Chapter III: Part 3

This scheme was carried out, Tintinnabulum, after a thoughtful study of Patricia’s epistolary style, producing something in this manner, no doubt with the holy look on his face that is always there when he knows he is concocting a masterpiece. (I regret that he has forgotten what he said in the introductory passage, which dealt in an artful feminine manner with her garments and was probably a beauty.)

“Darling Doubly Doubly,

... oh dear, I am so unhappy because I fear the match between darlingest mummy and Mr. K. is not to be hit off. Oh dear, she blows hot and cold and it makes me bleed to see the poor man’s anguishes, and you and me wanting it so much. If only I could think of a lady-like way to tell mummy that we know she wants it and that we want her to go ahead, but I cannot, and it would need a wonder of a man to do it. Oh dear, how lovely it would be, oh dear, how I wish I knew some frightfully clever person, oh dear——”

“I stopped there,” Tintinnabulum told me. “I meant to put in a lot more before I finished, but I wouldn’t let myself go on.”

“Why?” I asked eagerly, aware that he had reached a great moment in his life.

“Because,” he said heavily, “I saw all at once that I had come to the end.” (We are so undemonstrative that I did not embrace him).

The letter was left as arranged, on Mrs. Daly’s floor, and I may say at once that everything went as planned by the Master. Can we not see Mildred (all authors have a right to call their heroine by her Christian name), opening the door of that room? Her beautiful face is down-cast, all the luckier for Tintinnabulum and Co., for she at once sees the life-giving sheet. She picks it up, meaning to replace it on the desk whence it has so obviously fluttered, when a word catches her eye, and not intending to read she reads. An exquisite flush tints her face as she recognises Patricia’s inimitable style. The happy woman is now best left to herself (Come away, Tintinnabulum, you imp).

Dear (not dearest) heroine, you little know who is responsible for your raptures, the indifferent lad now trying to twist one leg round his neck as he finishes his apple. Grudge us not the few minutes in which for literary purposes we have snatched you from the shores of the blue Mediterranean. Thither we now return you to cloudless days and to your K., roses in your cheeks (Tintinnabulum’s roses). And you, O lucky K., when you encounter boys of thirteen, might do worse than have a mysterious prompting to give them a franc or so. I wish you both very happy, and I am, yours affec.

“Shall I send them your love?” I almost hear myself saying to Tintinnabulum.

“If you like,” he replies, preoccupied with what is left of an apple when the apple itself has gone. For it must be admitted of him that he has not boasted of his achievement. His only comment was modesty itself, “Two bob,” he said.

It is almost appalling to reflect that no woman who knows Tintinnabulum (and has two bob) need remain single. And what character apples have, even when being consumed; if I had given him an orange or a pear this chapter would be quite different. With such deep thoughts I put out his light, and took away the other apple which he had hidden beneath his pillow.

6. _Nemesis_

As the holidays waned (and after W. W. was safely stowed away in bed) Tintinnabulum gratified me by being willing to talk about Neil. If you had heard us at it you would have sworn that those two had no very close connection, that Neil was merely some interesting whipper-snapper who had played about the house until the manlier Tintinnabulum arrived. He was always spoken of between us as Neil, which obviously suited Tintinnabulum’s dignity, but I wonder how I took to it so naturally myself. I hope I am not a queer one.

By that arrangement Tintinnabulum can make artful enquiries, not unwistful, into his own past, and I can seem (thus goes the game) not to know that he is doing so. He can even commend Neil.

“Pretty decent of him,” he says, discussing the Bruiser Belt and the score against Juddy’s.

“I didn’t think he had it in him,” is even stronger about the sea-trout Neil had landed and been so proud of that he would not lie prone till it was put in a basin by his bedside. He had then slept with one arm over the basin.

Strongest of all is to say that Neil was mad, at present a term not only of approval but even of endearment at the only school that counts (Tintinnabulum speaking). Sometimes we talk of the dark period when Neil, weeping over his first Latin grammar, used to put a merry tune on the gramophone to accompany his woe. He continued to weep as he studied, but always rose at the right time to change the tune. This is a heart-breaker of a memory to me, and Tintinnabulum knows it and puts his hand deliciously on my shoulder (that kindest gesture of man to man).

“The gander must have been mad, quite mad,” he says hurriedly.

How Neil would like to hear Tintinnabulum saying these nice things about him.

Perhaps we all have a Neil. Have you ever wakened suddenly in the night, certain that you heard a bell ring as it once rang or a knocking on your door as only one could knock or a voice of long ago, quite close? Sometimes you rise and wander the house; more often, after waiting alert for a repetition of the sound, you decide that you have been dreaming or that it was the creaking of a window or a board. But I daresay it was none of these things. I daresay it was your Neil.

Perhaps you have become something quite different from what he meant to be. Perhaps he wants to get into the house, not to gaze proudly at you but to strike you.

Some drop their Neil deliberately and can recall clearly the day of the great decision, but most are unaware that he has gone. For instance, it may have been Neil who married the lady and you who gradually took his place, so like him in appearance that she is as deceived as you. Or it may be that she has found you out and knows who it is that is knocking on the door trying to get back to her. You might be scared if you knew that though she is at this moment attending to your wants with a smile for you on her face, her passionate wish is to be done with you. On the other hand, you may be the better fellow of the two. Let us decide that this is how it is.

