Chapter II: Follows a Frog and Finds a Tadpole

I

The acquaintance with slave Egbert was very shortly renewed. The afternoon of the Friday that was to see the arrival of the Burdons at the Old Manor brought also a threshing-engine up the village street--a snorting and enormous thing that fetched Percival rushing to the gate and drew him after it and kept him in charmed attendance until "Post Offic" was half a mile behind. Here the engine stopped, and the men who accompanied it setting themselves to a deliberate meal, Percival turned himself into a horse that had escaped from its stable and was recaptured and began to trot himself home.

He was in the lane that strikes out of the highroad towards Burdon Old Manor when his quick eye caught sight of a frog in the grass-grown hedge-side and "Whoa!" cried Percival and changed from escaped horse to ardent frog-hunter. The sturdiest frog, it proved to be, a big, solid fellow and wonderfully nimble at great jumps when Percival was found to be in pursuit. He pressed it hotly; it bounded amain. He laughed and followed--it was here--it was there--it was lost--it was found--it was gone again. He grew stubborn and vexed in the chase. A frown stood on his moist brow. He began to breathe hotly. The frog perceived the change. It lost its wits. It dashed from cover, made with wild bounds across the road, was closely followed, and lived to tell the frightful tale by intervention of a shout before it, a stumble behind it, and the barest pulling up of the Manor wagonette within a yard of fallen Percival.

Lord Burdon jumped out and lifted Percival in his arms before the frog-hunter was well aware of what had happened. "Not hurt, eh? That's all right! You young rascal, you--you might have been killed. Haven't you got ears? What are those great flappers for, eh?" and Lord Burdon tweaked a flapper and laughed jovially. "What were you doing, eh?"

"I was chasing a frog," said Percival, rubbing his ear and using his elevation on Lord Burdon's arms to have a stare at the little boy and the pretty lady in the wagonette.

"A frog! Why here's a frog for you. Come and look at my frog in the cart here."

Lord Burdon carried him to the body of the wagonette. "Here's my frog! tadpole, rather. Rollo, look here. You're only a little tadpole, aren't you? Look what this fine air is going to do for you. Look at this great lump of a fellow. That's what you've got to be like!"

The little tadpole smiled shyly. Tadpole was an excusable description. Rollo Letham at nearly ten might have passed for younger than Percival at rising eight. He was very thin, pale, fragile; his head looked too big for his delicate frame; his eyes were big and shy, his mouth nervous.

"A shame!" said Lady Burdon, smiling. "You're not a tadpole, are you, Rollo? But this is a splendid young man!" And she stretched a kind hand--nicely gloved--across the cart to Percival.

Lord Burdon raised him to meet it. Bare knees, well-streaked with mud and blood, came into view.

"Oh, your poor little knees!" Lady Burdon cried.

Percival caught Rollo's eye fixed in some horror on the wounds. "I cut them every day!" he said bigly, and shot a proud glance at the tadpole.

"Well, they're terrible. They must be washed. Bring him in, Maurice. We'll wash him, as we've nearly killed him, at the house."

"Yes, do! Yes, please do!" Rollo whispered, and his mother patted his hand, pleased at the animation of the thin little face.

Lord Burdon hesitated: "Take him to the Manor? Why, that may be miles from his home, you know."

"I suppose we can send him back in the trap, can't we?" Lady Burdon said, a trifle disagreeably. "You're a regular old woman, Maurice. Lift him in next to Rollo. You can see how Rollo takes to him, I should have thought."

"Didn't want to be had up for kidnapping, you know," Lord Burdon responded cheerfully. "Would be a bad start in the local opinion--eh?" And he laughed with the appeal and the apology with which he always met his wife's waves of impatience. "Shove up, Rollo! In you get, frog-hunter! Heavens! What a lump. All right. Drive on!"

