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

CHAPTER XXIV
CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME – AND ENDS THERE

NOW all this has nothing to do with the story, except to show what sort of a girl Cissy Carter was, and how she differed from Prissy Smith – who in these circumstances would certainly have gone home and prayed that God would in time make Wedgwood Baker a better boy, instead of tackling missionary work on the spot with her knuckles as Cissy Carter did.

It was several days later, and the flag of the Smoutchy boys still flew defiantly over the battlements of the castle. The great General was growing discouraged, for in little more than a week his father might return from London, and would doubtless take up the matter himself. Then, with the coming of policemen and the putting up of fences and notice-boards, all romance would be gone forever. Besides which, most of the town boys would have to go back to school, and the Carters' governess and their own would be returning to annoy them with lessons, and still more uncalled for aggravations as to manners.

Cissy Carter had given Sammy the slip, and started to come over by herself to Windy Standard. It was the afternoon, and she came past the gipsy encampment which Mr. Picton Smith had found on some unenclosed land on the other side of the Edam Water, and which, spite of the remonstrances of his brother-landlords, he had permitted to remain there.

The permanent Ishmaelitish establishment consisted of about a dozen small huts, some entirely constructed of rough stone, others of turf with only a stone interposed here and there; but all had mud chimneys, rough doorways, and windows glazed with the most extraordinary collection of old glass, rags, wisps of straw, and oiled cloth. Dogs barked hoarsely and shrilly according to their kind, ragged clothes fluttered on extemporised lines, or made a parti-coloured patch-work on the grass and on the gorse bushes which grew all along the bank. There were also a score of tents and caravans dotted here and there about the rough ground. Half-a-dozen swarthy lads rose silently and stared after Cissy as she passed.

A tall limber youth sitting on a heap of stones examining a dog's back, looked up and scowled as she came by. Cissy saw an unhealed wound and stopped.

"Let me look at him," she said, reaching out her hand for the white fox-terrier.

"Watch out, miss," said the lad, "he's nasty with the sore. He'll bite quick as mustard!"

"He won't bite me," said Cissy, taking up the dog calmly, which after a doubtful sniff submitted to be handled without a murmur.

"This should be thoroughly washed, and have some boracic ointment put on it at once," said Cissy, with the quick emphasis of an expert.

"Ain't got none o' the stuff," said the youth sullenly, "nor can't afford to buy it. Besides, who's to wash him first off, and him in a temper like that?"

"Come over with me to Oaklands and I'll get you some ointment. I'll wash him myself in a minute."

The boy whistled.

"That's a good 'un," he said, "likely thing me to go to Oaklands!"

"And why?" said Cissy; "it's my father's place. I've just come from there."

"Then your father's a beak, and I ain't going a foot – not if I know it," said the lad.

"A what – oh! you mean a magistrate – so he is. Well, then, if you feel like that about it I'll run over by myself, and sneak some ointment from the stables."

And with a careless wave of the hand, a pat on the head and a "Poo' fellow then" to the white fox-terrier, she was off.

The youth cast his voice over his shoulders to a dozen companions who were hiding in the broom behind. His face and tone were both full of surprise and admiration.

"Say, chaps, did you hear her? She said she'd 'sneak' the ointment from the stables. I tell 'ee what, she'll be a rare good plucked one that. And her a beak's daughter! Her mother mun ha' been a piece!"

It was half-an-hour before Cissy got back with the pot of boracic dressing and some lint.

"I had to wait till the coachman had gone to his tea," she explained, "and then send the stable boy with a message to the village to get him out of the way."

The youth on the stone heap secretly signalled his delight to the appreciative audience hiding in the broom bushes.

Then Cissy ordered him to get her some warm water, which he brought from one of the kettles swinging on the birchen tripods scattered here and there about the encampment.

Whereupon, taking the fox-terrier firmly on her knee and turning up the skirt of her dress, she washed away all the dirt and matted hair, cleansing the wound thoroughly.

The poor beast only made a faint whining sound at intervals. Then she applied the antiseptic dressing, and bound the lint tightly down with a cincture about the animal. She fitted his neck with a neat collar of her own invention, made out of the wicker covering of a Chianti wine flask which she brought with her from Oaklands.

