The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith

"Oh, do you think so? – Run Cissy, run Hugh, and find him!" Whereat Cissy and Hugh John removed themselves. As soon as they were outside our hero found his tongue.

"How could you tell such a whopper? Of course he would not fall into the water like a baby!"

"Goos-ee gander," said Cissy briskly; "of course not! I knew that very well. But if I had not said something we should have had to stay there moping among all those Grown-Ups, and doing nothing but talking proper for hours and hours."

"But I thought you liked it, Cissy," said Hugh John, who did not know everything.

"Like it!" echoed Cissy; "I've got to do it. And if they dreamed I didn't like it, they'd think I hadn't proper manners, and make me stop just twice as long. Mother wants me to acquire a good society something-or-other, so that's why I've to stop and make tea, and pretend to like to talk to Mr. Burnham."

"Oh – him," said Hugh John; "he isn't half bad. And he's a ripping good wicket-keep!"

"I dare say," retorted Cissy, "that's all very well for you. He talks to you about cricket and W. G.'s scores – I've heard him. But he speaks to me in that peeky far-away voice from the back of his throat, like he does in the service when he comes to the bit about 'young children' – and what do you think the Creature says?"

"I dunno," said Hugh John, with a world-weary air, as if the eccentricities of clergymen in silk waistcoats were among the things that no fellow could possibly find out.

"Well, he said that he hoped the time would soon come when a young lady of so much decision of character (that's me!) would be able to assist him in his district visiting."

"What's 'decision of character' when he's at home?" asked Hugh John flippantly.

"Oh, nothing – only one of the things parsons say. It doesn't mean anything – not in particular!" replied the widely informed Cissy. "But did you ever hear such rot?"

And for the first time her eyes met his with a quaintly questioning look, which somehow carried in it a reminiscence of the stile and the ivy bush. Cissy's eyes were never quite (Hugh John has admitted as much to me in a moment of confidence) – never quite the same after the incident of the orchard. On this occasion Hugh John instantly averted his own, and looked stolidly at the ground.

"Perhaps Mr. Burnham has heard that you went with medicine and stuff to the gipsy camp," he said after a pause, trying to find an explanation of the apparently indefensible folly of his cricketing hero. Cissy had not thought of this before.

"Well, perhaps he had," she said, "but that was quite different."

"How different?" queried Hugh John.

"Well, that was only dogs and Billy Blythe," said Cissy, somewhat shamefacedly; "that doesn't count, and besides I like it. Doing good has got to be something you don't like – teaching little brats their duty to their godfathers and godmothers, or distributing tracts which only make people stamp and swear and carry on."

"Isn't there something somewhere about helping the fatherless and the widow?" faltered Hugh John. He hated "talking good," but somehow he felt that Cissy was doing herself less than justice.

"Well, I don't suppose that the fox-terrier's pa does much for him," she said gaily; "but come along and I'll 'interjuce' you to your ally Billy Blythe."

So they walked along towards the camp in silence. It was a still, Sunday-like evening, and the bell of Edam town steeple was tolling for the six o'clock stay of work, as it had done every night at the same hour for over five hundred years. The reek of the burgesses' supper-fires was going up in a hundred pillar-like "pews" of tall blue smoke. Homeward bound humble bees bumbled and blundered along, drunk and drowsy with the heady nectar they had taken on board – strayed revellers from the summer-day's Feast of Flowers. Delicate little blue butterflies rose flurriedly from the short grass, flirted with each other a while, and then mounted into a yet bluer sky in airy wheels and irresponsible balancings.

"This is my birthday!" suddenly burst out Hugh John.

Cissy stopped short and caught her breath.

"Oh no – it can't be;" she said, "I thought it was next week, and they aren't nearly ready."

Whereat Cissy Cartar began most incontinently and unexpectedly to cry. Hugh John had never seen her do this before, though he was familiar enough with Prissy's more easy tears.

"Now don't you, Ciss," he said; "I don't want anything – presents and things, I mean. Just let's be jolly."

"Hu-uh-uh!" sobbed Cissy; "and Janet Sheepshanks told me it was next week. I'm sure she did; and I set them so nicely to be ready in time – more than two months ago, and now they aren't ready after all."

"What aren't ready?" said Hugh John.

"The bantam chickens," sobbed Cissy; "and they are lovely as lovely. And peck – you should just see them peck."