"Gee up!" cried Percival, highly entertained, and chatted frankly with Lady Burdon as the wagonette bowled along. To her questions he was nearly eight, he told her; he would have another birthday in a short time; Honor gave him a sword at his last birthday and his Aunt Maggie gave him a trumpet. "You may blow my trumpet, if you like," turning to Rollo. "Honor says it is poison to blow it because I've broken the little white thing what you blow through. But I blow it all right."

Rollo flushed and smiled and put a thin little hand from beneath the rug and took Percival's muddy fist and held it for the remainder of the journey. Boy friends who did not laugh at him were new to him.

"Miss Oxford's little boy," Percival explained to further questions. "I live at the post-office, and we've got a drawer _full_ of stamps with funny little holes what you tear off."

Lady Burdon turned to her husband: "Ah, I know now. You remember? You remember the vicar telling us about Miss Oxford when we first came down here? Well, she's to be congratulated on her nephew. I'm glad. He'll be the jolliest little companion for Rollo."

Lord Burdon remembered. "Yes--this will be her sister's child. Orphan, poor little beggar."

And Lady Burdon: "We'll be able to have him up with Rollo as much as we like, I've no doubt. Look how happy they are together," and she smiled at them, chatting eagerly.

Percival was twisting and bending the better to see the occupants of the box-seat. A form that seemed familiar sat beside the driver. "Why, that's Mr. Unt!" Percival cried brightly, and as the familiar form turned at the sound of its name, "How's your poor headache, Mr. Unt?" he asked. "Much better now, isn't it?"

Mr. Unt's pallid face became slightly tinged with embarrassment. "The young gentleman spoke to me at the Manor Wednesday, me lady," he apologised. "Had come up to take tea with Mr. Hamber." He profited by the touch of his hat with which he spoke to draw his hand across his forehead; a sick yedache clearly was still torturing there.

"His headaches are terrible," Percival explained. "I thought he was a clown, you know. I saw him driving in this carriage with tyrangs."

Egbert's back shivered. "Parding, me lady," said he, turning again.

Lady Burdon laughed. "Hunt," she told Percival. "Not Unt. He speaks badly."

"You know, his headaches--" Percival began; and she added more severely: "He is a servant."

"He's my servant," Rollo said. "Hunt looks after me when I go out. I hate nurses, so I have him. He'll be yours too, if you'll come and play with me. Both of ours. May he, mother?"

"You can tell Miss Oxford that some one will always be there to keep an eye on you if she will let you come and play," Lady Burdon replied to Percival.

"So now he is yours and mine," cried Rollo, squeezing the hand he held.

"Thank you very much," Percival said. "Of course, if his headache is very bad we won't have him, because he will like to lie down."

He spoke clearly; and a tiny little tremble of Egbert's back seemed to advertise again the gratitude that sympathy aroused in him.

"Oh, that's nothing," Rollo declared. "He pretends."

The poor back drooped. "Tyrangs," Egbert murmured and furtively edged a vegule to his mouth.

II

In the dusk of that evening Percival went bounding home, immensely pleased with his new friends and with the new delights in life they had discovered for him. He had nice clean knees and a bandage on each--a matter that caused him considerable pride. He had gladly promised to come to see Rollo again on the morrow, and he would have stayed much longer into the evening had not Lord Burdon (as Lady Burdon said) "begun to fidget" and to persist that Miss Oxford must be getting nervous at this long absence.

"His aunt will naturally be glad when she knows where he has been," Lady Burdon had exclaimed.

Lord Burdon gave the smile that she knew came before one of his annoying rejoinders. "That won't make her wild with joy while she doesn't know where he is, old girl."

She was irritable. The vexation of having to leave London, which she enjoyed, for Burdon which she felt she would hate, was settling upon her. She looked at him resentfully. "That is funny, I suppose?" she inquired. "You are always very funny, aren't you?" and she gave orders for Hunt to take Percival home.

Down the road Percival chattered brightly to Egbert, holding his hand. "I jump like this," he explained, capering along, "because I pretend I'm a horse. Then if you want me to walk quietly you only have to say 'whoa!' you see."

"Whoa!" said Egbert very promptly.

