Chapter II: Part 2

Then, a week after 'Joe' was buried, came the marvellous determination of Mathers. For the first time in his life I felt a sort of pride in Mathers, and was glad to be his chum. At the same time the danger was frightful, and I had no idea what the end might be. Only two people knew it, Milly and myself. I rather advised him against it; but she was hot and strong for it: so Mathers went ahead into a regular sea of danger. Not that he did it for Milly--far from it: he did it for himself, and to advance his prosperity with the Doctor. His prosperity with the Doctor was extremely low, and he had made one mistake already by offering the Doctor half-a-box of dates in a rather patronizing way; and so now it was neck or nothing, and Mathers well knew the frightful risks he ran in the thing he was going to do.

He said, "I always make a success or an utter failure--at games, in class and everything. Either this will make me the Doctor's friend for life, or make him my bitter enemy for life."

The idea in the strange mind of Bunny Mathers was to bring 'Joe' back again to Merivale. He could not raise him from the dead, but he meant to do the next best thing, and dig him up and secretly stuff him.

Only Mathers could have imagined this, though there were one or two other chaps equal to doing the thing if somebody else had thought of it.

I said to Mathers, "What do you know about stuffing parrots?"

And he said, "More than you might think."

He had read the article on stuffing beasts in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, which Briggs allowed him to refer to, little knowing the reason; and he said that stuffing was simpler than embalming, and that his brother, Mathers minor, had often stuffed bats and moles and other things in the holidays at home. He told me that all you want for bird-stuffing is wire, cotton-wool and pepper; and for sixpence he could get all these things in great abundance.

Milly Dunstan knew where 'Joe' was buried, and the only difficulty, in the opinion of Mathers, was digging him up. For some reason, though he did not shrink from the horrors of getting 'Joe' ready for the stuffing treatment, he hated the digging up; so I undertook to do this. There was little danger, as 'Joe' had been buried in a secluded rockery under a large fern, where nobody ever went. Milly showed me the spot on a half-holiday, when I was supposed to be stopping in, owing to bronchitis or something of that sort; and I popped out, got a trowel from the gardener's potting-shed, and dug up 'Joe.' He had been very nicely buried in a large, empty tobacco tin of Browne's; and I also made the grave look all right again and put back the wooden gravestone. Minnie had stuck this up, and on it Freckles had carved for her the rather sad words--

"_To the memory of darling 'Joe,' died 7th February, 1901. Age unknown. Regretted by all._"

Owing to the weather being frosty, and the ground simply full of splinters of ice, 'Joe' had fortunately kept perfectly. This comforted Mathers a good deal, and when I told him the poor old chap was not even gamey, he was much pleased. He worked in fearful secrecy at night, and kept 'Joe' in his play-box by day. Most of the actual work was done at the passage window by moonlight; and when the moon was no good, which happened in two days, we used a candle-end. Once the pepper got up our noses, and we both sneezed in a way to wake half the dormitory; but nobody suspected, and the work was gradually done.

I merely held things and advised. The actual stuffing was entirely the work of Bunny. When 'Joe' was once ready for the cotton-wool, the stuffing was as simple as possible; and owing to his toughness we easily sewed up his chest afterwards; but the thing was to get him to look as if he was alive. This is evidently the great difficulty in the stuffer's art, and Mathers had not mastered it by any means from the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. I said--

"For a first attempt it is spiffing; but all the same, 'Joe' never looked like that in life or death. He is now, as it were, neither dead or alive."

Mathers admitted this. He said he thought it was the want of the eyes, and that all would come right when they were in.

I asked him where he was going to get the eyes, and he said he was going to write to the great Rowland Ward for them. This he did do, and they sent a pair of most lifelike parrot's eyes, and only charged three bob. The eyes did a great deal for 'Joe,' and certainly made him look alive. But it was a strange sort of unearthly life, I thought. They made him look creepy, as if he was a ghost risen from the tomb to haunt somebody who had killed him. Also about this time we had to get some Condy's fluid to steady poor old 'Joe' down a bit. I thought this was serious, but Mathers said not. He assured me that Condy's fluid is an everyday thing in stuffing parrots and suchlike; and then I had an idea, and got my 'anti-something' tooth-powder; which also helped, and so it came to be some use after all, which tooth-powder seldom is. We varnished the claws, and tried to stick back a lot of feathers that unfortunately came out in the process of stuffing. Then I got a bit of wood and a stick for a perch, and we wired 'Joe' on and put a walnut at his feet; which was a good thought of Bunny's, because walnuts were always his favourite food.

Then, from being very confident and hopeful and full Of the Doctor's joy and gladness when he should see the parrot, Mathers sank suddenly into a sort of state of despair. He couldn't get the wings right, and he said the thought of them tortured him day and night and sent him down three places in his class. At each attempt more feathers fell out, and finally I got impatient with Mathers and told him that if he messed about with the parrot any more the thing would fall to pieces and fail utterly. I also reminded him that the matron, when passing by the play-boxes the day before, had thought there must be a dead mouse behind the wainscot. Things were, in fact, coming to a climax, and I said that as he'd had the pluck to stuff 'Joe,' I hoped, after all the fearful danger and swot we'd had, that he would keep on to the end and give him to the Doctor and trust to luck that it would come off all right.