* * * * *

The last week of the holidays was darkened for Tintinnabulum and W. W. by the shadow of a letter demanded of them by their tutor. It had to be on one of three subjects:

(_a_) Your Favourite Walk.
(_b_) Your Favourite Game.
(_c_) What shall I do next Half?

A nasty tag attached to m’ tutor’s order said “the letter must be of great length.” Little had they troubled about it till the end loomed, but then they rumbled wrathfully; well was it for their tutor he heard not what they said of him.

Tintinnabulum of course was merely lazy, or on principle resented writing anything for less than 3_d._ Grievous, however, was the burden on W. W., whose gifts lie not in a literary direction. He is always undone by his clear-headed way of putting everything he knows on any subject into the first sentence. He had a shot at (_a_), (_b_) and (_c_).

_Attempt on (a)._ “My favourite walk is when I do not have far to go to it.” (Here he stuck.)

_Attempt on (b)._ “The game of cricket is my favourite game, and it consists of six stumps, two bats and a ball.” After wandering round the table many times he added, “Nor must we forget the bails.” (Stuck again.)

_Attempt on (c)._ “Next half is summer half, so early school will be half an hour earlier.” (Final stick.)

He then abandoned hope and would, I suppose, have had to run away to sea (if boys still do that) had not Help been nigh.

For a consideration (and you can now guess exactly how much it was) Tintinnabulum offered to write W. W.’s letter for him. I did not see it till later (as you shall learn), indeed the episode was purposely kept dark from me. The subject chosen was “My Favourite Walk,” because Tintinnabulum had a book entitled Walks and Talks with the Little Ones, which never before had he thought might come in handy. Of course such a performer by no means confined himself to purloining from this work, though he did have something to say about how W. W. wandered along his walk carrying a little book into which he put “interesting plants.” Anything less like W. W. thus engaged I cannot conceive, unless it be Tintinnabulum himself.

The miscreant also carefully misspelt several words, as being natural to W. W. Unfortunately (his fatal weakness) he could not keep his own name out of the letter, and he made W. W. say that the favourite walk was “near the house of my kind friend Tintinnabulum, and you know him, sir, for he is in your house, and I mess with him, which is very lucky for me, all the scugs wanting to mess with him and nobody wanting me.”

Could brainy critics, peeled for the pounce, read that human document they would doubtless pause to enquire into its hidden meaning. On the surface it was written (_a_) to get 3_d._ out of W. W., (_b_) to give relief to Tintinnabulum’s ego. To the ordinary reader (with whom to-day we have no concern) this might suffice, but the digger would ask, what is the philosophy of life advanced by the author, is the whole thing an allegory and if so, what is Tintinnabulum’s Message; in short, is he, like the commoner writers, merely saying what he says, or, like the big chaps, something quite different?

Had his tutor considered the letter thus, we might have had a most interesting analysis of it (and no one would have been more interested than Tintinnabulum). But though a favourite of mine (and also of Tintinnabulum) his tutor is just slightly Victorian, and he went for the letter like one of the illiterate.

It was not seen by me until the two hopefuls returned to school, when I received it from their tutor with another one which is uncommonly like it. Investigation has elicited the following data, for which kindly allow me to use (_a_), (_b_) and (_c_) again, as I have taken a fancy to them.

(_a_) Letter is read and approved by W. W.

(_b_) W. W. on reflection objects to passage about the honour of messing with Tintinnabulum.

(_c_) Ultimatum issued by Tintinnabulum that the passage must be retained.

(_d_) MS. haughtily returned to the author.

(_e_) The author alters a few words and sends in letter as his own.

(_f_) W. W. has made a secret copy of the letter and sends it in as his, with the objectionable passage deleted.

(_g_) Their tutor smells a rat.

(_h_) He takes me into his confidence.

(_i_) Days pass but I remain inactive.

(_j_) He puts the affair into the hands of Beverley, the head of the house.

(_k_) Triumph of Miss Rachel.

Miss Rachel who is an old friend of ours is slight and frail, say 5 ft. 3, her biceps cannot be formidable and I question whether she could kick the beam however favourably it was placed for her. She is such an admirer of Tintinnabulum that he occasionally writhes, in his fuller knowledge of the subject.

Having led a quiet and uneventful life (so far as I know), Miss Rachel suddenly shoots into the light through her acquaintance with the Beverleys of Winch Park, which is, as it were, nothing; but the great Beverley, Beverley the thunderous, who is head of m’ tutor’s house, is a scion of that family; and now you see what a swell Miss Rachel has become. When Neil (as he then was) was entered for that great school she wrote to Beverley—fancy knowing someone who can write to Beverley—telling him (to Neil’s indignation) what a darling her young friend was and hoping Beverley would look after him and make him his dear little fag. Months elapsed before a reply came, but when it did come it really referred to Tintinnabulum and contained these pregnant words: “As to the person in whom you are interested, I look after him a good deal, and the more I see of him the more I lick him.”

Miss Rachel showed me the letter with exultation. So kind of him, she said, though she was a little distressed that a strapping fellow like Beverley should spell so badly.

More recently I had a letter from Tintinnabulum, which I showed to her as probably denoting the final transaction in the affair of the letter.

“W. W. and I,” it announced very cheerily, “saw Beverley yesterday in his room and he gave each of us six of the best.”