Percival's legs itched to jump out the animation that events had bottled into him. "Did you say 'gee up'?" he presently inquired.

"No," said Egbert.

"Oh," said Percival, and with a little sigh repeated "oh!"

Egbert felt the appeal. "Fac' of it is, that jumping jerks me up."

"Got another sick headache, have you?"

"Crool," said the living martyr to 'em.

Percival took another phrase of Aunt Maggie: "You must be thor'ly out of sorts, I think."

"Got one foot in the grave, that's what I've got," Egbert agreed. "Fac'."

Percival peered down at Egbert's legs. "Which one, please?" he inquired.

"Figger o' speech," Egbert told him, and explained: "Way of saying things." He added: "Go off in the night one of these days, I shall;" and commented with gloomy satisfaction: "Then they'll be sorry."

Percival asked: "Who will?" He visioned Egbert running by night with one foot embedded in a tombstone, and he was considerably attracted by the picture. "Who will?" he repeated.

"Tyrangs!" said Egbert. "Too late to be sorry then. Fac'."

"Well, I should be dreffly sorry," Percival assured him.

"Believe you," said Egbert, "and many thanks for the same. First that's ever said a kine word to me, you are; and I'll be grateful--if I'm spared."

He looked at his watch and then down the lane. "Think you could get home safe from here? Fac' is I'm behind with my vegules and left them in my other coat."

"Oh, yes," Percival agreed. "This is just by the corner, you know."

"Well, then," said Egbert, halting, "you see, if I don't take 'em fair, can't expec' them to treat me fair, can I?"

Percival assented: "Oh, no."

"Sure you'll be all right?"

"Oh, yes. I'll be a horse, you see. Just say 'gee up!' will you?"

"Gee up!" said Egbert.

"Stead-_ey_!" cried Percival, prancing. "Stead-_ey_! Goodnight!" and bounded off.

"Nice little f'ler," commented Egbert; and hurried back to the vegules.

Where the lane turned to the village, horse Percival was made, as he declared, to shy dreff'ly. He galloped almost into the arms of two figures that stepped suddenly out of the dusk. "Oh, Percival!" Aunt Maggie cried and kissed him. "Oh, Percival, where _have_ you been?"

"Say 'whoa!" cried Percival. "Say 'whoa!' Aunt Maggie. I'm a horse--a white one, you know."

Two heavy hands pressed the white horse's shoulders, stilling its plunges. "You're a bad little boy, that's what you are," Honor exclaimed, "running off and frightening your Auntie, and not caring nor minding. Don't Care comes before a fall, as I've told you many times and--"

"_Pride_ comes before a fall," corrected Percival. "You've got it wrong _again_, Honor," and Honor's flow was checked with the suddenness that had become the established termination of attempts to reprove Percival since he had learnt the right phrasing of her store of confused maxims.

She took his hand while she pondered doubtfully upon the correction, and with Aunt Maggie holding the other, he skipped along, bubbling over with his adventures. "I've got bandages on both my legs, Aunt Maggie--oh, and Hunt has got one of his legs in the grave, just fancy that! I've been having tea with Rollo; and Lady Burdon put on these bandages and she wants me to go and play with Rollo every day. _Do_ let me, Aunt Maggie. I say, you are squeezing my hand most dreffly, you know."

Aunt Maggie relaxed the sudden contraction of her fingers. "Lady Burdon--yes?--tell from the very beginning, Percival dear."

"Well, she said 'Promise to tell your Aunt Maggie I will come and ask her to let you be Rollo's little friend and'--Aunt _Maggie_! You're _hurting_!"

She recollected herself again and patted the small fingers. "Tell from the very beginning, dear. How did you meet them?"

"Well, you understand, I was catching a frog--"

"Post Offic" was reached, supper was swallowed, his merry head beginning to droop and nod, while still he excitedly recounted all his adventures. He was almost asleep when Aunt Maggie undressed him and put him to bed.

She sat a long time beside him, watching him while he slept.