Then he lost all heart about it and said that Milly should decide; but he was not fair to her, and only showed her the head. The rest he hid from her in a bath-towel. Of course the head was the champion part, owing to the eyes from Rowland Ward.

She cried first, but in a general way she was delighted. She praised Mathers; and she also said that it would be well to present it quickly to the Doctor, so that he could get some proper professional staffer to finish it and put a glass case over it as soon as possible. Of course a glass case was beyond our power.

Still Mathers hesitated; then, urged by me, he decided to have a second opinion. He said--

"I don't like Steggles; but he is the oldest and therefore the wisest boy in the school. I will show him the work and put myself entirely into his hands."

"There's a fearful risk," I replied, "because Steggles doesn't care for man or beast, and if he sees a chance to have some frightful score off you, he will."

"No, he won't," answered Bunny. "I shall throw myself on his sportsmanlike feeling."

"He hasn't got any," I said.

But he risked it; and for once Steggles behaved less like a common or garden cad than usual. We showed him the parrot, after making him take an oath of secrecy. The oath would have been merely a matter of form with him generally, for I have known him to break a blood-oath as if it was nothing; but somehow the excited state of Mathers and the extraordinary thing that he had done took the fancy of Steggles, and he showed a great deal of interest in the parrot, and gave us some jolly good advice into the bargain.

Of course he rotted Mathers when he'd got over the shock of the surprise. He struck an attitude of horror and fear and terror, and said, "Great snakes! Is it loaded, sergeant?" Then he pretended it was a ghost, and finally he held his nose and fainted. After all this foolery Mathers asked him for his candid opinion, and Steggles very kindly gave it. He said--

"If you take my advice you'll instantly bury it again: for two reasons. Firstly, because if the Doctor sees it he'll probably expel you; and secondly, because if you don't, the whole school will jolly soon be down with a fell disease."

To show you what Mathers is, after hearing this, nothing in the world would make him bury the parrot again. He said that it was a cruel thing, after all the danger and trouble and expense of stuffing 'Joe,' that Steggles should advise him just to bury him again; he also said that the slight scent was purely medicinal; and that, as for expelling, if the Doctor could really and truly go so far as to expel a boy who had done nothing but try with all his might to give him a moment of great and sudden happiness, then the sooner he was expelled and sent to another sort of school the better.

In fact, he was so worked up by the idea of reburying the parrot that he decided he would carry 'Joe' before the Doctor the very next day--either immediately before or after prayers.

Steggles merely said that Mathers was young and headstrong, and he hoped that he should be there to see. Then he went, and Bunny and I had a long talk as to whether before or after prayers would be best. I said after prayers on a Litany morning, because the Litany always leaves the Doctor weak but in a very kind and gentle state; whereas before prayers he is sometimes rather short.

Therefore it was so, and after the next Litany morning Mathers went up, as bold as brass to the eye, and in his hand he carried 'Joe' hidden under a clean pocket handkerchief lent by me.

The Doctor had just shut his big prayer-book, and he looked down pretty kindly at Bunny.

"What have you there, Mathers minimus?" he asked, little knowing the nature of the thing that was going to burst upon his gaze.

"Please, sir," said Bunny, "it's poor old 'Joe.'"

Doctor Dunstan didn't seem to remember.

"Poor old 'Joe'! What do you mean, boy?" he asked in a changed tone of voice.

"The parrot, sir. I thought--I thought it was a pity he should be lost to you, being a beautiful object, and I--in fact--here he is, sir--stuffed by me; and the slight smell is medicinal," said Mathers.

Then he drew off the handkerchief and held the parrot up to the Doctor. Certainly it was a great effect, and at first the Doctor was evidently far too astonished to be much obliged to Mathers. He didn't take the parrot--on the contrary, he fell back a pace or two, and his astonishment seemed slowly to change to a sort of wild horror. First he looked at the parrot, then he looked at Mathers, then he regularly glared at the parrot again. Seen from a distance the effect of the parrot was not good. Evidently we had lost more feathers than we thought, and its back had got a lump between the shoulders, more really like a vulture than a parrot. Still, of course one could recognize it.

Mathers held it up; then, getting frightened, he put it down on a form, and I knew, from the trembling way he began to handle my handkerchief that if the Doctor didn't speak pretty soon, Mathers would blub in public.

These silences of the Doctor's are well known as awful. You can hear a pin drop in them; and during them his eyes roll round and round in the sockets, like Catherine wheels, but much slower.

At last he spoke.

"Am I to understand, boy Mathers, that unaided you--you dug up, or disinterred, that unfortunate fowl and then sought to impart to it this bizarre, this grotesque, this indelicate semblance of life?"

