imitate her anger. 'Oh, please, I'm going; remember me to your mother.'
And he left the room, followed rather sadly by Tommy, who felt that
Barbara was angry with him. 'That's a very disagribble little girl,'
remarked the clown, confidentially, when they were safe outside, and
Tommy thought it wiser to agree.
'What have you got in your pockets?' he asked, presently, seeing a hard
bulge in his friend's white trunks.
'Only some o' your nice soldiers,' said the clown, and walked into the
schoolroom, where there was a fire burning. 'Are they brave?' he asked.
'Very,' said Tommy, who had quite persuaded himself that this was so.
'Look here, we'll have a battle.' He thought a battle would keep the
clown quiet. 'Here's two cannon and peas, and you shall be the French
and I'll be English.'
'All right,' said the clown, and took his share of the soldiers and
calmly put them all in the middle of the red-hot coals. 'I want to be
quite sure they can stand fire first,' he explained; and then, as they
melted, he said, 'There, you see, they're all running away. I never see
such cowards.'
Tommy was in a great rage, and could almost have cried, if it had not
been babyish, for they were his best regiments which he could see
dropping down in great glittering stars on the ashes below. 'That's a
caddish thing to do,' he said, with difficulty; 'I didn't give them to
you to put in the fire!'
'Oh, I thought you did,' said the clown, 'I beg your pardon;' and he
threw the rest after them as he spoke.
'You're a beast!' cried Tommy, indignantly; 'I've done with you, after
this.'
'Oh, no, yer ain't,' he returned.
'I have, though,' said Tommy; 'we're not friends any longer.'
'All right,' said the clown; 'when I'm not friends with any one, I take
and use the red-'ot poker to 'em,' and he put it in the fire to heat as
he spoke.
This terrified the boy. It was no use trying to argue with the clown,
and he had seen how he used a red-hot poker. 'Well, I'll forgive you
this time,' he said hastily; 'let's come away from here.'
'I tell you what,' said the clown, 'you and me'll go down in the kitchen
and make a pie.'
Tommy forgot his injuries at this delightful idea; he knew what the
clown's notion of pie-making would be. 'Yes,' he said eagerly, 'that
will be jolly; only I don't know,' he added doubtfully, 'if cook will
let us.'
However, the clown soon managed to secure the kitchen to himself; he had
merely to attempt to kiss the cook once or twice and throw the best
dinner service at the other servants, and they were left quite alone to
do as they pleased.
What fun it was, to begin with! The clown brought out a large deep dish,
and began by putting a whole turkey and an unskinned hare in it out of
the larder; after that he put in sausages, jam, pickled walnuts, and
lemons, and, in short, the first thing that came to hand.
'It ain't 'arf full yet,' he said at last, as he looked gravely into the
pie.
'No,' said Tommy, sympathetically, 'can't we get anything else to put
in?'
'The very thing,' cried the clown, 'you're just about the right size to
fill up--my! what a pie it's going to be, eh?' And he caught up his
young friend, just as he was, rammed him into the pie, and poured sauce
on him.
But he kicked and howled until the clown grew seriously displeased. 'Why
carn't you lay quiet,' he said angrily, 'like the turkey does? you don't
deserve to be put into such a nice pie!'
'If you make a pie of me,' said Tommy, artfully, 'there'll be nobody to
look on and laugh at you, you know!'
'No more there won't,' said the clown, and allowed him to crawl out,
all over sauce. 'It was a pity,' he declared, 'because he fitted so
nicely, and now they would have to look about for something else;' but
he contrived to make a shift with the contents of the cook's
work-basket, which he poured in--reels, pin-cushions, wax, and all. He
had tried to put the kitchen cat in too, but she scratched his hands and
could not be induced to form the finishing touch to the pie.
How the clown got the paste and rolled it, and made Tommy in a mess with
it, and how the pie was finished at last, would take too long to tell
here; but somehow it was not quite such capital fun as he had
expected--it seemed to want the pantomime music or something; and then
Tommy was always dreading lest the clown should change his mind at the
last minute, and put him in the pie after all.
