And though he would much rather have kept it a secret buried in his
breast, we made him own that he had shut Pincher up yesterday in the
empty rabbit-hutch when he was playing Zoological Gardens and forgotten
all about it in the pleasures of our cousin having left us.
So we need not have gone over the water at all. But though Oswald pities
all dumb animals, especially those helplessly shut in rabbit-hutches at
the bottoms of gardens, he cannot be sorry that we had such a Celestial
adventure and got hold of such a parrot. For Alice says that Oswald and
Dicky and she shall have the parrot between them.
She is tremendously straight. I often wonder why she was made a girl.
She's a jolly sight more of a gentleman than half the boys at our
school.
_THE YOUNG ANTIQUARIES_
THIS really happened before Christmas, but many authors go back to
bygone years for whole chapters, and I don't see why I shouldn't.
It was one Sunday--the Somethingth Sunday in Advent, I think--and Denny
and Daisy and their father and Albert's uncle came to dinner, which is
in the middle of the day on that day of rest and the same things to eat
for grown-ups and us. It is nearly always roast beef and Yorkshire, but
the puddings and vegetables are brightly variegated and never the same
two Sundays running.
At dinner some one said something about the coat-of-arms that is on the
silver tankards which once, when we were poor and honest, used to stay
at the shop having the dents slowly taken out of them for months and
months. But now they are always at home and are put at the four corners
of the table every day, and any grown-up who likes can drink beer out of
them.
After some talk of the sort you don't listen to, in which bends and
lioncels and gules and things played a promising part, Albert's uncle
said that Mr. Turnbull had told him something about that coat-of-arms
being carved on a bridge somewhere in Cambridgeshire, and again the
conversation wandered into things like Albert's uncle had talked about
to the Maidstone Antiquarian Society the day they came over to see his
old house in the country and we arranged the time-honoured Roman remains
for them to dig up. So, hearing the words king-post and mullion and
moulding and underpin, Oswald said might we go; and we went, and took
our dessert with us and had it in our own common-room, where you can
roast chestnuts with a free heart and never mind what your fingers get
like.
When first we knew Daisy we used to call her the White Mouse, and her
brother had all the appearance of being one too, but you know how
untruthful appearances are, or else it was that we taught him happier
things, for he certainly turned out quite different in the end; and she
was not a bad sort of kid, though we never could quite cure her of
wanting to be "ladylike"--that is the beastliest word there is, I think,
and Albert's uncle says so, too. He says if a girl can't be a lady it's
not worth while to be only like one--she'd better let it alone and be a
free and happy bounder.
But all this is not what I was going to say, only the author does think
of so many things besides the story, and sometimes he puts them in. This
is the case with Thackeray and the Religious Tract Society and other
authors, as well as Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Only I don't suppose you have
ever heard of her, though she writes books that some people like very
much. But perhaps they are her friends. I did not like the one I read
about the Baronet. It was on a wet Sunday at the seaside, and nothing
else in the house but Bradshaw and "Elsie; or like a----" or I shouldn't
have. But what really happened to us before Christmas is strictly the
following narrative.
"I say," remarked Denny, when he had burned his fingers with a chestnut
that turned out a bad one after all--and such is life--and he had
finished sucking his fingers and getting rid of the chestnut, "about
these antiquaries?"
"Well, what about them?" said Oswald. He always tries to be gentle and
kind to Denny, because he knows he helped to make a man of the young
Mouse.
"I shouldn't think," said Denny, "that it was so very difficult to be
one."
"I don't know," said Dicky. "You have to read very dull books and an
awful lot of them, and remember what you read, what's more."
"I don't think so," said Alice. "That girl who came with the
antiquities--the one Albert's uncle said was upholstered in red plush
like furniture--_she_ hadn't read anything, you bet."
Dora said, "You ought not to bet, especially on Sunday," and Alice
altered it to "You may be sure."
"Well, but what then?" Oswald asked Denny. "Out with it," for he saw
that his youthful friend had got an idea and couldn't get it out. You
should always listen patiently to the ideas of others, no matter how
silly you expect them to be.
"I do wish you wouldn't hurry me so," said Denny, snapping his fingers
anxiously. And we tried to be patient.
"Why shouldn't we _be_ them?" Denny said at last.
"He means antiquaries," said Oswald to the bewildered others. "But
there's nowhere to go and nothing to do when we get there."
The Dentist (so-called for short, his real name being Denis) got red and
white, and drew Oswald aside to the window for a secret discussion.
Oswald listened as carefully as he could, but Denny always buzzes so
when he whispers.
"Right oh," he remarked, when the confidings of the Dentist had got so
that you could understand what he was driving at. "Though you're being
shy with us now, after all we went through together in the summer, is
simply skittles."