Mathers said he was to understand that. He added with a shaking voice--

"I did it to give you pleasure, sir--on my honour."

The Doctor looked at Mathers minimus much puzzled.

"It is hard to conceive that even an immature mind, such as you possess, could suppose that pleasure would result to any intelligent being from so pitiful and indecent an achievement," he said. "The boy who tore this wretched bird from its last resting-place and set it up to caricature the entire race of _Psittacus erythacus_---- However, this is no time to investigate your conduct, Mathers. You will join me after evening school in the study."

Then he looked at the parrot again and cleared his throat. Mathers slunk away to his seat, and as he did so, suddenly the Doctor started and seemed to 'point,' like a sporting dog. I think he had discovered there was more than met the eye about the parrot. He called up Macmullen, who happened to catch his gaze, and told him to take 'Joe' to the gardener.

"Direct Smith to place these remains in the spot I originally selected," he said; "and if anybody ventures to disturb them again the consequences will be exceedingly serious. Now go to your classes."

He waved his hand, and Macmullen took the parrot, and nobody ever saw it again. But to this day Mathers swears that Smith never buried him. He believes that in some secret place in his house the gardener has 'Joe' in a glass case; because, very truly, he says that no ordinary gardener would be likely to resist the temptation of having a rare and beautiful bird to decorate his house. Besides, the glass eyes. Also it is well known that Dr. Dunstan never goes into the gardener's house; which is really the entrance lodge to Merivale, and is full of Smith's wife and children. So I dare say Bunny is right there.

He told me afterwards that Dunstan was very cold, but not actively angry in the evening. Mathers said that the Doctor didn't seem to attach any importance to the fact that he'd stuffed 'Joe' to give him a great and sudden pleasure. Instead, he evidently thought that Bunny had done a rather daring thing to please himself.

"'Unseemly' was the word he used," said Mathers to me. "He seemed to think it was not a case for much punishment; but, all the same, he has told me to write out the article on the stuffer's art from the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, which is rather rot, because I shall certainly never want to stuff anything again in this world. I couldn't tell him all I'd been through to do it, because he'd got a sort of beastly idea that I _liked_ doing it; though you know that it was nothing of the sort. On the whole it has left him against me, and he seems to take a good deal of credit to himself for not making a lot more row about it. But whether he's going to let it rankle in his mind, so that I may suffer for it more or less till the end of the term, or whether, when I've done the impot., he'll feel as usual--just neither for me nor against me--I can't say yet. He might have tried to look at it from my point of view."

"You could hardly expect him to do that: masters never do," I said.

"It's all the worse for him, anyway," answered Mathers minimus. "To rebury the parrot was a slight on me in a way; because whether he liked it or not he could have seen at a glance the hours and hours of awful trouble, and the fearful expense it must have been to me. The eyes alone were three shillings; and nobody in this world ever threw away valuable money in such a cruel manner. Besides, if it had gone off well and he'd taken it as I meant it, I fully intended other good surprises for him."

"You'd better not surprise him again for a jolly long time," I said. "He doesn't much like surprises--people don't when they grow up. They have a footling way of preferring everything to drag on in a tame and dull manner. My father hates telegrams, for instance."

"I had fully meant to get Johnson to bring him another and a better parrot," said Mathers. "Even a pair of parrots might have been arranged; and they would have made a nest about April, and laid eggs, and there would gradually have been parrots for all his daughters; and he could have taught them what he liked, even to the extent of Latin; for it is well known that a parrot will learn anything. But it's all over now. Never again will I try to give him pleasure--or anybody else either. Why, even Milly hasn't pitied me much--just because it's all a failure; whereas if he'd taken it in a manly way, and thanked me before the school, and, perhaps, given us a half-holiday or something and sent the parrot off at once to be measured for a glass case--how different it all would have been! Nobody would have called me 'body-snatcher' then; whereas now I shall be called that for life."

Which was all true enough in its way, and he was called 'body-snatcher' for ever more. Whereas, to show what mistakes happen, I'd done that part--simply as a friend.

*THE BANKRUPTCY OF BANNISTER*

*No. III*

*THE BANKRUPTCY OF BANNISTER*

*I*

I am Bannister, and what happened to me was a very gradual thing at first; but it grew and grew until finally something had to be done, and that something was called 'bankruptcy.'

Curiously enough I had heard the word before at home. In fact, as I told Gideon, who kindly let me explain my position to him, my father had once been bankrupted; and when he was a bankrupt my mother cried a good deal and my father talked about 'everlasting disgrace' and 'a bloodthirsty world,' and something in the pound. And then there came a day when my father told my mother gladly that he had been discharged, whatever that was, and my mother seemed much pleased. In fact, she said, "Thank God, Gerald!" and they had a bottle of champagne for lunch. It was in holidays, and I heard it all, and tasted the champagne, and didn't like it.

