, and he looked down pretty
kindly at Bunny.
"What have you there, Mathers minimus?" he asked, little knowing the
nature of the thing that was going to burst upon his gaze.
"Please, sir," said Bunny, "it's poor old 'Joe.'"
Doctor Dunstan didn't seem to remember.
"Poor old 'Joe'! What do you mean, boy?" he asked in a changed tone of
voice.
"The parrot, sir. I thought--I thought it was a pity he should be lost
to you, being a beautiful object, and I--in fact--here he is,
sir--stuffed by me; and the slight smell is medicinal," said Mathers.
Then he drew off the handkerchief and held the parrot up to the Doctor.
Certainly it was a great effect, and at first the Doctor was evidently
far too astonished to be much obliged to Mathers. He didn't take the
parrot--on the contrary, he fell back a pace or two, and his
astonishment seemed slowly to change to a sort of wild horror. First he
looked at the parrot, then he looked at Mathers, then he regularly
glared at the parrot again. Seen from a distance the effect of the
parrot was not good. Evidently we had lost more feathers than we
thought, and its back had got a lump between the shoulders, more really
like a vulture than a parrot. Still, of course one could recognize it.
Mathers held it up; then, getting frightened, he put it down on a form,
and I knew, from the trembling way he began to handle my handkerchief
that if the Doctor didn't speak pretty soon, Mathers would blub in
public.
These silences of the Doctor's are well known as awful. You can hear a
pin drop in them; and during them his eyes roll round and round in the
sockets, like Catherine wheels, but much slower.
At last he spoke.
"Am I to understand, boy Mathers, that unaided you--you dug up, or
disinterred, that unfortunate fowl and then sought to impart to it this
bizarre, this grotesque, this indelicate semblance of life?"