"I'd just as soon have them next week, or the next after that – rather indeed. Shut up now, Ciss. Stop crying, I tell you. Do you hear?" He was instinctively adopting that gruff masculine sternness which men consider to be on the whole the most generally effective method of dealing with the incomprehensible tears of their women-kind. "I don't care if you cry pints, but I'll hit you if you won't stop! So there!"

Cissy stopped like magic, and assumed a distant and haughty expression with her nose in the air, the surprising dignity of which was marred only by the recurring spasmodic sniff necessary to keep back the moisture which was still inclined to leak from the corners of her eyes.

"I would indeed," said Hugh John, like all good men quickly remorseful after severity had achieved its end. "I'd ever so much rather have the nicest presents a week after; for on a regular birthday you get so many things. But by next week, when you've got tired of them all, and don't have anything new – that's the proper time to get a present."

"Oh, you are nice," said Cissy impulsively, coming over to Hugh John and clasping his arm with both her hands. He did not encourage this, for he did not know where it might end, and the open moor was not by any means the ivy-grown corner of the stable. Cissy went on.

"Yes, you are the nicest thing. Only don't tell any body – "

"I won't!" said Hugh John, with deepest conviction.

"And I'll give you the mother too," continued Cissy; "she is a perfect darling, and won a prize at the last Edam show. It was only a second, but everybody said that she ought by rights to have had the first. Yes, and she would have got it too – only that the other old hen was a cousin of the judge's. That wasn't fair, was it?"

"Certainly not!" said Hugh John, with instant emphasis.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GIPSY CAMP

AT this point a peculiar fragrance was borne to them upon the light wind, the far-blowing smell of a wood-fire, together with the odour of boiling and fragrant stew – a compound and delicious wild-wood scent, which almost created the taste by which it was to be enjoyed, as they say all good literature must. There was also another smell, less idyllic but equally characteristic – the odour of drying paint. All these came from the camp of the gipsies set up on the corner of the common lands of Windy Standard.

The gipsies' wood was a barren acre of tall, ill-nurtured Scotch firs, with nothing to break their sturdy monotony of trunk right up to the spreading crown of twisted red branches and dark green spines. Beneath, the earth was covered with a carpet of dry and brown pine-needles, several inches thick, soft and silent under the feet as velvet pile. Ditches wet and dry closed in the place of sanctuary for the wandering tribes of Egypt on all sides, save only towards the high road, where a joggly, much-rutted cart track led deviously in between high banks, through which the protruding roots of the Scotch firs, knotted and scarred, were seen twisting and grappling each other like a nest of snakes. Suddenly, between the ridges of pine-trees, the pair came in sight of the camp.

"I declare," cried Hugh John, "they are painting the waggons. I wish they would let me help. I can slick it on like a daisy. Now I'm telling you. Andrew Penman at the coach-works in Church Street showed me how. He says I can 'line' as well as any workman in the place. I'm going to be a coach-painter. They get bully wages, I tell you."

"I thought you were going to be a soldier," commented Cissy, with the cool and inviting criticism of the model domestic lady, who is always on hand with a bucket of cold water for the enthusiasms of her men-folk.

Hugh John remembered, saw his mistake, and shifted his ground all in the twinkling of an eye; for of course a man of spirit ought never to own himself in the wrong – at least to a girl. It is a bad precedent, occasionally even fatal.

"Oh yes, of course I am going to be a soldier," he said with the hesitation of one who stops to think what he is going to say; "but I'm to be a coach-painter in my odd time and on holidays. Besides, officers get so little pay now-a-days, it's shameful – I heard my father say. So one must do something."

"Oh, here's the terrier – pretty thing, I declare he quite knows me – see, Hugh John," cried Cissy, kneeling with delight in her eye, and taking hold of the little dog, which came bounding forward to meet her – stopping midway, however, to paw at its neck, to which the Chianti wicker-work still clung tightly round the edge of the bandage.

Billy Blythe came towards them, touching his cap as he did so in a half-military manner; for had he not a brother in the county militia, who was the best fighter (with his fists) in the regiment, the pest of his colonel, but in private the particular pet of all the other officers, who were always ready to put their money on Gipsy Blythe to any amount.

"Yes, miss," he said; "I done it. He's better a'ready, and as lively as a green grass-chirper. Never seed the like o' that ointment. 'Tis worth its weight in gold when ye have dogs."