Even when it was safely in the oven he had another fear lest he should
be made to stay and eat it, for it had such very peculiar things in it
that it could not be at all nice. Fortunately, as soon as it was put
away the clown seemed to weary of it himself.
'Let me and you go and take a walk,' he suggested.
Tommy caught at the proposal, for he was fast becoming afraid of the
clown, and felt really glad to get him out of the house; so he got his
cap, and the clown put on a brown overcoat and a tall hat, under which
his white and red face looked stranger than ever, and they sallied forth
together.
Once Tommy would have thought it a high privilege to be allowed to go
out shopping with a clown; but, if the plain truth must be told, he did
not enjoy himself so very much after all. People seemed to stare at them
so, for one thing, and he felt almost ashamed of his companion, whose
behaviour was outrageously ridiculous. They went to all the family
tradesmen, to whom Tommy was, of course, well known, and the clown
_would_ order the most impossible things, and say they were for Tommy!
Once he even pushed him into a large draper's shop, full of pretty and
contemptuous young ladies, and basely left him to explain his presence
as he could.
But it was worse when they happened to meet an Italian boy with a tray
of plaster images on his head.
'Here's a lark!' said the clown, and elbowed Tommy against him in such a
way that the tray slipped and all the images fell to the ground with a
crash.
It was certainly amusing to see all the pieces rolling about; but, while
Tommy was still laughing, the boy began to howl and denounce him to the
crowd which gathered round them. The crowd declared that it was a shame,
and that Tommy ought to be made to pay for it; and no one said so more
loudly and indignantly than the clown!
Before he could escape he had to give his father's name and address, and
promise that he would pay for the damage, after which he joined the
clown (who had strolled on) with a heavy heart, for he knew that that
business would stop all his pocket-money for years after he was grown
up! He even ventured to reproach his friend: 'I shan't sneak of you, of
course, he said, 'but you know _you_ did it!' The clown's only answer to
this was a reproof for telling wicked stories.
At last they passed a confectioner's, and the clown suddenly remembered
that he was hungry, so they went in, and he borrowed sixpence from
Tommy, which he spent in buns.
He ate them all himself slowly, and was so very quiet and well-behaved
all the time that Tommy hoped he was sobering down. They had gone a
little way from the shop when he found that the clown was eating tarts.
'You might give me one,' said Tommy; and the clown, after looking over
his shoulder, actually gave him all he had left, filling his pocket with
them, in fact.
'I never saw you buy them,' he said wonderingly, which the clown said
was very peculiar; and just then an attendant came up breathlessly.
'You forgot to pay for those tarts,' she said.
The clown replied that he never took pastry. She insisted that they
were gone, and he must have taken them.
'It wasn't me, please,' said the clown; 'it was this little boy done it.
Why, he's got a jam tart in his pocket now. Where's a policeman?'
Tommy was so thunderstruck by this treachery that he could say nothing.
It was only what he might have expected, for had not the clown served
the pantaloon exactly the same the night before? But that did not make
the situation any the funnier now, particularly as the clown made such a
noise that two real policemen came hurrying up.
Tommy did not wait for them. No one held him, and he ran away at the top
of his speed. What a nightmare sort of run it was!--the policemen
chasing him, and the clown urging them on at the top of his voice.
Everybody he passed turned round and ran after him too.
Still he kept ahead. He was surprised to find how fast he could run, and
all at once he remembered that he was running the opposite way from
home. Quick as thought he turned up the first street he came to, hoping
to throw them off the scent and get home by a back way.
For the moment he thought he had got rid of them; but just as he stopped
to take breath, they all came whooping and hallooing round the corner
after him; and he had to scamper on, panting, and sobbing, and
staggering, and almost out of his mind with fright. If he could only
get home first, and tell his mother! But they were gaining on him, and
the clown was leading and roaring with delight as he drew closer and
closer. He came to a point where two roads met. It was round another
corner, and they could not see him. He ran down one, and, to his immense
relief, found they had taken the other. He was saved, for his house was
quite near now.