“How charming of Beverley!” Miss Rachel said.

“The best what?” she enquired, but I cannot have heard her, for I made no answer.

I learn that sometimes she thinks it was probably cakes and at other times fives balls, which she knows to be in great demand at that school. I shall not be surprised if Miss Rachel sends a dozen of the best to Beverley.

7. _How to Write a Collins_

I note that the dozen of the best shared by these two odd creatures seems to have made them pals again. The proof is that though they began the new half by messing with other youths they are now once more messing together.

“That priceless young cub, W. W.,” occurs in one letter of Tintinnabulum’s.

“W. W. is the lad for me,” he says in the next.

Again, I have a note of thanks for hospitality from W. W. in which he remarks, “Tintinnabulum is as ripping as ever.” This, however, is to be discounted, as, though the letter is signed W. W. Daly, I recognise in it another hand, I recognise this other hand so clearly that I can add a comment in brackets (3_d._).

Yes, I can do so (because of a game I have long been playing), but any other person would be deceived, just as m’ tutor was at first deceived by the epistles on the favourite walk. He told me that these were so fragrant of W. W. that he had thought Tintinnabulum must be the copy-cat. Indeed, thus it was held until W. W. nobly made confession.

What I must face is this, that Tintinnabulum, being (alas) an artist, has been inside W. W. Not only so, he has since his return to school been inside at least half a dozen other boys, searching for Collinses for them.

A Collins, as no one, perhaps except Miss Austen, needs to be told, is the fashionable name for a letter of thanks for hospitality to a host or hostess. Thus W. W.’s letter to me was a Collins. Somehow its fame has spread through his house, and now Tintinnabulum is as one possessed, writing threepenny Collinses for the deficient. They are small boys as yet, but as the quality of his Help is trumpeted to other houses I conceive Fields, Blues and Choices knocking at his door and begging for a Collins. It will be a great day for Tintinnabulum when Beverley applies.

The Collins letter is a fine art in which those who try the hardest often fall most heavily, and perhaps even m’ tutor or the Provost Himself, at his wit’s end how to put it neatly this time, will yet crave a 3_d._ worth. It may even be that readers grown grey in the country’s service, who quake at thought of the looming Collins, would like to have Tintinnabulum’s address. It is refused; but I mention, to fret them, that his every Collins is guaranteed different from all his other Collinses, and to be so like the purchaser that it is a photograph.

If you were his client you could accept Saturday to Monday invitations with a light heart. But don’t, when he is at your Collins, go near him and the babe lest he clutch it to his breast and growl. He has the great gift of growling, which will yet make him popular with another sex.

His concentration on the insides of others is of course very disturbing to me, but I should feel still more alarmed if I heard that he had abandoned the monetary charge and, for sheer love of the thing, was turning out Collinses gratis.

To-day there comes a ray of hope from a harassed tutor, who writes that Tintinnabulum has deserted the Collins for googly bowling, the secrets of which he is pursuing with the same terrific intensity. I can picture him getting inside the ball.

8. _He and I and Another_

You readers may smile when I tell you why I have indited these memories and fancies. It was not done for you but for me, being a foolish attempt to determine, by writing the things down (playing over by myself some of the past moves in the game), whether Tintinnabulum really does like me still. That he should do so is very important to me as he recedes farther from my ken down that road which hurries him from me. I cannot, however, after all, give myself a very definite answer. He no longer needs me of course, as Neil did, and he will go on needing me less. When I think of Neil I know that those were the last days in which I was alive.

Tintinnabulum’s opinion of himself, except when he is splashing, is lowlier than was Neil’s; some times in dark moods it is lowlier than makes for happiness. He has hardened a little since he was Neil, coarsened but strengthened. I comfort myself with the curious reflection that the best men I have known have had a touch of coarseness in them.

Perhaps I have made too much of the occasional yieldings of this boy whom I now know so superficially. The new life is building seven walls around him. Are such of his moves in the game as I can follow merely an expert’s kindness to an indifferent player?

On the other hand, I learn from a friendly source that he has spoken of me with approval, once at least, as “mad, quite mad,” and I know that my battered countenance, about which I am very “touchy” excites his pity as well as his private mirth. On the last night of the holidays he was specially gruff, but he slipped beneath my door a paper containing the words “I hereby solemnly promise never to give you cause for moral anxiety,” and signed his name across a postage stamp to give the document a special significance. Nevertheless, W. W. and he certainly do at times exchange disturbing glances of which I am the object, and these, I notice, occur when I think I am talking well. Again, if I set off to tell a humorous story in company nothing can exceed the agony on Tintinnabulum’s face. Yet I am uncertain that this is not a compliment, for if he felt indifferently toward me why should he worry about my fate?

During those holidays a master at his old preparatory sent me a letter he had received from Tintinnabulum (whom he called Neil), saying that as it was about me he considered I ought to read it. But I had not the courage to do so. Quite likely it was favourable, but suppose it hadn’t been. Besides, it was not meant for me to see, and I cling to his dew-drop about my being mad. On the whole, I think he is still partial to me. Corroboration, I consider, was provided at our parting, when he so skilfully turned what began as a tear into a wink and gazed at me from the disappearing train with what I swear was a loving scowl.