A tall girl came up at this moment, dusky and lithe, her face and neck tanned to a fine healthy brown almost as dark as saddle-leather, but with a rolling black eye so full and piercing that even her complexion seemed light by comparison. She carried a back load of tinware of all sorts, and by her wearied air appeared to be returning to the encampment after a day's tramp.

"Ah, young lady and gentleman, sure I can see by your eyes that you are going to buy something from a poor girl – ribbons for the hair, or for the house some nice collanders, saucepans, fish-pans, stew-pans, patty-pans, jelly-pans – "

"Go 'way, Lepronia Lovell," growled Billy; "don't you see that this is the young lady that cured my dog?"

"And who may the young gentleman be?" said the girl. "Certain I am I've seen him before somewhere at the back o' beyant."

"Belike aye, Lepronia, tha art a clever wench, and hast got eyes in the back o' thee yead," said Billy, in a tone of irony. "Do you not know the son of Master Smith o' t' Windy Standard – him as lets us bide on his land, when all the neighbours were on for nothing else but turning us off with never a rest for the soles of our feet?"

"And what is his name?" said the girl.

"Why, the same as his father of course, lass – what else?" cried Billy; "young Master Smith as ever was. Did you think it was Blythe?"

"'Faith then, God forbid!" said Lepronia, "ye have lashin's of that name in them parts already. Sure it is lonesome for a poor orphan like me among so many Blythes; and good-looking young chaps some o' them too, and never a wan o' ye man enough to ask me to change my name, and go to church and be thransmogrified into a Blythe like the rest of yez!"

Some of the gipsies standing round laughed at the boldness of the girl, and Billy reddened. "I'm not by way of takin' up with no Paddy," he said, and turned on his heel.

"Paddy is ut," cried the girl indignantly after him, "'faith now, and it wad be tellin' ye if ye could get a daycent single woman only half as good lookin' as me, to take as much notice av the likes o' ye as to kick ye out of her road!"

She turned away, calling over her shoulder to Cissy, "Can I tell your fortune, pretty lady?"

Quick as a flash, Cissy's answer came back.

"No, but I can tell yours!"

The girl stopped, surprised that a maid of the Gentiles should tell fortunes without glass balls, cards, or even looking at the lines of the hand.

"Tell it then," she said defiantly.

"You will live to marry Billy!" she said.

Then Lepronia Lovell laughed a short laugh, and said, "Never while there's a daycent scarecrow in the world will I set up a tent-stick along with the likes of Billy Blythe!"

But all the same she walked away very thoughtful, her basketful of tinware clattering at her back.

After the fox-terrier had been examined, commented upon, and duly dressed, Billy Blythe walked with them part of the way homeward, and Hugh John opened out to him his troubles. He told him of the feud against the town boys, and related all the manifold misdeeds of the Smoutchies. All the while Billy said nothing, but the twitching of his hands and a peculiarly covert look about his dusky face told that he was listening intently. Scarcely had Hugh John come to the end of his tale when, with the blood mounting darkly to his cheeks, Billy turned about to see if he were observed. There was no one near.

"We are the lads to help ye to turn out Nipper Donnan and all his crew," he said. "Him and his would soon make short work of us gipsies if they had the rights of castle and common. Why, Nipper's father is what they call a bailie of their burgh court, and he fined my father for leaving his horses out on the roadside, while he went for a doctor when my mother was took ill a year past last November."

Hugh John had found his ally.

"There's a round dozen and more of us lads," continued Billy, "that 'ud make small potatoes and mince meat of every one of them, if they was all Nipper Donnans – which they ain't, not by a long sight. I know them. A fig for them and their flag! We'll take their castle, and we'll take it too in a way they won't forget till their dying day."

The gipsy lad was so earnest that Hugh John, though as much as ever bent upon conquering the enemy, began to be a little alarmed.

"Of course it's part pretending," he said, "for my father could put them out if we were to tell on them. But then we won't tell, and we want just to drive them out ourselves, and thrash them for stealing our pet lamb as well!"

"Right!" said Billy, "don't be afraid; we won't do more than just give them a blazing good hiding. Tell 'ee what, they'll be main sore from top to toe before we get through with 'em!"