So, remembering this, when Gideon talked of me being a bankrupt, I said, "All right, and the sooner the better."

As I say, one gets hard up very gradually, and the debts seem nothing in themselves; but when, owing to chaps bothering, you go into it all on paper you may often be much surprised to find how serious things are taken altogether.

What I found was that my pocket-money was absolutely all owed for about three terms in advance, and that Steggles, who lent me a shilling upon a thing called a mortgage, the mortgage being my bat, was not going to give up my bat, which was a spliced bat and cost eight shillings and sixpence. He said what with interest and one thing and another his shilling had gained six shillings more, and that if he didn't take the bat at once he would be out of pocket. So he took it, and he played with it in a match and got a cluck's egg, and I was jolly glad. Then the tuck-woman, who is allowed to come up to the playground after school with fruit and sweets and suchlike, was owed by me seven shillings and fourpence, and she wouldn't sell anything more to me, and asked me rather often to pay the money. I told her that all would be paid sooner or later, and she seemed inclined not to believe it. Other debts were one and six owed to Corkey minimus for a mouse that he said was going to have young mice, but it didn't, and he had consented to take ninepence owing to being mistaken. Tin Lin Chow, the Chinese boy, was owed four shillings and threepence for a charm. It was a good enough charm, made of ivory and carved into a very hideous face. All the same, it never had done me much good, for here I was bankrupted six months after buying it, and the charm itself not even paid for.

There was a lot of other small debts--some merely a question of pens and caterpillars; but they all mounted up, and so I felt something must be done, because being in such a beastly mess kept me awake a good deal at night thinking what to do.

Therefore I went to Gideon, who is a Jew, and very rich, and well known to lend money at interest. He is first in the whole school for arithmetic, and his father is a diamond merchant and a banker, and many other things that bring in enormous sums of money. Gideon has no side, and he is known to be absolutely fair and kind even to the smallest kids. So I went to him and I said--

"Please, Gideon, if it won't be troubling you, I should like to speak to you about my affairs. I am very hard up, in fact, and fellows are being rather beastly about money I owe them."

"I'm afraid I can't finance you, Bannister," said Gideon awfully kindly. "My money's all out at interest just now, and, as a matter of fact, I'm rather funky about some of it."

"I don't want you to finance me," I said; "and that would be jolly poor fun for you anyway, because I've got nothing, and never shall have in this world, as far as I can see. I only want you to advise me. I'm fourteen and three-quarters, and when I was twelve and a half my father got into pretty much the same mess that I'm in now; and he got out again with ease, and even had champagne afterwards, by the simple plan of being bankrupt."

"It's not always an honourable thing--I warn you of that," said Gideon.

"I'm sure it was perfectly honourable in my father's case," I said, "because he's a frightfully honourable man. And I am honourable, too, and want to do what is right and proper as soon as possible."

"Why don't you write to your father?" asked Gideon.

"Because he once warned me--when he was being bankrupted, in fact--that if ever I owed any man a farthing he would break my neck, and my mother said at the same time--blubbing into a handkerchief as she said it--that she would rather see me in my coffin than in the bankruptcy court. All the same, they both cheered up like anything after it was all over, and father said he should not hesitate to go through it all again if necessary; but, still, I wouldn't for the world tell them what I've done. In fact, they think that I have money in hand and subscribe to the chapel offertories, and do all sorts of good with my ten bob a term; whereas the truth is that I have to pay it all away instantly on the first day of the term, and have had to ever since two terms after I first came."

"What you must do, then, is to go bankrupt," said Gideon thoughtfully.

"Yes," I said, "that's just the whole thing. How do you begin?"

"Generally other people begin," said Gideon. "Creditors, as a rule, do what they think will pay them best. Sometimes they will show great patience, if they think it is worth while, and sometimes they won't. My father has told me about these things. He has had to bankrupt a few people in his time, though he's always very sorry to do it."

"In my case nobody will show patience, because it's gone on too long," I said. "In fact, the only one who has got anything out of me for three terms is Steggles, who has taken my bat."

"He has foreclosed on a mortgage. He was quite within his rights for once," said Gideon, who rather hated Steggles, because Steggles always called him 'Shylock junior.'

"To begin," continued Gideon, "two things generally happen, I believe; there is a meeting of creditors, and soon afterwards the bailiffs come in."

"I remember my father mentioning bailiffs wildly to my mother," I said, "but I don't think they ever came in; if they did, I never saw them."

"Then no doubt the meeting of creditors decided against it; and a meeting of creditors is what you'd better have," declared Gideon. "Tell everybody you owe money to that there is to be a meeting in the gym. on Thursday evening to go into the affair. I will be there, if you like, as I understand these things pretty well."

I thanked Gideon very much indeed and asked him if he could tell what happened next after the meeting.

"The claims are put in against you," he explained, "and then you say what you've got to say, and give a reason why you can't pay; and then your assets are stated."

"What are assets?" I asked.

"What you've got to pay with, or what you hope to have in course of time."