He tried to hasten, but the pavement was all slushy and slippery, and
his boots felt heavier and heavier, and, to add to his misery, the
pursuers had found out their mistake. As he looked back, he could see
the clown galloping round the corner and hear his yell of discovery.
'Oh, fairy, dear fairy,' he gasped, 'save me this time. I _do_ like your
part best, now!'
She must have heard him and taken pity, for in a second he had reached
his door, and it flew open before him. He was not safe even yet, so he
rushed upstairs to his bedroom, and bounced, just as he was, into his
bed.
'If they come up I'll pretend I'm ill,' he thought, as he covered his
head with the bedclothes.
They _were_ coming up, all of them. There was a great trampling on the
stairs. He heard the clown officiously shouting: 'This way, Mr.
Policeman, sir!' and then a tremendous battering at his door.
He lay there shivering under the blankets.
'Perhaps they'll think the door's locked, and go away,' he tried to
hope, and the battering went on not quite so violently.
'Master Tommy! Master Tommy!' It was Sarah's voice. They had got her to
come up and tempt him out. Well, she _wouldn't_, then!
And then--oh! horror!--the door was thrown open. He sprang out of bed in
an agony.
'Sarah! Sarah! keep them out,' he gasped. 'Don't let them take me away!'
'Lor', Master Tommy! keep who out?' said Sarah, wonderingly.
'The--the clown--and the policemen,' he said. 'I know they're behind the
door.'
'There, there!' said Sarah; 'why, you ain't done dreaming yet. That's
what comes of going out to these late pantomimes. Rub your eyes; it's
nearly eight o'clock.'
Tommy could have hugged her. It was only a dream after all, then. As he
stood there, shivering in his nightgown, the nightmare clown began to
melt away, though even yet some of the adventures he had gone through
seemed too vivid to be quite imaginary.
* * * * *
Singularly enough, his Uncle John actually did call that morning, and to
take him to the Crystal Palace, too; and as there was no butter-slide
for him to fall down on, they were able to go. On the way Tommy told him
all about his unpleasant dream.
'I shall always hate a clown after this, uncle,' he said, as he
concluded.
'My good Tommy,' said his uncle, 'when you are fortunate enough to dream
a dream with a moral in it, don't go and apply it the wrong way up. The
real clown, like a sensible man, keeps his fun for the place where it is
harmless and appreciated, and away from the pantomime conducts himself
like any other respectable person. Now, your _dream_ clown, Tommy----'
'I know,' said Tommy, meekly. 'Should you think the pantomime was good
here, Uncle John?'
_A CANINE ISHMAEL_
(FROM THE NOTES OF A DINER-OUT)
'Tell me,' she said suddenly, with a pretty imperiousness that seemed to
belong to her, 'are you fond of dogs?' How we arrived at the subject I
forget now, but I know she had just been describing how a collie at a
dog-show she had visited lately had suddenly thrown his forepaws round
her neck in a burst of affection--a proceeding which, in my own mind
(although I prudently kept this to myself), I considered less
astonishing than she appeared to do.
For I had had the privilege of taking her in to dinner, and the meal had
not reached a very advanced stage before I had come to the conclusion
that she was the most charming, if not the loveliest, person I had ever
met.
It was fortunate for me that I was honestly able to answer her question
in a satisfactory manner, for, had it been otherwise, I doubt whether
she would have deigned to bestow much more of her conversation upon me.
'Then I wonder,' she said next, meditatively, 'if you would care to
hear about a dog that belonged to--to someone I know very well? Or would
it bore you?'
I am very certain that if she had volunteered to relate the adventures
of Telemachus, or the history of the Thirty Years' War, I should have
accepted the proposal with a quite genuine gratitude. As it was, I made
it sufficiently plain that I should care very much indeed to hear about
that dog.
She paused for a moment to reject an unfortunate _entree_ (which I
confess to doing my best to console), and then she began her story. I
shall try to set it down as nearly as possible in her own words,
although I cannot hope to convey the peculiar charm and interest that
she gave it for me. It was not, I need hardly say, told all at once, but
was subject to the inevitable interruptions which render a dinner-table
intimacy so piquantly precarious.