What will become of Tintinnabulum? There was a horror looking for him in his childhood. Waking dreams we called them, and they lured Neil out of bed in the night. It was always the same nameless enemy he was seeking, and he stole about in various parts of the house in search of it, probing fiercely for it in cupboards, or standing at the top of the stairs pouring out invective and shouting challenges to it to come up. I have known the small white figure defend the stair-head thus for an hour, blazing rather than afraid, concentrated on some dreadful matter in which, tragically, none could aid him. I stood or sat by him, like a man in an adjoining world, waiting till he returned to me, for I had been advised, warned, that I must not wake him abruptly. Gradually I soothed him back to bed, and though my presence there in the morning told him, in the light language we then adopted, that he had been “at it again” he could remember nothing of who the enemy was. It had something to do with the number 7; that was all we ever knew. Once I slipped from the room, thinking it best that he should wake to normal surroundings, but that was a mistake. He was violently agitated by my absence. In some vague way he seemed on the stairs to have known that I was with him and to have got comfort from it; he said he had gone back to bed only because he knew I should be there when he woke up. I found that he liked, “after he had been an ass,” to wake up seeing me “sitting there doing something frightfully ordinary, like reading the newspaper,” and you may be sure that thereafter that was what I was doing.

After he had been a year or two at his preparatory, Neil did a nice thing for me; one of a thousand. I had shaken my head over his standing so low in Maths, though he was already a promising classic, and had said that it was “great fun to be good at what one was bad at.” A term or two later when he came home he thrust the Maths prize into my hand. “But it wasn’t fun,” he growled. (It was Neil’s growl before it was Tintinnabulum’s.) He came back to blurt out, “I did it because in those bad times you were always sitting there with the newspaper when I woke.”

By becoming Tintinnabulum he is not done with his unknown foe, though I think they have met but once. On this occasion his dame had remained with him all night, as he had been slightly unwell, and she was amused, but nothing more, to see him, without observing her, rise and search the room in a fury of words for something that was not there. The only word she caught was “seven.” He asked them not to tell me of this incident, as he knew it would trouble me. I was told, and, indeed, almost expected the news, for I had sprung out of bed that night thinking I heard Neil once again defending the stair. By the time I reached Tintinnabulum it had ceased to worry him. “But when I woke I missed the newspaper,” he said with his adorable smile, and again putting his hand on my shoulder. How I wished “the newspaper” could have been there. There are times when a boy can be as lonely as God.

What is the danger? What is it that he knows in the times during which he is shut away and that he cannot remember to tell to himself or to me when he wakes? I am often disturbed when thinking of him (which is the real business of my life), regretting that, in spite of advice and warnings, I did not long ago risk waking him abruptly, when, before it could hide, he might have clapped seeing eyes upon it, and thus been able to warn me. Then, knowing the danger, I would for ever after be on the watch myself, so that when the moment came, I could envelop him as with wings. These are, of course, only foolish fears of the dark, and with morning they all fly away. Tintinnabulum makes very merry over them. I have a new thought that, when he is inside me, he may leave them there deliberately to play upon my weakness for him and so increase his sock allowance. Is the baffling creature capable of this enormity? With bowed head I must admit he is. I make a note, to be more severe with him this half.

The Dream

HERBERT ASQUITH

My dream? Can I remember my dream?
I was floating down the nursery stair,
And my little terrier ran in front
With his feet treading on the air;
And when we came to the dining-room,
The King and the Queen were there:
And father and mother, two and two;
And a baby elephant from the Zoo,
Each on a golden chair;
And three soldiers, and Mary Rose
Riding an ostrich that pecked her toes,
And Uncle Jim
Looking very trim,
Eating a kipper.
And, when they had sung to the King,
They all sat down in a ring,
And played at hunt the slipper.

Then I saw a curling stream
And yellow flow’rs in a meadow,
And six little green frogs
Dancing a jig in the shadow:
And the tune came from a bough,
“Tweet, tweet, quiver,”
Sung by a little brown bird
That swayed above the river.

Then we all started to dance,
And Aunt Rebecca too;
Uncle Jim began to prance,
And the baby elephant blew
A curl of smoke from his cigar,
As he sat and watched the evening star.
And the little brown bird sang on,
Swaying above the river:
But a wind came whispering down,
And the leaves began to shiver.

Then with a crackly sound
Uncle Jim went flat:
He turned into a cricket-bat;
But Aunt Rebecca grew very round
And floated up like a black balloon,
Higher and higher, into the Moon.
The stars fell out of the sky;
The baby elephant whined:
“Time to get up” said nurse:
And “Flap” went the blind.

Mr. Snoogles

By Elizabeth Lowndes

Veronica lay very still in bed, then she stretched out as far as she could. Her feet travelled down to that cold region near where the sheets and blankets disappear under the mattress. She was certainly still awake, for one doesn’t stretch in dreams, and if one did one would certainly wake up.

Then she cautiously raised herself upon one elbow and looked round, slowly, at the fire. Ever since Teddy had said that Mr. Snoogles lived up the chimney she had regarded the fire with much greater interest, not to say dread. Not that Mr. Snoogles was real. He was just fun. And yet, though Veronica knew he was only fun, she often wondered how he managed to fit in the inside of the chimney—if, that is, he was at all like father, or even Dr. Blackie (who wasn’t at all big for a man). But then Teddy was the only person who claimed to have ever seen this person who had taken refuge in their chimneys, and he couldn’t be made to describe him.