"I've got nothing at all," I said, "and never shall have until I'm old enough to go into an office and earn money."

"Then the assets will be nil," said Gideon. "But they can't be absolutely nil in your case. For instance, you have a watch, and you have that Chinese charm you bought from Tin Lin Chow and various other things, including the green lizard you found on the common last Saturday, if it's still alive."

"I can't give up the watch," I said, "it isn't mine. It's only lent to me by my mother. The lizard died yesterday, I'm sorry to say, owing to not liking captivity."

"Well, at any rate, the thing is to declare something in the pound," Gideon told me.

"It may be," I said, "but first get your pound. You can't declare anything in the pound if you haven't got a pound. At least, I don't see how."

He seemed doubtful about that and changed the subject.

"Anyway, I'll be at the meeting of creditors," he promised; and I felt sure he would be, because Gideon was never known to lie.

*II*

A good deal happened before the meeting of creditors. Among other things I went down three places in my form, because my mind was so much occupied with going bankrupt; and I also got into a beast of a row with the Doctor, which was serious, and might have been still more serious if he had insisted on knowing the truth. It was at a very favourite lesson of the Doctor's--namely, the Scripture lesson, and, as a rule, he simply takes the top of the class and leaves the bottom pretty much alone, because at the top are Macmullen and Richmond and Prodgers, all fliers at Scripture, and their answers give the Doctor great pleasure; and at the bottom are me and Willson minor and West and others, and our answers don't give him any pleasure at all. But sometimes he pounces down upon us with a sudden question, to see if we are attending; and he pounced down upon me, to see if I was attending, and I was not, because my mind was full of the meeting of creditors, who were more important to me for the minute than the people in the Old Testament.

So when the Doctor suddenly said, "Tell us what you know of Gideon, Bannister, if you please," I clean forgot there was more than one Gideon, and said--

"Gideon is an awfully decent sort, sir, and he has advised me to offer something in the pound."

Naturally the Doctor did not like this. In fact, he liked it so little that he made me go straight out of the class and wait for him in his study. Then he caned me for insolence, combined with irreverence, and made me write out about Gideon and the dew upon the fleece twenty-four times; which I did.

I also asked our Gideon if he was by any chance related to the Bible Gideon, and he said that it was impossible to prove that he was not, and that it was also impossible to prove that he was. In any case, he said, such things did not trouble him, though a friend of his father's, wanting to prove that he was related to a man who died in the year 734 A.D., went to a place called the Herald's Office and gave them immense sums of money, and they proved it easily. He said also that it was a jolly good thing the Doctor did not ask for particulars, because if he had known that I was a bankrupt and just about to offer something in the pound, he would probably have expelled me on the spot.

Gideon asked me if I had done anything about the bankruptcy, and I told him privately that I had. But I did not tell him what. I had, in fact, taken a desperate step and written a letter to my grandmother. I marked it "Private" in three places, and begged her, on every page, not to tell my father; because my father was her son, and he had often told me that if I wrote to her for money he would punish me in a very terrible manner, How, he never mentioned, but he meant it, and so I had to make my grandmother promise not to tell him. I wrote the letter seven or eight times before I got it up to the mark, then I borrowed one of Foster's envelopes, already stamped with pink stamps for writing home, and sent it off. It was the best letter I ever wrote, or ever shall write, and this is how it went--

"MY DEAR GRANDMOTHER,

"I write this line, though very busy, to hope that you are exceedingly well and enjoying the fine weather. I hope your lovely, little clever dog, 'Fido,' is well also. I never see such a clever and beautiful dog anywhere else. My parents write to me that they are well. I am quite well. At least, I am quite well in body, though I have grown rather thin lately through not being able to eat enough food. This is not the fault of the food. It is my _mind_. You will be very sorry to hear, dear grandmother, that I am a bankrupt. I hope you may never know what it is to be one, for it is very terrible, especially if you are honourable and honest, as I am, owing to the books you always give me so very kindly at Christmas. To be a bankrupt is to be called upon at any moment to have to pay something in the pound, and this is a dreadful position, but even more dreadful in my case than in some others. For instance, when dear father was bankrupted he paid something in the pound and had plenty over for a bottle of champagne; but in my case _I have not got the pound_.

"I don't mean, of course, my dear grannie, that I want anybody to _give_ me the pound; but the terrible thing is, I can't be a bankrupt without it, and so really I don't know what will happen to me if I don't get it. If by any wonderfully kind and lucky chance you could _lend_ me a pound, my dreadful situation would, of course, improve at once, and I should, no doubt, get fatter and cheerfuller in a few days; but as it is I lie awake and sigh all night, and even wake chaps with the loudness of my sighs, which fling things at me for keeping them awake. But I cannot help it. I don't tell you these things to worry you, dear grannie, as very likely you have worries of your own; but it would not be honest not to tell you how very badly I want a pound just for the moment. There is to be a meeting of my creditors in the gymnasium in a few days, and how I am going to declare anything in the pound I don't know. It makes me feel terribly _old_, and I have gone down several places in my class and been _terribly caned_ by Dr. Dunstan. But nothing matters if I can honourably get that pound. It would change the whole course of my life, in fact. My beautiful bat has gone, you will be sorry to hear, owing to a mortgage, and I hope you may never know what a mortgage is. I have to borrow it now when I play cricket. But I am playing very badly this term, because you cannot be in good form if the brain is worrying about a pound. I shall lose my place in the second eleven, I expect. I have missed several catches lately, and I fancy my _eyes_ are growing _dim and old_, owing to being awake worrying so much at night about that pound.