'This dog,' she began quietly, without any air of beginning a story,
'this dog was called Pepper. He was not much to look at--rather a rough,
mongrelly kind of animal; and he and a young man had kept house together
for a long time, for the young man was a bachelor and lived in chambers
by himself. He always used to say that he didn't like to get engaged to
anyone, because he was sure it would put Pepper out so fearfully.
However, he met somebody at last who made him forget about Pepper, and
he proposed and was accepted--and then, you know,' she added, as a
little dimple came in her cheek, 'he had to go home and break the news
to the dog.'
She had just got to this point, when, taking advantage of a pause she
made, the man on her other side (who was, I daresay, strictly within his
rights, although I remember at the time considering him a pushing beast)
struck in with some remark which she turned to answer, leaving me
leisure to reflect.
I was feeling vaguely uncomfortable about this story; something, it
would be hard to say what, in her way of mentioning Pepper's owner made
me suspect that he was more than a mere acquaintance of hers.
Was it _she_, then, who was responsible for----? It was no business of
mine, of course; I had never met her in my life till that evening--but I
began to be impatient to hear the rest.
And at last she turned to me again: 'I hope you haven't forgotten that I
was in the middle of a story. You haven't? And you would really like me
to go on? Well, then--oh yes, when Pepper was told, he was naturally a
little annoyed at first. I daresay he considered he ought to have been
consulted previously. But, as soon as he had seen the lady, he withdrew
all opposition--which his master declared was a tremendous load off his
mind, for Pepper was rather a difficult dog, and slow as a rule to take
strangers into his affections, a little snappy and surly, and very
easily hurt or offended. Don't you know dogs who are sensitive like
that? _I_ do, and I'm always so sorry for them--they feel little things
so much, and one never can find out what's the matter, and have it out
with them! Sometimes it's shyness; once I had a dog who was quite
painfully shy--self-consciousness it was really, I suppose, for he
always fancied everybody was looking at him, and often when people were
calling he would come and hide his face in the folds of my dress till
they had gone--it was too ridiculous! But about Pepper. He was devoted
to his new mistress from the very first. I am not sure that she was
quite so struck with him, for he was not at all a lady's dog, and his
manners had been very much neglected. Still, she came quite to like him
in time; and when they were married, Pepper went with them for the
honeymoon.'
'_When they were married!_' I glanced at the card which lay half-hidden
by her plate. Surely _Miss_ So-and-so was written on it?--yes, it was
certainly 'Miss.' It was odd that such a circumstance should have
increased my enjoyment of the story, perhaps--but it undoubtedly did.
'After the honeymoon,' my neighbour continued, 'they came to live in the
new house, which was quite a tiny one, and Pepper was a very important
personage in it indeed. He had his mistress all to himself for the
greater part of most days, as his master had to be away in town; so she
used to talk to him intimately, and tell him more than she would have
thought of confiding to most people. Sometimes, when she thought there
was no fear of callers coming, she would make him play, and this was
quite a new sensation for Pepper, who was a serious-minded animal, and
took very solemn views of life. At first he hadn't the faintest idea
what was expected of him; it must have been rather like trying to romp
with a parish beadle, he was so intensely respectable! But as soon as he
once grasped the notion and understood that no liberty was intended, he
lent himself to it readily enough and learnt to gambol quite creditably.
Then he was made much of in all sorts of ways; she washed him twice a
week with her very own hands--which his master would never have dreamt
of doing--and she was always trying new ribbons on his complexion. That
rather bored him at first, but it ended by making him a little conceited
about his appearance. Altogether he was dearly fond of her, and I don't
believe he had ever been happier in all his life than he was in those
days. Only, unfortunately, it was all too good to last.'
Here I had to pass olives or something to somebody, and the other man,
seeing his chance, and, to do him justice, with no idea that he was
interrupting a story, struck in once more, so that the history of Pepper
had to remain in abeyance for several minutes.
My uneasiness returned. Could there be a mistake about that name-card
after all? Cards _do_ get re-arranged sometimes, and she seemed to know
that young couple so very intimately. I tried to remember whether I had
been introduced to her as a Miss or Mrs. So-and-so, but without success.