CHAPTER XXIX

TOADY LION'S LITTLE WAYS

THUS it was finally arranged. The castle was to be attacked by the combined forces of Windy Standard and the gipsy camp the following Saturday afternoon, which would give them the enemy in their fullest numbers. Notice would be sent, so that they could not say afterwards that they had been taken by surprise. General Napoleon Smith was to write the letter himself, but to say nothing in it about his new allies. That, as Cissy put it, "would be as good as a sixpenny surprise-packet to them."

So full was Hugh John of his new plan and the hope, now almost the certainty, of success, that when he went home he could not help confiding in Prissy – who, like a model housewife, was seated mending her doll's stockings, while Janet Sheepshanks attended to those of the elder members of the household.

She listened with quick-coming breath and rising colour, till Hugh John thought that his own military enthusiasm had kindled hers.

"Isn't it prime? – we'll beat them till they can't speak," said Hugh John triumphantly. "They'll never come back to our castle again after we finish with them."

But Priscilla was silent, and deep dejection gnawed dully at her heart.

"Poor things," she said thoughtfully; "perhaps they never had fathers to teach them, nor godfathers and godmothers to see that they learned their Catechism."

"Precious lot mine ever did for me – only one old silver mug!" snorted Hugh John.

Just then Toady Lion came in.

"Oh, Hugh John," he panted, in tremulous haste to tell some fell tidings, "I so sorry – I'se broked one of the cannons, and it's your cannon what I'se broked."

"What were you doing with my cannon?" inquired his brother severely.

"I was juss playin' wif it so as to save my cannons, and a great bid stone fell from the wall and broked it all to bits. I beg'oo pardon, Hugh John!"

"All right!" said Hugh John cheerfully; "you can give me one of yours for it."

Toady Lion stood a while silent, with a puzzled expression on his face.

"That's not right, Hugh John," he said seriously; "I saided that I was sorry, and I begged 'oo pardon. Father says then 'oo must fordiv me!"

"Oh, I'll forgive you right enough," said Hugh John, "after I get the cannon. It's all the same to me which cannon I have."

"But your cannon is broked – all to little bits!" said Toady Lion, trying to impress the fact on his brother's memory.

"Well, another cannon," said Hugh John – "I ain't particular."

"But the other cannons is all mine," explained Toady Lion, who has strong ideas as to the rights of property.

"No matter – one of them is mine now!" said his brother, snatching one out of his arms.

Toady Lion began to cry with a whining whimper that carried far, and with which in his time he had achieved great things.

It reached the ear of Janet Sheepshanks, busy at her stocking-mending, as Toady Lion intended it should.

"I declare," she cried, "can you not give the poor little boy what he wants? A great fellow like you pestering and teasing a child like that. Think shame of yourself! What is the matter, Arthur George?"

"Hugh John tooked my cannon!" whimpered that young Machiavel.

"Haven't got your cannon, little sneak!" said Hugh John under his breath.

"Won't give me back my cannon!" wailed Toady Lion still louder, hearing Janet beginning to move, and knowing well that if he only kept it up she would come out, and, on principle, instantly take his part. Janet never inquired. She had a theory that the elder children were always teasing and oppressing the younger, and she acted upon it – acted promptly too.

"I wants – " began Toady Lion in his highest key.

"Oh, take the cannon, sneak!" said Hugh John fiercely, "chucking" his last remaining piece of artillery at Toady Lion, for Janet was almost in the doorway now.

Toady Lion burst into a howl.

"Oo-oo-ooooh!" he cried; "Hugh John hitted me on the head wif my cannon – "

"Oh, you bad boy, wait till I catch you, Hugh Picton Smith," cried Janet Sheepshanks, as the boy retreated precipitately through the open French window, – "you don't get any supper to-night, rascal that you are, never letting that poor innocent lamb alone for one minute."

In the safety of the garden walk Hugh John shook his fist at the window.

"Oh, golly," he said aloud; "just wait till Toady Lion grows up a bit. By hokey, won't I take this out of him with a wicket? Oh no – not at all!"

Now Toady Lion was not usually a selfish little boy; but this day it happened that he was cross and hot, also he had a tooth which was bothering him. And most of all he wanted his own way, and had a very good idea how to get it too.