"Of course if you can give any sort of idea where I can get that pound I shall be very thankful. Unfortunately, in this case, five shillings would be no good, and even ten would be no good, strange though it may seem. Only a pound is any use. I must now conclude, my dear grannie, with best love and good wishes from your very affectionate grandson,

"ARTHUR MORTIMER BANNISTER.

"P.S.--Though all this fearful brain worry has thrown me back a lot in class, still _my Scripture is all right_, and I shall be able to say the Kings of Israel, either backwards or forwards, next holidays, in a way that, I hope, will surprise you. I have been a good deal interested in Gideon and the dew upon the fleece lately."

Well, I sent off this ripping letter, which was far, far the longest and best I had ever written in my life; and before sending it I printed at the top of each page, "Don't tell father," feeling that to be very important. Then I waited and hoped that my grandmother would read the letter in the way I meant her to, and great was my relief when I found that she had. On the very morning of the meeting of creditors she wrote a whacking long letter and sent a postal order for a pound; and the letter I put away for future reading and the postal order I took to Mr. Thwaites, who always changes postal orders into money for boys.

Me seemed surprised at the great size of the postal order, but gave me a golden pound and told me to be careful of it. I was so excited that I very nearly got kept in at morning school, but I escaped; and when the time came I went to Gideon, and he walked up to the gym. with me to meet the creditors.

*III*

Ten chaps were assembled for the bankruptcy, but I jolly soon cleared out Stopford, because the sixpence he said I owed him had been paid at the beginning of the term, and Westcott was able to prove it. So Stopford went, but reluctantly. Steggles also went. He wanted me to take back my mortgaged bat and owe him about six shillings instead, but, knowing Steggles, I felt sure that something must have gone wrong with the bat, and when I examined it, I found that it was so. In fact, the bat was badly sprung; and Gideon said it was like Steggles, and a beastly, paltry thing to try to do. So Steggles also went, and that left eight fellows. These eight chaps were told to make their claims, and when they had, Gideon made me examine them to see they were all right. Only four claimed too much, and Mathers, who is an awfully kind-hearted chap, claimed too little.

So I said, "I'm afraid I owe you one and nine, not one and three, Mathers."

And he said, "That's all right. I knocked off a tanner when you won the house match against Browne's a week ago." Which shows the sort of chap that Mathers was.

I said, "Does anybody else feel inclined to knock off anything owing to my winning the house match against Browne's?"

But nobody did, and seeing that five of the creditors actually belonged to Browne's house I couldn't expect that they would.

"When you've admitted the claims," said Gideon, "I'll add them up myself."

So I went through the claims and had to admit them all.

Then Gideon added them up and said--

"The claims lodged against you, Bannister, amount to exactly one pound twelve shillings and eightpence; but I think you told me that the tuck-woman was also a creditor. If so, she ought to be here."

"I have spoken to her," I said, "and she says that I owe her seven shillings and fourpence. That is the figure. I told her that I was going to have a meeting of creditors, and she said I was beginning early and that she wished she could let me off, but that she had an invalid husband and twenty small children at home--or some such number."

"Then the debt ranks good," said Gideon. So he added the seven and fourpence to the one pound twelve shillings and eightpence.

"The total liabilities are exactly two pounds," said Gideon. "Now, Bannister, as the debts are admitted to be two pounds, the next question is, what are the assets? I may tell you kids," he continued, turning to Corkey minimus, and Fairlawn and Frost, who were the smallest of the creditors in size and age, "that the word 'assets,' which you very likely do not know, means what Bannister has got to pay you with. You have made him a bankrupt and he owes you two pounds; so now the simple question is how much can he pay of that money? Of course he can't pay it all--else he wouldn't be a bankrupt--but he is going to pay according to his assets. Now, Bannister," he concluded, turning to me, "you'd better tell the meeting what your assets are. Does everybody understand?"

Everybody understood, or said they did, except Frost, and he kept on saying over and over again, like a parrot, "Fivepence and a lead pencil, five-pence and a lead pencil," till Gideon at last had to tell him to shut up and not interfere with the meeting.

Then I spoke. I said, in finite a quiet sort of way, as if it was an everyday thing--

"I have decided to pay something in the pound, Gideon."

But Gideon was rather impatient.

"We all know that. That's what we're here for," he said.