In the morning and in the afternoon Mr. Snoogles was much more amusing than any shop-bought game. Veronica would laugh over him, and invent long conversations in which he said such silly things! But when the evening crept on, and the fire crackled in the grate, and flickered on the walls, it made it all so different. Why do things which aren’t true make you think they are true, at night?

Veronica remembered uneasily a curious dream. She was no longer a big girl with short hair and long thin legs; she was a green velvet pin-cushion, and pins of various sizes and colours were just about to be stuck into her before she was sent off to a village bazaar. Though that was only a dream, for a long time she never saw a pin-cushion without thinking of herself as one....

And now, to-night, she at last lay back in bed out of sight of the fire, and tried to plan adventures for the next day. Why did real adventures always pass her by?

Suddenly she heard a curious low rumbling sound. For a moment she hoped and yet dreaded that it came from the direction of the chimney, but when the sound got louder, as it did very soon, she burst out laughing, for it was only Teddy snoring. The door between their rooms was open, so no wonder she heard him. How funny, and how disappointing!

In time Veronica’s eyes closed without her noticing it, and lying there, so comfortable and so warm in bed, just on that borderland of the ordinary world of lessons and rice pudding (when one expected something else with jam on it) and that other delicious world of dreams and vague sensations.

But all at once Veronica heard a great clatter. She sat up in bed and opened her eyes wide to see in the firelight a most curious little person. He had leapt out of the chimney and dropped all the fire-irons in a heap at his feet. She could see them lying there on the white woolly mat, all at sixes and sevens.

He was very small, about as high as the poker. He had large round eyes, nearly as round as two pennies. And on his head, perched on the very top, was the lid of the nursery kettle! It was a copper kettle, and was always kept very bright.

The stranger was dressed in black and his clothes fitted him quite tight, like a well-drawn-up stocking or a glove.

Veronica gazed at him, her eyes growing almost as round as his own.

Then he stamped his foot, and raising his arms over his head, he made a low bow.

“Madam, your wish to see me, though it is only prompted by idle curiosity, has brought me down from my kingdom among the chimney pots. I have a request to make to you. Will you take my place for a few hours? I am called away on urgent private affairs, but I cannot leave my work up there unless you will give me your help.”

His voice was high and sharp. It was rather like listening to a sparrow.

He went straight on, without waiting for an answer. “It is a mistake to suppose that I live in the chimney. It would be most disagreeable to do so, as I should have thought you, who have imagination, would realize. But I am talking too much. I wait respectfully, Madam, for your answer. Will you help me?”

Veronica wriggled uncomfortably under the warm bedclothes.

“I will help you if I can.” She was a cautious, as well as a truthful, child, so she added hastily, “I don’t want to say I will, if I can’t. And are you—_are_ you Mr. Snoogles?”

The strange little man standing on the mat threw back his head so suddenly that the lid of the kettle fell off and bounced away behind the coal scuttle.

“Oh, how funny!” he laughed. “I shall add that to my collection. No, I’m _not_ Mr. Snoogles; but I am the person whom your brother calls Mr. Snoogles.”

“So Teddy _has_ seen you after all. Sometimes I thought Mr. Snoogles was only a game.”

“Indeed, I’m not a game. What a horrid thing to be! Imagine being a football?”

“Or a pin-cushion,” said Veronica hastily. “I know because I believed I was one once, but only for a short time,” she added, because she was truthful, but also in case Mr. Snoogles found a stray pin on the floor and, remembering what she had said, might stick it into her. He looked such a tidy man.

“I can assure you, Madam, that I will not request you to do anything at all difficult. I shall only require your services for a short period—say about ten years.”

“_Ten years?_ But in ten years I shall be quite old—that is, quite grown up. I shall be twenty-one.”

“Well, what of that? My work is much more amusing than what you do all day—lessons, walks, quarrels.”

Veronica felt a little taken aback.

“But I don’t quarrel—that is to say, not much, not nearly as much as do our cousins in the country or as the long-haired family we see in the park. Would you like to hear my names? I am not madam yet. You see, I am not married. And won’t you sit down?”

“No, I never sit down. It’s lazy. Proceed with your names. Though I know what I call you to myself.”

“I was christened Elizabeth Veronica Sybella—now, what do _you_ call me?”

“Never mind. Don’t ask questions. It’s bad manners.”

Veronica felt annoyed, but she put her pride in her pocket and asked: “If I do what you want me to do—will you tell me then?”

“I shall if you deserve it.”

What a horrid thing to say! How like a holiday governess!—the sort that Veronica and her brother had had last summer.

“We must be gone. You have been wasting _our_ time. Not that time is money to me.”

“Isn’t it? It is to father, though how he makes it into money I don’t know. I have so much time I could make such a lot of money if only I knew how to do it.”

“Money is silly stuff. Look how easily it burns. Only yesterday I saw the kitchenmaid at No. 5 throw a five-pound note on to the fire. She didn’t know what it was, poor silly girl, though she is very clever at washing cups and saucers. Come on now!”

Veronica jumped out of bed, and ran over to the fireplace.

“Do we go up there?” she said, looking at the chimney and then at the dying fire. “Won’t it burn?”

“Not when you are with me. Fire is my servant. I am fire’s lord and master. But if you feel at all nervous I will command it to die.”

