CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME--AND ENDS THERE.
Now all this has nothing to do with the story, except to show what
sort of a girl Cissy Carter was, and how she differed from Prissy
Smith--who in these circumstances would certainly have gone home and
prayed that God would in time make Wedgwood Baker a better boy,
instead of tackling missionary work on the spot with her knuckles as
Cissy Carter did.
It was several days later, and the flag of the Smoutchy boys still
flew defiantly over the battlements of the castle. The great General
was growing discouraged, for in little more than a week his father
might return from London, and would doubtless take up the matter
himself. Then, with the coming of policemen and the putting up of
fences and notice-boards, all romance would be gone forever. Besides
which, most of the town boys would have to go back to school, and the
Carters' governess and their own would be returning to annoy them with
lessons, and still more uncalled for aggravations as to manners.
Cissy Carter had given Sammy the slip, and started to come over by
herself to Windy Standard. It was the afternoon, and she came past the
gipsy encampment which Mr. Picton Smith had found on some unenclosed
land on the other side of the Edam Water, and which, spite of the
remonstrances of his brother-landlords, he had permitted to remain
there.
The permanent Ishmaelitish establishment consisted of about a dozen
small huts, some entirely constructed of rough stone, others of turf
with only a stone interposed here and there; but all had mud chimneys,
rough doorways, and windows glazed with the most extraordinary
collection of old glass, rags, wisps of straw, and oiled cloth. Dogs
barked hoarsely and shrilly according to their kind, ragged clothes
fluttered on extemporised lines, or made a parti-coloured patch-work
on the grass and on the gorse bushes which grew all along the bank.
There were also a score of tents and caravans dotted here and there
about the rough ground. Half-a-dozen swarthy lads rose silently and
stared after Cissy as she passed.
A tall limber youth sitting on a heap of stones examining a dog's
back, looked up and scowled as she came by. Cissy saw an unhealed
wound and stopped.
"Let me look at him," she said, reaching out her hand for the white
fox-terrier.
"Watch out, miss," said the lad, "he's nasty with the sore. He'll bite
quick as mustard!"
"He won't bite me," said Cissy, taking up the dog calmly, which after
a doubtful sniff submitted to be handled without a murmur.
"This should be thoroughly washed, and have some boracic ointment put
on it at once," said Cissy, with the quick emphasis of an expert.
"Ain't got none o' the stuff," said the youth sullenly, "nor can't
afford to buy it. Besides, who's to wash him first off, and him in a
temper like that?"
"Come over with me to Oaklands and I'll get you some ointment. I'll
wash him myself in a minute."
The boy whistled.
"That's a good 'un," he said, "likely thing me to go to Oaklands!"
"And why?" said Cissy; "it's my father's place. I've just come from
there."
"Then your father's a beak, and I ain't going a foot--not if I know
it," said the lad.
"A what--oh! you mean a magistrate--so he is. Well, then, if you feel
like that about it I'll run over by myself, and sneak some ointment
from the stables."
And with a careless wave of the hand, a pat on the head and a "Poo'
fellow then" to the white fox-terrier, she was off.
The youth cast his voice over his shoulders to a dozen companions who
were hiding in the broom behind. His face and tone were both full of
surprise and admiration.
[Illustration: "'LET ME LOOK AT HIM,' SHE SAID."]
"Say, chaps, did you hear her? She said she'd 'sneak' the ointment
from the stables. I tell 'ee what, she'll be a rare good plucked one
that. And her a beak's daughter! Her mother mun ha' been a piece!"
It was half-an-hour before Cissy got back with the pot of boracic
dressing and some lint.
"I had to wait till the coachman had gone to his tea," she explained,
"and then send the stable boy with a message to the village to get him
out of the way."
The youth on the stone heap secretly signalled his delight to the
appreciative audience hiding in the broom bushes.
Then Cissy ordered him to get her some warm water, which he brought
from one of the kettles swinging on the birchen tripods scattered here
and there about the encampment.
Whereupon, taking the fox-terrier firmly on her knee and turning up
the skirt of her dress, she washed away all the dirt and matted hair,
cleansing the wound thoroughly.
The poor beast only made a faint whining sound at intervals. Then she
applied the antiseptic dressing, and bound the lint tightly down with
a cincture about the animal. She fitted his neck with a neat collar of
her own invention, made out of the wicker covering of a Chianti wine
flask which she brought with her from Oaklands.
"There," she said, "that will keep him from biting at it, and you must
see that he doesn't scratch off the bandage. I'll be passing
to-morrow and will drop in. Here's the pot of ointment. Put some more
on in the morning and some again at night, and he will be all right in
a day or two."