"You couldn't all know it," I answered, "because none of you knew that I'd got a pound. You can't pay something in the pound unless you've got one. And I thought it might interest the creditors at this meeting to know that I have got one."

They were frightfully interested, naturally, and even Gideon was. I put it into his hand and he looked at it and turned it over and nodded.

"The assets are a pound," said Gideon; "I've no doubt you'll all be glad to hear that."

The chaps evidently felt very different to me when they heard the assets were a pound, because most of them, as they told me afterwards, didn't know there were any assets at all. They got rather excited, in fact, and Fowle even asked if there might be any more assets.

But I said, "No. There is only this pound. When I became bankrupt I determined that I would pay something in the pound, and I wrote to private friends and put the position before them, and they quite agreed with me and sent the pound; and now I am going to pay something in it. I don't quite know what that means, but it is an honourable and proper thing to do; and Gideon does know what it means, and I shall be very much obliged to him if he will say what I am to pay in it."

"It is quite easy," said Gideon. "You have a debt; you can't pay it all, so you pay so much in the pound."

"That's what I'm going to do," I said.

"The question is, how much you're going to pay in the pound," said Forrest, who had made more row than all the rest of the creditors put together, though I only owed him a penny.

"I know that's the question without your telling me," I answered. "Gideon has the pound, and he will say what I am to pay in it."

Gideon looked rather puzzled.

"You don't seem to understand even yet, Bannister," he said. "You don't pay so much in the pound of the assets; you pay so much in the pound of the debts."

I didn't pretend to understand what Gideon meant by this complicated way of putting it, and told him so.

"All I want," I said, "is to do the strictly honourable thing and pay so much in the pound, which I have handed over to Gideon for that reason."

But Gideon, much to my surprise, seemed to feel rather annoyed at this.

"I wish you'd try and understand the situation," he said. "When you speak of so much in the pound, it's a figure of speech in a sort of way. It isn't a real, single, solitary pound."

"It's real enough," I said; "Thwaites gave it to me in exchange for a postal order."

"_This_ pound is real, but----" Then Gideon broke off in a helpless sort of way, and then he began again.

"You owe two pounds--d'you see that?"

"Of course," I said. "That's the whole thing."

"And you've got one pound--d'you see that?"

He held it up, as if he was going to do a conjuring trick with it.

Of course I said I did see it.

"Then, if you owe two pounds and can only find one, how much are you going to pay in the pound?"

"Whatever you think would be sportsmanlike, Gideon," I said.

"It isn't a question of being sportsmanlike, it's a question of simple arithmetic," he said. "You've got twenty shillings, and you owe forty; you owe just twice as many as you've got; therefore it follows that you'll pay ten shillings in the pound; and that's a good deal more than many people can."

"I'll pay more than that," I said. "I'll pay fifteen shillings."

"What an ass you are, Bannister!" answered Gideon. "You _can't_ pay fifteen shillings, you haven't got it to pay."

"My Dear chap," I said, "I've got a pound."

"You've got nothing at all," he said. "You pay ten shillings in each of the two pounds you owed, and then there's nothing left."

After that I began to see; and when we went into it all and got change, and paid each chap exactly half of what I owed him, it turned out that Gideon was perfectly right, and there wasn't a farthing left over. Everybody was fairly well satisfied except the tuck-woman, but nobody seemed much obliged to me; and I couldn't help thinking that though Gideon had been awfully decent about it, and managed it all frightfully well, nevertheless a grown man would have managed it even better. Because, take my father's bankruptcy and look how jolly different that turned out to mine. I don't know what he paid in the pound, but I do know there was enough left over for him to buy a bottle of champagne, and for my mother to say "Thank God!" Whereas my bankruptcy appeared to have left me exactly where I was before, and there was nothing whatever left over to buy even a bottle of ginger beer.

I pointed this out to Gideon, and he said--

"Of course I don't know how much your father paid in the pound."

Presently I said, "I'm awfully obliged to you, Gideon, and I shall never forget how kind you have been. And I wonder if you'd mind adding to your fearful kindness by lending me a penny."

"What for?" said Gideon; "ginger beer?"

"No," I said; "for a stamp to write to my grandmother. I may tell you privately that she sent that pound out of her own money, and it was very sporting of her, and of course I must thank her."

Gideon didn't much like it, I could see; but at last he brought out the penny and entered it in his book.

"If you can pay it back by the end of the term I'll charge no interest," he said.

And just to show what luck Gideon always has, the very next Sunday, at church, I found a three-penny piece, doubtless dropped by somebody, so Gideon had his penny back in three days, and I went so far as to offer him a halfpenny interest, but he would not take it from me.