That same night, when Hugh John was wandering disconsolately without at the hour of supper, wondering whether Janet Sheepshanks meant to keep her word, a small stout figure came waddling towards him. It was Toady Lion with the cover of a silver-plated fish-server in his hand. It was nearly full of a miscellaneous mess, such as children (and all hungry persons) love – half a fried sole was there, three large mealy potatoes, green peas, and a whole boiled turnip.

"Please, Hugh John," said Toady Lion, "I'se welly solly I broked your cannon. I bringed you mine supper. Will 'oo forgive me?"

"All right, old chap," said the generous hero of battles instantly, "that's all right! Let's have a jolly feed!"

So on the garden seat they sat down with the fish-cover propped between them, and ate their suppers fraternally and happily out of one dish, using the oldest implements invented for the purpose by the human race.

CHAPTER XXX

SAINT PRISSY, PEACEMAKER

THIS is the letter which, according to his promise, General Napoleon Smith despatched to the accredited leader of the Smoutchy boys – or, as they delighted to call themselves, the Comanche Cowboys.

Windy Standard House, Bordershire.

Mistr. Nippr. Donnan, Esqr.,

Dear Sir, – This is to warn you that on Saturday the 18th, between the hours of ten in the morning and six in the evening, we, the rightful owners of the Castle of Windy Standard, will take possession of our proppaty. Prevent us at your peril. You had better get out, for we're coming, and our motty is 'Smith for ever, and No Quarter!'

Given under our hand and seal.

(Signed) Napoleon Smith,General-Feeld-Marshall-Commanding.

P.S. – I'll teach you to kick my legs with tacketty butes and put me in nasty dunguns. Wait till I catch you, Nipper Donnan.

The reply came back on a piece of wrapping paper from the butcher's shop, rendered warlike by undeniable stains of gore. It had, to all appearance, been written with a skewer, and contrasted ill with the blue official paper purloined out of Mr. Picton Smith's office, on which the challenge had been sent. It ran thus: —

Matthew Donnan & Co.,

Butchers and Cattle Salesmen,

21 High Street, Edam, Bordershire.

Dear Sir. – Yours of the 13th received, and contents noted. Come on, you stuck-up retches. We can fight you any day with our one hand tied behind us. Better leave girls and childer at home, for we meen fightin' this time – and no error. – We'll nock you into eternal smash.

Hoping to be favoured with a continuance of your esteemed orders, – I have the honour to remain, Sir, your obedient servant to command,

N. Donnan.

The high contracting parties having thus agreed upon terms of mutual animosity, to all appearance there remained only the arbitrament of battle.

But other thoughts were working in the tender heart of Prissy Smith. She had no sympathy with bloodshed, and had she been in her father's place she would at once have given the town all their desires at any price, in order that the peace might be kept. Deeply and sincerely she bewailed the spirit of quarrelling and bloodshed which was abroad. She had her own intentions as to the enemy, Hugh John had his – which he had so succinctly summed up in the "favour of the 13th," acknowledged with such businesslike precision by Mr. Nipper Donnan in his reply to General Napoleon's blue official cartel.

Without taking any one into her confidence (not even Sammy Carter, who might have laughed at her), Priscilla Smith resolved to set out on a mission of reconciliation to the Comanche Cowboys. Long and deeply she prepared herself by self-imposed penances for the work that was before her. She was, she knew, no Joan of Arc to lead an army in battle array against a cruel and taunting enemy. She was to be a St. Catherine of Siena rather, setting out alone and unfriended on a pilgrimage of mercy. She had read all she could lay her hands on about the tanner's daughter, and a picture of the great barn-like brick church of San Dominico where she had her visions, hung over the wash-stand in Prissy's little room, and to her pious eyes made the plain deal table seem the next thing to an altar.

Prissy wanted to go and have visions too; and so, three times a day she went in pilgrimage to the tool-house where the potatoes were stored, as being the next best thing to the unattainable San Dominico. This was a roomy place more than half underground, and had a vaulted roof which was supported by pillars – the remains, doubtless, of some much more ancient structure.

Here Prissy waited, like the Scholar Gipsy, for the light from heaven to fall; but, alas, the light refused to come to time. Well, then, she must just go on without it as many another eager soul had done before her. There only remained to make the final preparations.

On the morrow therefore she waited carefully after early dinner till General Smith and Toady Lion had gone off in the direction of the mill-dam. Then she took out the little basket which she had concealed in the crypt of San Dominico – that is to say in the potato house. It stood ready packed and covered with a white linen cloth.