"Thank'ee, miss," said the lad, touching his cap with the natural
courtesy which is inherent in the best blood of his race. "I don't
mean to forget, you be sure."
Cissy waved her hand to him gaily, as she went off towards Windy
Standard. Then all at once she stopped.
"By the way, what is your name? Whom shall I ask for if you are not
about to-morrow?"
"Billy Blythe," he said, after a moment's pause to consider whether
the daughter of a magistrate was to be trusted; "but I'll be here
to-morrow right enough!"
"Why did you tell the beak's daughter your name, Bill, you blooming
Johnny?" asked a companion. "You'll get thirty days for that sure!"
"Shut up, Fish Lee," said the owner of the dog; "the girl is main
right. D'ye think she'd ha' said 'sneaked' if she wasn't. G'way,
Bacon-chump!"
Cissy Carter took the road to Windy Standard with a good conscience.
She was not troubled about the "sneaking," though she hoped that the
coachman would not miss that pot of ointment.
At the foot of the avenue, just where it joined the dusty road to the
town of Edam, she met Sir Toady Lion. He had his arms full of valuable
sparkling jewellery, or what in the distance looked like it as the sun
shone upon some winking yellow metal.
Toady Lion began talking twenty to the dozen as soon as ever he came
within Cissy's range.
"Oo!" he cried, "what 'oo fink? Father sented us each a great big
half-crown from London--all to spend. And we have spended it."
"Well," said Cissy genially, "and what did you buy?"
"Us all wented down to Edam and boughted--oh! yots of fings."
"Show me what you've bought, Toady Lion! I want to see! How much money
had you, did you say?"
Toady Lion sat plump down in the thickest dust of the road, as he
always did just wherever he happened to be at the time. If there
chanced to be a pool there or a flower-bed--why, so much the worse.
But whenever Toady Lion wanted to sit down, he sat down. Here,
however, there was only the dry dust of the road and a brown smatter
of last year's leaves. The gallant knight was in a meditative mood and
inclined to moralise.
"Money," said Toady Lion thoughtfully, "well, dere's the money that
you get gived you, and wot Janet sez you muss put in your money-box.
That's no good! Money-box locked! Janet keeps money-box. 'Get money
when you are big,' she sez--rubbage, I fink--shan't want it then--lots
and lots in trowsies' pocket then, gold sixpences and fings."
Toady Lion's eyes were dreamy and glorious, as if the angels were
whispering to him, and he saw unspeakable things,
"Then there's miss'nary money in a round box wif a slit on the top.
That's lots better! Sits on mantlepiece in dining-room. Can get it out
wif slimmy-jimmy knife when nobody's looking. Hugh John showed me how.
Prissy says boys who grab miss'nary's pennies won't not go to heaven,
but Hugh John, he says--yes. 'Cause why miss'nary's money is for bad
wicked people to make them good. Then if it is wicked to take
miss'nary money, the money muss be meaned for us--to do good to me and
Hugh John. Hugh John finks so. Me too!"
Toady Lion spoke in short sentences with pauses between, Cissy
meantime nodding appreciation.
"Yes, I know," she said meditatively, "a thinbladed kitchen knife is
best."
But Sir Toady Lion had started out on the track of Right and Wrong,
and was intent on running them down with his usual slow persistence.
"And then the miss'nary money is weally-weally our money, 'cause Janet
_makes_ us put it in. Onst Hugh John tried metal buttons off of his
old serge trowsies. But Janet she found out. And he got smacked. An'
nen, us only takes a penny out when us is _tony-bloke_!"
"Is which? Oh, stone-broke," laughed Cissy Carter, sitting down beside
Toady Lion; "who taught you to say that word?"
"Hugh John," said the small boy wistfully; "him and me tony-bloke
all-ee-time, all-ee-ways, all-ee-while!"
"Does Prissy have any of--the missionary money?" said Cissy; "I
should!"
"No," said Toady Lion sadly; "don't you know? Our Prissy's awful good,
juss howwid! She likes goin' to church, an' washing, an' having to
wear gloves. Girls is awful funny."
"They are," said Cissy Carter promptly. The funniness of her sex had
often troubled her. "But tell me, Toady Lion," she went on, "does Hugh
John like going to church, and being washed, and things?"
"Who? Hugh John--him?" said Toady Lion, with slow contempt. "'Course
he don't. Why, he's a boy. And once he told Mr. Burnham so--he did."
Mr. Burnham was the clergyman of both families. He had recently come
to the place, was a well-set up bachelor, and represented a communion
which was not by any means the dominant one in Bordershire.