With these dramatic words Mr. Snoogles clapped his hands together and cried out: “Servant, hide thyself! Let thy light burn dim while we pass over you.”

Instantly the coals grew grey and dusty.

Mr. Snoogles put out his hand, and taking Veronica’s fingers firmly in his, he pulled her up, and soon she found herself being drawn up higher and higher.

“When we get to the top I will explain what you have to do.”

Veronica said nothing. Adventure had come at last—the real thing, better than any story-book she had ever read, because it was happening to her—actually to her.

They suddenly came out into the night air. To the right, to the left, in fact, wherever she looked, were chimney pots. Some had strange things on them like hats.

Then it was that Veronica noticed she had become about the same size as Mr. Snoogles. She did not feel cold, either, which was stranger still. But she sat down as she had been told, and gazed about her. High above, the stars were twinkling and the young moon was shining.

Mr. Snoogles coughed.

“Have you finished thinking your thoughts, and will you now think of mine?” he said crossly.

“I am so sorry. Please tell me yours.”

“My business—and soon it will be _your_ business, don’t forget—is to be the Watchman of Fire and Smoke. Smoke is used for punishment because it is unpleasant. But Fire brings warmth and happiness. You will have power over them both, but you must keep Fire in his proper place. When you see things not going well in a house then send down Smoke. If they bear it well, and cease to think of themselves, call it back and ask Fire to burn brightly to warm them, and to make them feel happy and cheerful. If a live coal flies out on the mat, you must be there to make it go out. A house on fire is a terrible thing, and means you have not been doing your work properly.” He waited a moment, then exclaimed: “I must be going soon, so do your best!”

“But how shall I——?” Veronica looked round, but Mr. Snoogles had vanished, and she found herself alone on the roof.

“I can’t do it, it’s too difficult,” she said to herself, “much more difficult than learning a long speech out of Shakespeare. One can always do that if one really tries, but this——?”

* * * * *

“Veronica, Veronica, I have been screaming at you for ages. There is a big fire outside! That empty house is burning down, I can see it from my window——”

Teddy was jumping about in his pyjamas. “Come along! Hurry up!” he shouted.

Veronica got out of bed as if she was dreaming. Then she cried in great distress, “It’s my fault—that fire. Mr. Snoogles said I must not allow it to happen.”

“Don’t be so silly. Mr. Snoogles isn’t real. Come along!”

The two children ran to the window, and in the excitement of watching the fire engines arrive, and the water pouring out of the great hose pipes Veronica forgot her part in this tragedy.

Later in the morning, as they were coming in from a walk, Veronica said, “Teddy, what was Mr. Snoogles really like when you saw him? Do tell me and I will tell you a great secret.”

“Mr. Snoogles? I will show him to you.”

Teddy took off his coat and hat, and running halfway up the stairs, he threw his coat round a pillar which marked the half landing. Then he put his cap on the round knot at the top.

“Veronica! Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Snoogles!”

“Teddy! D’you mean you never saw him really? I have.”

“Of course I didn’t. And you haven’t either!”

Veronica said nothing to that. She knew better.

Eggs

HERBERT ASQUITH

Bob has blown a hundred eggs,
Blue and olive, white and grey;
Warbler, nightingale, and thrush,
Bob has blown their songs away!

Low in spotless wool they rest,
Purest blue and clouded white,
Streaked with cinnamon and red,
Flecked with purples of the night;

Mute and gleaming, row on row,
Lie the tombstones of the spring!
What a chorus would there be
If those eggs began to sing!

The Two Sailors

JOHN LEA

_This was one_

There once was a sailor who never could bear
To rub any oil on the top of his hair,
And no one who loved him at sea or at home
Would offer the use of a brush and a comb.
He said (and what reason for doubting the tale?)
The very best brush is the breath of a gale,
While as to the comb—seek a better, in vain,
Than jolly good torrents of tropical rain.
So all round the world (and no cruise did he miss)
That singular sailor looked something like _this_.

_This was the other one_

There once was a sailor who lavished with care
Whole buckets of oil on the top of his hair,
And no one who loved him omitted to speak
In rapture of tresses so splendidly sleek.
He said (and who questions what mariners say?)
He brushed them and combed them each hour of the day.
For, up on the mast in the wildest of seas,
He never neglected such duties as these.
And so, as no chance he would lazily miss,
That singular sailor looked something like _this_.

Doctor Dolittle meets a Londoner in Paris

HUGH LOFTING

One day John Dolittle was walking alone in the Tuileries Gardens. He had been asked to come to France by some French naturalists who wished to consult him on certain new features to be added to the zoo in the Jardin des Plantes. The Doctor knew Paris well and loved it. To his way of thinking it was the perfect city—or would be, if it were not so difficult to get a bath there.

It had been raining all day, but now the sun was shining, and the gardens, fresh and wet, looked very beautiful. As the Doctor passed one of the many shrubberies he came upon a sparrow wallowing in a puddle in the middle of the gravel path.

“Why, I declare!” he muttered to himself, hurrying forward. “It’s Cheapside!”

The small bird, evidently quite accustomed to human traffic, was far too busy with his bathing to notice anyone’s approach.

“How do you do, Cheapside?” said the Doctor in sparrow language. “Who on earth would ever have thought of finding you here?”

The sparrow stopped his fluttering and wallowing and looked up through the water that ran down in big drops off his tousled head-feathers.