There is some fatality which generally distracts one's attention at the
critical moment of introduction, and in this case it was perhaps easily
accounted for. My turn came again, and she took up her tale once more.
'I think when I left off I was saying that Pepper's happiness was too
good to last. And so it was. For his mistress was ill, and, though he
snuffed and scratched and whined at the door of her room for ever so
long, they wouldn't let him in. But he managed to slip in one day
somehow, and jumped up on her lap and licked her hands and face, and
almost went out of his mind with joy at seeing her again. Only (I told
you he was a sensitive dog) it gradually struck him that she was not
_quite_ so pleased to see him as usual--and presently he found out the
reason. There was another animal there, a new pet, which seemed to take
up a good deal of her attention. Of course you guess what that was--but
Pepper had never seen a baby before, and he took it as a personal slight
and was dreadfully offended. He simply walked straight out of the room
and downstairs to the kitchen, where he stayed for days.
'I don't think he enjoyed his sulk much, poor doggie; perhaps he had an
idea that when they saw how much he took it to heart they would send the
baby away. But as time went on and this didn't seem to occur to them,
he decided to come out of the sulks and look over the matter, and he
came back quite prepared to resume the old footing. Only everything was
different. No one seemed to notice that he was in the room now, and his
mistress never invited him to have a game; she even forgot to have him
washed--and one of his peculiarities was that he had no objection to
soap and warm water. The worst of it was, too, that before very long the
baby followed him into the sitting-room, and, do what he could, he
couldn't make the stupid little thing understand that it had no business
there. If you think of it, a baby must strike a dog as a very inferior
little animal: it can't bark (well, yes, it _can_ howl), but it's no
good whatever with rats, and yet everybody makes a tremendous fuss about
it! The baby got all poor Pepper's bows now; and his mistress played
games with it, though Pepper felt he could have done it ever so much
better, but he was never allowed to join in. So he used to lie on a rug
and pretend he didn't mind, though, really, I'm certain he felt it
horribly. I always believe, you know, that people never give dogs half
credit enough for feeling things, don't you?
'Well, at last came the worst indignity of all: Pepper was driven from
his rug--his own particular rug--to make room for the baby; and when he
had got away into a corner to cry quietly, all by himself, that wretched
baby came and crawled after him and pulled his tail!
'He always _had_ been particular about his tail, and never allowed
anybody to touch it but very intimate friends, and even then under
protest, so you can imagine how insulted he felt.
'It was too much for him, and he lost the last scrap of temper he had.
They said he bit the baby, and I'm afraid he did--though not enough
really to hurt it; still, it howled fearfully, of course, and from that
moment it was all over with poor Pepper--he was a ruined dog!
'When his master came home that evening he was told the whole story.
Pepper's mistress said she would be ever so sorry to part with him, but,
after his misbehaviour, she should never know a moment's peace until he
was out of the house--it really wasn't safe for baby!
'And his master was sorry, naturally; but I suppose he was beginning
rather to like the baby himself, and so the end of it was that Pepper
had to go. They did all they could for him; found him a comfortable
home, with a friend who was looking out for a good house-dog, and wasn't
particular about breed, and, after that, they heard nothing of him for a
long while. And, when they did hear, it was rather a bad report: the
friend could do nothing with Pepper at all; he had to tie him up in the
stable, and then he snapped at everyone who came near, and howled all
night--they were really almost afraid of him.
'So when Pepper's mistress heard that, she felt more thankful than ever
that the dog had been sent away, and tried to think no more about him.
She had quite forgotten all about it, when, one day, a new nursemaid,
who had taken the baby out for an airing, came back with a terrible
account of a savage dog which had attacked them, and leaped up at the
perambulator so persistently that it was as much as she could do to
drive it away. And even then Pepper's mistress did not associate the dog
with him; she thought he had been destroyed long ago.
'But the next time the nurse went out with the baby she took a thick
stick with her, in case the dog should come again. And no sooner had she
lifted the perambulator over the step, than the dog _did_ come again,
exactly as if he had been lying in wait for them ever since outside the
gate.