HUGH JOHN'S WAY-GOING.
The secret which had oppressed society after the return of Mr. Picton
Smith from London, being revealed, was that Hugh John and Sammy Carter
were both to go to school. For a while it appeared as if the
foundations of the world had been undercut--the famous fellowship of
noble knights disbanded, Prissy and Cissy, ministering angel and wild
tomboy, alike abandoned to the tender mercies of mere governesses.
Strangest of all to Prissy was the indubitable fact that Hugh John
wanted to go. At the very first mention of school he promptly forgot
all about his noblest military ambitions, and began oiling his
cricket bat and kicking his football all over the green. Mr. Burnham
was anxious about his pupil's Latin and more than doubtful about his
Vulgar Fractions; but the General himself was chiefly bent on
improving his round arm bowling, and getting that break from the left
down to a fine point.
Every member of the household was more or less disturbed by the coming
exodus--except Sir Toady Lion. On the last fateful morning that
self-contained youth maundered about as usual among his pets, carrying
to and fro saucers of milk, dandelion leaves cut small, and other
dainties--though Hugh John's boxes were standing corded and labelled
in the hall, though Prissy was crying herself sick on her bed, and
though there was even a dry hard lump high up in the great hero's own
manly throat.
His father was giving his parting instructions to his eldest son.
"Work hard, my boy," he said. "Tell the truth, never tell tales, nor
yet listen to them. Mind your own business. Don't fight, if you can
help it; but if you have to, be sure you get home with your left
before the other fellow. Practise your bowling, the batting will
practise itself. And when you play golf, keep your eye on the ball."
"I'll try to play up, father," said Hugh John, "and anyway I won't be
'dasht-mean'!"
His father was satisfied.
Then it was Prissy who came to say good-bye. She had made all sorts
of good resolutions, but in less than half a minute she was bawling
undisguisedly on the hero's neck. And as for the hero--well, we will
not say what he was doing, something most particularly unheroic at any
rate.
Janet Sheepshanks hovered in the background, saying all the time, "For
shame, Miss Priscilla, think shame o' yoursel'--garring the laddie
greet like that when he's gaun awa'!"
But even Janet herself was observed to blow her own nose very often,
and to offer Hugh John the small garden hoe instead of the neatly
wrapped new silk umbrella she had bought for him out of her own money.
And all the while Sir Toady Lion kept on carrying milk and fresh
lettuce leaves to his stupid lop-eared rabbits. Yet it was by no means
insensibility which kept him thus busied. He was only playing his
usual lone hand.
Yet even Toady Lion was not without his own proper sense of the
importance of the occasion.
"There's a funny fing 'at you wants to see at the stile behind the
stable," he remarked casually to Hugh John, as he went past the front
door with an armful of hay for bedding, "but I promised not to tell
w'at it is."
Immediately Hugh John slunk out, ran off in an entirely different
direction, circled about the "office houses," reached the stile behind
the stable--and there, with her eyes very big, and her underlip
quivering strangely, he discovered Cissy Carter.
He stopped short and looked at her. The pressure of having to say
farewell, or of making a stated speech of any kind, weighed heavily
upon him. The two looked at each other like young wild animals--or as
if they were children who had never been introduced, which is the same
thing.
"Hugh John Picton, you don't care!" sobbed Cissy at last. "And I don't
care either!" she added haughtily, commanding herself after a pathetic
little pause.
"I do, I do," answered Hugh John vehemently, "only every fellow has
to. Sammy is going too, you know!"
"Oh, I don't care a button for Sammy!" was Cissy's most unsisterly
speech.
Hugh John tried to think of something to say. Cissy was now sobbing
quietly and persistently, and that did not seem to help him.
"Say, don't now, Ciss! Stop it, or you'll make me cry too!"
"You don't care! You don't love me a bit! You know you don't!"
"I do--I do," protested the hero, in despair, "there--there--_now_ you
can't say I don't care."
"But you'll be so different when you come back, and you'll have lost
your half of the crooked sixpence."
"I won't, for true, Cissy--and I shan't ever look at another girl nor
play horses with them even if they ask me ever so."
"You will, I know you will!"
A rumble of wheels, a shout from the front door--"Hugh John--wherever
can that boy have got to?"
"Good-bye, Ciss, I must go. Oh hang it, don't go making a fellow cry.
Well, I _will_ say it then, 'I love you, Ciss!' There--will that
satisfy you?"
[Illustration: "A SLIM BUNDLE OF LIMP WOE."]
Something lit on the end of Cissy's nose, which was very red and wet
with the tears that had run down it. There was a clatter of feet, and
the Lord of Creation had departed. Cissy sank down behind the stone
wall, a slim bundle of limp woe, done up in blue serge trimmed with
scarlet.
The servants were gathered in the hall. Several of the maids were
already wet-eyed, for Hugh John had "the way with him" that made all
women want to "mother" him. Besides, he had no mother of his own.
"Good-bye, Master Hugh!" they said, and sniffed as they said it.
"Good-bye, everybody," cried the hero, "soon be back again, you know."
He said this very loudly to show that he did not care. He was going
down the steps with Prissy's fingers clutched in his, and every one
was smiling. All went merry as a marriage bell--never had been seen so
jovial a way-going.
"_Ugh--ugh--ugh!_" somebody in the hall suddenly sobbed out from among
the white caps of the maids.
"Go upstairs instantly, Jane. Don't disgrace yourself!" cried Janet
Sheepshanks sharply, stamping her foot. For the sound of Jane's sudden
and shameful collapse sent the other maids' aprons furtively up to
their eyes.
And Janet Sheepshanks had no apron. Not that she needed one--of course
not.
"Come on, Hugh John--the time is up!" said his father from the side of
the dog-cart, where (somewhat ostentatiously) he had been refastening
straps which Mike had already done to a nicety.
At this moment Toady Lion passed with half a dozen lettuce leaves. He
was no more excited "than nothing at all," as Prissy indignantly said
afterwards.
"Good-bye, Toady Lion," said Hugh John, "you can have my other bat
and the white rat with the pink eyes."
Toady Lion stood with the lettuce leaves in his arms, looking on in a
bored sort of way. Prissy could have slapped him if her hands had not
been otherwise employed.
He did not say a word till his brother was perched up aloft on the
dog-cart with his cricket bat nursed between his knees and a new
hard-hat pulled painfully over his eyes. Then at last Toady Lion
spoke. "Did 'oo find the funny fing behind the stable, Hugh John?"
Before Hugh John had time to reply, the dog-cart drove away amid sharp
explosions of grief from the white-capped throng. Jane Housemaid
dripped sympathy from a first-floor window till the gravel was wet as
from a smart shower. Toady Lion alone stood on the steps with his
usual expression of bored calmness. Then he turned to Prissy.
"Why is 'oo so moppy?"
"Oh, you go away--you've got no heart!" said Prissy, and resumed her
luxury of woe.
If Toady Lion had been a Gallic boy, we should have said that he
shrugged his shoulders. At all events, he smiled covertly to the
lettuces as he moved off in the direction of the rabbit-hutches.
"It was a _very_ funny fing w'at was behind the stable," he said. For
Sir Toady Lion was a humorist. And you can't be a humorist without
being a little hard-hearted. Only the heart of a professional writer
of pathos can be one degree harder.