"There," she said, "that will keep him from biting at it, and you must see that he doesn't scratch off the bandage. I'll be passing to-morrow and will drop in. Here's the pot of ointment. Put some more on in the morning and some again at night, and he will be all right in a day or two."

"Thank'ee, miss," said the lad, touching his cap with the natural courtesy which is inherent in the best blood of his race. "I don't mean to forget, you be sure."

Cissy waved her hand to him gaily, as she went off towards Windy Standard. Then all at once she stopped.

"By the way, what is your name? Whom shall I ask for if you are not about to-morrow?"

"Billy Blythe," he said, after a moment's pause to consider whether the daughter of a magistrate was to be trusted; "but I'll be here to-morrow right enough!"

"Why did you tell the beak's daughter your name, Bill, you blooming Johnny?" asked a companion. "You'll get thirty days for that sure!"

"Shut up, Fish Lee," said the owner of the dog; "the girl is main right. D'ye think she'd ha' said 'sneaked' if she wasn't. G'way, Bacon-chump!"

Cissy Carter took the road to Windy Standard with a good conscience. She was not troubled about the "sneaking," though she hoped that the coachman would not miss that pot of ointment.

At the foot of the avenue, just where it joined the dusty road to the town of Edam, she met Sir Toady Lion. He had his arms full of valuable sparkling jewellery, or what in the distance looked like it as the sun shone upon some winking yellow metal.

Toady Lion began talking twenty to the dozen as soon as ever he came within Cissy's range.

"Oo!" he cried, "what 'oo fink? Father sented us each a great big half-crown from London – all to spend. And we have spended it."

"Well," said Cissy genially, "and what did you buy?"

"Us all wented down to Edam and boughted – oh! yots of fings."

"Show me what you've bought, Toady Lion! I want to see! How much money had you, did you say?"

Toady Lion sat plump down in the thickest dust of the road, as he always did just wherever he happened to be at the time. If there chanced to be a pool there or a flower-bed – why, so much the worse. But whenever Toady Lion wanted to sit down, he sat down. Here, however, there was only the dry dust of the road and a brown smatter of last year's leaves. The gallant knight was in a meditative mood and inclined to moralise.

"Money," said Toady Lion thoughtfully, "well, dere's the money that you get gived you, and wot Janet sez you muss put in your money-box. That's no good! Money-box locked! Janet keeps money-box. 'Get money when you are big,' she sez – rubbage, I fink – shan't want it then – lots and lots in trowsies' pocket then, gold sixpences and fings."

Toady Lion's eyes were dreamy and glorious, as if the angels were whispering to him, and he saw unspeakable things,

"Then there's miss'nary money in a round box wif a slit on the top. That's lots better! Sits on mantlepiece in dining-room. Can get it out wif slimmy-jimmy knife when nobody's looking. Hugh John showed me how. Prissy says boys who grab miss'nary's pennies won't not go to heaven, but Hugh John, he says – yes. 'Cause why miss'nary's money is for bad wicked people to make them good. Then if it is wicked to take miss'nary money, the money muss be meaned for us – to do good to me and Hugh John. Hugh John finks so. Me too!"

Toady Lion spoke in short sentences with pauses between, Cissy meantime nodding appreciation.

"Yes, I know," she said meditatively, "a thinbladed kitchen knife is best."

But Sir Toady Lion had started out on the track of Right and Wrong, and was intent on running them down with his usual slow persistence.

"And then the miss'nary money is weally-weally our money, 'cause Janet makes us put it in. Onst Hugh John tried metal buttons off of his old serge trowsies. But Janet she found out. And he got smacked. An' nen, us only takes a penny out when us is tony-bloke!"

"Is which? Oh, stone-broke," laughed Cissy Carter, sitting down beside Toady Lion; "who taught you to say that word?"

"Hugh John," said the small boy wistfully; "him and me tony-bloke all-ee-time, all-ee-ways, all-ee-while!"

"Does Prissy have any of – the missionary money?" said Cissy; "I should!"

"No," said Toady Lion sadly; "don't you know? Our Prissy's awful good, juss howwid! She likes goin' to church, an' washing, an' having to wear gloves. Girls is awful funny."