*THE TIGER'S TAIL*

*No. IV*

*THE TIGER'S TAIL*

*I*

Curiously enough a very curious thing happened to the other foreign curiosity that Johnson maximus sent to Dr. Dunstan. You may remember that Johnson, who is in the merchant service, brought the Doctor home a parrot and a tiger's skin, and that strange things overtook the parrot, especially after death. Well, strange things also overtook the Bengal tiger's skin, owing to me and Freckles and Smythe. I am Macmullen, and the real name of Freckles was Maine, and he came from Australia and had a great ambition to be a bush-ranger in course of time, and revive the practice of bushranging in New South Wales. Among other things that he had was an important bowie-knife--the same the Chinese boy, Tin Lin Chow, borrowed to commit 'harri-kari' with and failed. Well, with his great feeling for sport, Freckles naturally felt a good deal of interest in the tiger's skin, and often went to look at it in the Doctor's study. It was a good one, no doubt--white and yellow and black, with a long tail and a very fine head. In this head were glass eyes, like life, and the mouth was open and pink, with terrific teeth--worn smooth where the tiger had chewed his prey.

Then there came to Merivale a kid called Smythe. He was very small, but pretty solid and rather decent, and keen as mustard, and fiery in colour too.

It's a rum thing with boys, that some get chums with the greatest ease and some never do. And also the boys who often want to make chums never do, for some reason or other. But this kid soon made chums, though I couldn't tell you why. Of course he was nothing to me, because I'm thirteen--in fact, nearly fourteen--but for a chap just ten he was all right, and other chaps of his own age found him interesting. He had a lot of rather peculiar knowledge, gathered up from his father, who was a very learned man and wrote books for libraries. And he believed in heathen charms and old sayings, and remembered many queer things that his father had told him. He wanted to be the caretaker of a museum some day, but said that he hoped to be allowed to travel round the world first, like Darwin did, and see dwarfs and giants, and write books, and shoot a few specimens of different things not often heard of.

Of course he went through the ordinary adventures of new boys at Merivale, and it was in the matter of the 'kid test' that he became so generally known as a kid out of the common.

There is, just beyond the cricket ground, and before you come to the wood, a huge clump of rhododendrons that is covered with purple flowers in May. It is just the sort of place that a wild beast would choose for its lair, if there were wild beasts at Merivale, and it was a regular thing with kids to tell them that a savage animal did live there, and only came out at night. This beast was a test of the pluck of new kids, and the new kid who would walk past the rhododendrons after dark alone, was considered to be all right. Of course something was done to make it seem more terrible, and, in fact, till he left, John Batson, the gardener's boy, was always told to hide in the rhododendrons, and shake the bushes and growl when a test was being made. This he did very well, having a chronical sore throat, and a very harsh and growling voice, like a ferocious beast. But he had to go, owing to some row with the servants, and the new gardener's boy could only squeak, and was useless for the test. Generally, however, somebody in the fifth could be got, and for some time Freckles kindly obliged when a test had to be made. It amused him, and he growled very fairly well, and could also imitate wolves in a state of hunger, which he had once heard at a menagerie.

Well, young Smythe was told about the mystery of the rhododendron bed, and seemed more interested than frightened.

"Hasn't anybody ever seen the thing?" he asked.

"No," answered Steggles, who was there. "The sound it makes is so frightful that chaps generally run for their lives, and never wait to see it."

Smythe was very keen about it.

"I wish my father would come up and hear it," he said.

"The point is," explained Freckles, "that each kid must go past alone. It only growls for kids, and doesn't growl for grown-up people. It is a test of bravery. There are chaps here still who have never been brave enough to pass after the first growl. They were chaps who turned out quite brave in every other way, too."

"What have I to do?" asked Smythe.

"You've got to walk out on an appointed night, after evening school, and go round the rhododendron bed twice, no matter what happens. It is a winter beast, and is never heard in the summer. So it is a winter test. You've just come in time for it," explained Fowle, who was also there.

Smythe had been at Merivale about a fortnight when he was asked to undergo the great kid test.

He thought a bit after this speech from Fowle. Then he asked a question.

"And what do you think the creature is?"

"Nobody knows," said Fowle. "Of course if that was really known, something might be done."

"It ought to be shot," said Smythe; but Gideon thought not.

They all pretended to be serious, and Smythe quite believed the story, because he was very young. In fact, only one kid had ever refused to believe it.

"No," declared Gideon; "it may be the only beast of its kind in the world, and to shoot it would be a thousand pities."

"Then it ought to be photographed," said Smythe.

"Impossible, because nobody ever sees it," answered Steggles.

"That's no reason," said Smythe; "it might be done with Rontgen rays."

Which shows what a clever kid he was, though so ready to believe this rot about the beast.

"One person did see it, however," said Fowle, "and that was Montgomery, who went into a bank last term, and it left a great impression upon him."

"What did he say it looked like?" asked Smythe.

"A sort of thing between a tiger and a donkey," answered Fowle very seriously.

"Rum," said Smythe. "It might belong to the zebra family."

"Zebras don't growl," said Freckles.

"More they do," admitted Smythe. "They bray."

Then he went on to tell us some things about zebras that we didn't know ourselves.