“Jiminy Crickets!” he exclaimed. “It’s the Doc himself!”

“How do you come to be in Paris?” asked John Dolittle.

“Oh, it’s all Becky’s doing,” grumbled Cheapside, hopping out of the puddle and fluttering his wings to dry them. “I’m satisfied to stay in London, goodness knows. But every Spring it’s the same way: ‘Let’s take a hop over to the Continong,’ says she. ‘The horse-chestnuts will just be budding.’ ‘We got horse-chestnut trees in Regent’s Park,’ I says to ’er. ‘Ah,’ says she, ‘but not like the ones in the Twiddle-didee Gardens. Oh, I love Paris in the Spring,’ she says.... It’s always the same way: every year she drags me over ’ere. Sentiment, I reckon it is. You see, Doc, me and Becky met one another first ’ere—right ’ere in the Twiddle-didee Gardens. I recognised ’er as a London Sparrow—you can tell ’em the world over—and we got talkin’. You know the way those things ’appen. She wanted to build our first nest up there in the Lufer Palace. But I says, ‘No,’ hemphatic. ‘Let’s go back to St. Paul’s,’ I says. ‘I know a place in St. Edmund’s left ear what ’as all the stonework in Paris beat ’ollow as a nestin’ place. Besides,’ I says, ‘we don’t want our children growing up talkin’ no foreign language! We’re Londoners,’ I says: ‘let’s go back to London.’”

“Yes,” said the Doctor. “Even I guessed you were a London sparrow, before I recognised you, because——”

“Because I was washin’,” Cheapside finished. “That’s true: these ’ere foreign birds don’t run to water much.”

“That’s a fine puddle you have there,” said the Doctor. “I’ve half a mind to ask you to lend it to me. You know, I’ve been trying to get a bath myself ever since I’ve been in Paris—without success so far. After all, even a puddle is better than nothing. When I asked them at the _pension_ where I’m staying could I have a bath, they seemed to think I was asking for the moon.”

“Oh, I can tell you where you can get a bath, Doctor, a good one,” said the sparrow. “Just the other side of that shrubbery over there there’s an elegant marble pond, with a fountain and statues in the middle. You can hang your bath-towel on the statue and use the fountain for a shampoo. Just helegant!—But of course you’d have to do it after dark. Anybody washin’ in Paris is liable to get arrested—not because you ’ad no clothes on, mind you. Oh no, the French is very sensible about that. Look at all these statues: they don’t wear no clothes—and in summertime it’s much cooler for ’em. But washin’? That’s another matter. Over ’ere they’re very suspicious of anybody washin’. Just the same you could manage a tub in the marble pond late at night, easy—because there’s hardly anybody in the gardens then.”

“My gracious! I’ve a good mind to try it, Cheapside,” said the Doctor. “I haven’t had a bath in over a week.”

“Well,” said the Cockney sparrow, “you meet me here at midnight and me and Becky will guide you to the pond and keep a look-out while you get a wash.”

* * * * *

There was a half moon that night. And when, a few minutes before twelve o’clock, John Dolittle came into the Tuileries Gardens with a bath-towel over his arm, the first person he saw was a French policeman. Not wishing to be taken for a suspicious character, he thrust the bath-towel beneath his coat and hurried past the shrubbery as though bent on important business.

But he had not gone very far before he was overtaken by Cheapside and his wife, Becky.

“Don’t get worried, Doc, don’t get worried,” said the sparrow. “That bobby only goes by about once every ’alf-hour. ’E won’t be back for a while. Come over ’ere and we’ll show you your dressing-room.”

John Dolittle was thereupon conducted to a snug retreat in the heart of a big shrubbery.

“Nobody can see you ’ere,” said Cheapside. “And as soon as you’re ready all you’ve got to do is to ’op round that privet-’edge, sprint across the little lawn and there’s your bath waitin’ for you. Me and Becky will keep a look-out. And if any danger comes along we’ll whistle.”

Five minutes later the famous naturalist was wallowing luxuriously in the marble pond. The night was softly brilliant with moonlight, and the statues in the centre of the pool stood out palely against the dark mass of the trees behind.

John Dolittle had paused a moment with a cake of soap uplifted in his hand, utterly enchanted by the beauty of the scene, when he heard Cheapside hoarsely whispering to him from a branch overhead.

“Look out! Hide quick! Someone coming!”

Now the Doctor had left his bath-towel on the base of the statue. At Cheapside’s warning he splashed wildly out to get it before attempting a retreat to the shrubbery. Breathless, he finally reached the fountain. But just as he was about to grasp the towel Becky called from the other side of the pond:

“Cheapside! There is another party coming in at the other gate! The Doctor can never make it in time.”

John Dolittle, waist-deep in the water at the foot of the statue, looked about him in despair.

“Gracious! What shall I do then?” he cried drawing the bath-towel over his shoulders.

“You’ll have to be a statue,” hissed Cheapside the quick thinker. “Hop up on to the pedestal. They’ll never know the difference in this light. When they go by you can come down. Hurry! They’re quite close. I can see their heads over the top of the hedge.”

Swiftly winding his bath-towel about him, John Dolittle sprang up on to the pedestal and crouched in a statuesque pose. The marble group was of Neptune the sea-god and several attendant figures. John Dolittle, M.D., became one of the attendant figures. His hand raised to shade his eyes from an imaginary sun, he gazed seaward with a stony stare.