"They are," said Cissy Carter promptly. The funniness of her sex had often troubled her. "But tell me, Toady Lion," she went on, "does Hugh John like going to church, and being washed, and things?"

"Who? Hugh John – him?" said Toady Lion, with slow contempt. "'Course he don't. Why, he's a boy. And once he told Mr. Burnham so – he did."

Mr. Burnham was the clergyman of both families. He had recently come to the place, was a well-set up bachelor, and represented a communion which was not by any means the dominant one in Bordershire.

"Yes, indeedy. It was under the elm. Us was having tea. An' Mist'r Burnham, he was having tea. And father and Prissy. And, oh! such a lot of peoples. And he sez, Mist'r Burnham sez to Hugh John, 'You are good little boy. I saw you in church on Sunday. Do you like to go to church?' He spoke like this-a-way, juss like I'm tellin' oo, down here under his silk waistcoat – kind of growly, but nice."

"Hugh John say that he liked to go to church – 'cos father was there listenin', you see. Then Mist'r Burnham ask Hugh John why he like to go to church, and of course, he say wight out that it was to look at Sergeant Steel's wed coat. An' nen everybody laugh – I don't know why. But Mist'r Burnham he laughed most."

Cissy also failed to understand why everybody should have laughed. Toady Lion took up the burden of his tale.

"Yes, indeedy, and one Sunday I didn't have to go to church – 'cos I'd yet up such a yot of gween gooseb – "

"All right, Toady Lion, I know!" interrupted Cissy quickly.

"Of gween gooseberries," persisted Toady Lion calmly; "so I had got my tummy on in front. It hurted like – well, like when you get sand down 'oo trowsies. Did 'oo ever get sand in 'oo trowsies, Cissy?"

"Hush – of course not!" said Cissy Carter; "girls don't have trowsers – they have – "

But any injudicious revelations on Cissy's part were stopped by Toady Lion, who said, "No, should juss fink not. Girls is too great softs to have trowsies.

"Onst though on the sands at a seaside, when I was 'kye-kying' out loud an' kickin' fings, 'cos I was not naughty but only fractious, dere was a lady wat said 'Be dood, little boy, why can't you be dood?'

"An' nen I says, 'How can I be dood? Could 'oo be dood wif all that sand in 'oo trowsies?'

"An' nen – the lady she wented away quick, so quick – I can't tell why. P'raps she had sand in her trowsies! Does 'oo fink so, Cissy?"

"That'll do – I quite understand," said Cissy Carter, somewhat hastily, in dread of Toady Lion's well-known license of speech.

"An' nen 'nother day after we comed home I went into the park and clum up a nice tree. An' it was ever so gween and scratchy. 'An it was nice. Nen father he came walking his horse slow up the road, n' I hid. But father he seen me. And he say, 'What you doing there, little boy? You break you neck. Nen I whip you. Come down, you waskal!' He said it big – down here, (Toady Lion illustrated with his hand the place from which he supposed his father's voice to proceed). An' it made me feel all queer an' trimbly, like our guinea pig's nose when father speak like that. An' I says to him, 'Course, father, you never clumb up no trees on Sundays when you was little boy!' An' nen he didn't speak no more down here that trimbly way, but laughed, and pulled me down, and roded me home in front of him, and gived me big hunk of pie – yes, indeedy!"

Toady Lion felt that now he had talked quite enough, and began to arrange his brass cannons on the dust, in a plan of attack which beleaguered Cissy Carter's foot and turned her flank to the left.

"Where did you get all those nice new cannons? You haven't told me yet," she said.

"Boughted them!" answered Toady Lion promptly, "least I boughted some, and Hugh John boughted some, an' Prissy she boughted some."

"And how do you come to have them all?" asked Cissy, watching the imposing array. As usual it was the Battle of Bannockburn and the English were getting it hot.

"Well," said Toady Lion thoughtfully, "'twas this way. 'Oo sees Prissy had half-a-crown, an' she boughted a silly book all about a 'Lamplighter' for herself – an' two brass cannons – one for Hugh John an' one for me. And Hugh John he had half-a-crown, an' he boughted three brass cannon, two for himself and one for me."