"Yes, indeedy. It was under the elm. Us was having tea. An' Mist'r
Burnham, he was having tea. And father and Prissy. And, oh! such a lot
of peoples. And he sez, Mist'r Burnham sez to Hugh John, 'You are good
little boy. I saw you in church on Sunday. Do you like to go to
church?' He spoke like this-a-way, juss like I'm tellin' oo, down here
under his silk waistcoat--kind of growly, but nice."
"Hugh John say that he liked to go to church--'cos father was there
listenin', you see. Then Mist'r Burnham ask Hugh John WHY he like to
go to church, and of course, he say wight out that it was to look at
Sergeant Steel's wed coat. An' nen everybody laugh--I don't know why.
But Mist'r Burnham he laughed most."
Cissy also failed to understand why everybody should have laughed.
Toady Lion took up the burden of his tale.
"Yes, indeedy, and one Sunday _I_ didn't have to go to church--'cos
I'd yet up such a yot of gween gooseb----"
"All right, Toady Lion, I know!" interrupted Cissy quickly.
"Of gween gooseberries," persisted Toady Lion calmly; "so I had got my
tummy on in front. It hurted like--well, like when you get sand down
'oo trowsies. Did 'oo ever get sand in 'oo trowsies, Cissy?"
"Hush--of course not!" said Cissy Carter; "girls don't have
trowsers--they have----"
But any injudicious revelations on Cissy's part were stopped by Toady
Lion, who said, "No, should juss fink not. Girls is too great softs to
have trowsies.
"Onst though on the sands at a seaside, when I was '_kye-kying_' out
loud an' kickin' fings, 'cos I was not naughty but only fractious,
dere was a lady wat said 'Be dood, little boy, why can't you be dood?'
"An' nen I says, 'How can I be dood? Could 'oo be dood wif all that
sand in 'oo trowsies?'
"An' nen--the lady she wented away quick, so quick--I can't tell why.
P'raps _she_ had sand in her trowsies! Does 'oo fink so, Cissy?"
"That'll do--I quite understand," said Cissy Carter, somewhat hastily,
in dread of Toady Lion's well-known license of speech.
"An' nen 'nother day after we comed home I went into the park and
clum up a nice tree. An' it was ever so gween and scratchy. 'An it was
nice. Nen father he came walking his horse slow up the road, n' I hid.
But father he seen me. And he say, 'What you doing there, little boy?
You break you neck. Nen I whip you. Come down, you waskal!' He said it
big--down here, (Toady Lion illustrated with his hand the place from
which he supposed his father's voice to proceed). An' it made me feel
all queer an' trimbly, like our guinea pig's nose when father speak
like that. An' I says to him, 'Course, father, you never clumb up no
trees on Sundays when _you_ was little boy!' An' nen he didn't speak
no more down here that trimbly way, but laughed, and pulled me down,
and roded me home in front of him, and gived me big hunk of pie--yes,
indeedy!"
Toady Lion felt that now he had talked quite enough, and began to
arrange his brass cannons on the dust, in a plan of attack which
beleaguered Cissy Carter's foot and turned her flank to the left.
"Where did you get all those nice new cannons? You haven't told me
yet," she said.
"Boughted them!" answered Toady Lion promptly, "least I boughted some,
and Hugh John boughted some, an' Prissy she boughted some."
"And how do you come to have them all?" asked Cissy, watching the
imposing array. As usual it was the Battle of Bannockburn and the
English were getting it hot.
"Well," said Toady Lion thoughtfully, "'twas this way. 'Oo sees
Prissy had half-a-crown, an' she boughted a silly book all about a
'Lamplighter' for herself--an' two brass cannons--one for Hugh John
an' one for me. And Hugh John he had half-a-crown, an' he boughted
three brass cannon, two for himself and one for me."
"And what did you buy with your half-crown?" said Cissy, bending her
brows sweetly upon the small gunner.
"Wif my half-a-crown? Oh, I just boughted three brass cannons--_dey
was all for mine-self_!"
"Toady Lion," cried Cissy indignantly, "you are a selfish little pig!
I shan't stop with you any more."
"Little pigs is nice," said Toady Lion, unmoved, arranging his cannon
all over again on a new plan after the removal of Cissy's foot; "their
noses----"
"Don't speak to me about their noses, you selfish little boy! Blow
your own nose."
"No use," said Toady Lion philosophically; "won't stay blowed. 'Tis
too duicy!"
Cissy set off in disgust towards the house of Windy Standard, leaving
Toady Lion calmly playing with his six cannon all alone in the white
dust of the king's highway.