“Fine!” whispered Cheapside, flying on to the base of the statue. “No one could tell you from the real thing. Just keep still and you’ll be all right. They won’t stay, I don’t expect. Here they come. Don’t get nervous, now. Bless me, I believe they’re English too!—Tourists. Well, did you ever?”

A man and a woman, strolling through the gardens by one of the many crossing paths, had now paused at the edge of the pond and, to John Dolittle’s horror, were gazing up at the statue in the centre of it. They were both elderly; they both carried umbrellas; and they both wore spectacles.

“I’ll bet they’re short-sighted, Doc,” whispered Cheapside comfortingly. “Don’t worry.”

“Dear me, Sarah,” sighed the man. “What a beautiful night! The moon and the trees and the fountain. And such an imposing statue!—The sea-god Neptune with his mermaids and mermen.”

“Lancelot,” said the woman shortly, “let us hurry home. You’ll get your bronchitis worse in this damp air. I don’t like the statue at all. I never saw such fat creatures. Just look at that one on the corner there—the one with his hand up scanning the horizon. Why, he’s stouter than the butcher at home!”

“Humph!” muttered Cheapside beneath his breath. “It don’t seem to me as though _you_ ’ave any figure to write ’ome about, Mrs. Scarecrow.”

At this moment a large flying beetle landed on the Doctor’s neck and nearly spoiled everything.

“Good gracious, Sarah!” cried the man. “I thought I saw one of the figures move, the fat one.”

The tourist adjusted his spectacles and, coming a little closer to the edge of the pond, stared very hard. But Cheapside, to add a touch of convincing realism, flew up on to the merman’s shoulder, kicked the beetle into the pond with a secret flick of his foot and burst into a flood of carefree song.

“No, Sarah,” said the man. “I was mistaken. See, there is a bird sitting on his shoulder. How romantic! Must be a nightingale.”

“_Will_ you come home, Lancelot?” snapped the woman. “You won’t feel so romantic when your cough comes back. It must be after midnight.”

“But you know, Sarah,” said the man, as he was almost forcibly dragged away, “_I_ don’t think he’s too fat. They had to be stout, those marine people: they floated better that way. Dear me, Paris is a beautiful city!”

As the footsteps died away down the moonlit path, John Dolittle sighed a great sigh of relief and came to life.

“Cheapside,” said he, stretching his stiff arms, “you could never guess who those people were. My sister Sarah and her husband, the Reverend Lancelot Dingle. It’s funny, Cheapside, but whenever I am in an awkward or ridiculous situation Sarah seems bound to turn up. Of course she and her husband would just _have_ to come touring Paris at the exact hour when I was taking a bath in the Tuileries Gardens. Ah well, thank goodness the pond kept them off from getting any closer to me!”

“Well, listen, Doc,” said the London sparrow: “I think you had better be gettin’ along yourself now. It’s about time for that bobby to be coming round again.”

“Yes, you’re right,” said the Doctor. And he slid back into the water, waded to the edge and stepped out on to dry ground.

But John Dolittle’s troubles were not over yet. While he was still no more than half way to his “dressing-room” there came another warning shout from Cheapside:

“Look out!—Here he comes!”

This time flight seemed the only course. The policeman had seen the culprit disappear into the shrubbery. Breaking into a run, he gave chase.

“Don’t stop, Doc!” cried Cheapside. “Grab your clothes and get out the other side—Becky! Hey, Becky! Keep that policeman busy a minute.”

The Doctor did as he was told. Seizing his clothes in a pile as he rushed through the shrubbery, he came out at the other end like an express train emerging from a tunnel. Here Cheapside met him and led him across a lawn to another group of bushes. Behind this he hurriedly got into his clothes. Meanwhile Becky kept the policeman busy by furiously pecking him in the neck and making it necessary for him to stop and beat her off.

However, she could not of course keep this up for long. And if John Dolittle had not been an exceptionally quick dresser he could never have got away. In one minute and a quarter, collar and tie in one hand, soap and towel in the other, he left his second dressing-room on the run and sped for the gate and home.

The loyal Cheapside was still with him; but the sparrow was now so convulsed with laughter that he could scarcely keep up, even flying.

“I don’t see what you find so funny about it,” panted the Doctor peevishly as he slowed down at the gate and began putting on his collar. “I had a very narrow escape from getting arrested.”

“Yes, and you’d have gone to jail, too,” gasped Cheapside. “It’s no light offence, washing in this country. But that wasn’t what I was laughing at.”

“Well, what was it, then?” asked the Doctor, feeling for a stud in his pocket.

“The Reverend Dingle took me for a nightingale!” tittered the Cockney sparrow. “I must go back and tell Becky that. So long, Doc! You’ll be all right now. That bobby’s lost you altogether.... After all, you got your bath. See you in Puddleby next month.”

Vice-versa
ANY FATHER TO ANY DAUGHTER

HENRY NEWBOLT

If buttercups were white and pink,
And roses green and blue,
Then you instead of me could think,
And I instead of you.

Then I could daily give your doll
Her early evening tub,
While you in easy-chairs could loll
At some or other Club.

Then I could spell p-i-g pidge,
And learn to sew like Nurse;
While you could take a hand at bridge,
And murmur “Zooks!” or worse.