"And what did you buy with your half-crown?" said Cissy, bending her brows sweetly upon the small gunner.

"Wif my half-a-crown? Oh, I just boughted three brass cannons —dey was all for mine-self!"

"Toady Lion," cried Cissy indignantly, "you are a selfish little pig! I shan't stop with you any more."

"Little pigs is nice," said Toady Lion, unmoved, arranging his cannon all over again on a new plan after the removal of Cissy's foot; "their noses – "

"Don't speak to me about their noses, you selfish little boy! Blow your own nose."

"No use," said Toady Lion philosophically; "won't stay blowed. 'Tis too duicy!"

Cissy set off in disgust towards the house of Windy Standard, leaving Toady Lion calmly playing with his six cannon all alone in the white dust of the king's highway.

CHAPTER XXV
LOVE'S (VERY) YOUNG DREAM

CISSY found our hero in a sad state of depression. Prissy had gone off to evening service, and had promised to introduce a special petition that he might beat the Smoutchy boys; but Gen'l Smith shook his head.

"With Prissy you can't never tell. Like as not she may go and pray that Nipper Donnan may get converted, or die and go to heaven, or something like that. She'd do it like winking, without a thought for how I should feel! That's the sort of girl our Priss is!"

"Oh, surely not so bad as that," said Cissy, very properly scandalised.

"She would, indeed," said Hugh John, nodding his head vehemently; "she's good no end, our Prissy is. And never shirks prayers, nor forgets altogether, nor even says them in bed. I believe she'd get up on a frosty night and say them without a fire – she would, I'm telling you. And she doats on these nasty Smoutchies. She'd just love to have been tortured. She'd have regularly spread herself on forgiving them too, our Priss would."

"I wouldn't have forgived them," cried the piping voice of Toady Lion, suddenly appearing through the shrubbery (his own more excellent form was "scrubbery"), with his arms full of the new brass cannons; "I wouldn't have forgived them a bit. I'd have cutted off all their heads."

"Go 'way, little pig!" cried Cissy indignantly.

"Toady Lion isn't a little pig," said Hugh John, with dignity; "he is my brother."

"But he kept all the cannons to himself," remonstrated Cissy.

"'Course he did; why shouldn't he? He's only a little boy, and can't grow good all at once," said Hugh John, with more Christian charity than might have been expected of him.

"You've been growing good yourself," said Cissy, thrusting out her upper lip with an expression of bitter reproach and disappointment; "I'd better go home."

"I'll hit you if you say that, Cissy," cried Hugh John, "but anyway you shan't call Toady Lion a little pig."

"I like being little pig," said Toady Lion impassively; "little piggie goes 'Grunt-grunt!'"

And he illustrated the peculiarities of piglings by pulling the air up through his nostrils in various keys. "Little pigs is nice," he repeated at the end of this performance.

Cissy was very angry. Things appeared to be particularly horrid that afternoon. She had started out to help everybody, and had only managed to quarrel with them. Even her own familiar Hugh John had lifted up his heel against her. It was the last straw. But she was resolved to not give in now.

"Good little boy" – she said tauntingly – "it is such a mother's pet! It will be good then, and go and ask Nipper's pardon, and send back Donald to make nice mutton pies; it shall then – !"

Hugh John made a rush at this point. There was a wild scurry of flight, and the gravel flew every way. Cissy was captured behind the stable, and Hugh John was about to administer punishment. His hand was doubled. It was drawn back.

"Yes," cried Cissy, "hit a girl! Any boy can beat you. But you can hit a girl! Hit hard, brave soldier!"

Hugh John's hand dropped as if struck by lightning.

"I never did!" he said; "I fought ten of them at once and never even cried when they – when they – "

And the erstwhile dauntless warrior showed unmistakable signs of being perilously near a descent into the vale of tears.

"When they what?" queried Cissy softly, suddenly beginning to be sorry.

"Well, when they tortured me," said Hugh John.

Cissy went up suddenly and kissed him. It was only a peck which reached land at the top corner of his ear; but it made Hugh John crimson hotly, and fend Cissy off with his elbow as if she had been a big boy about to strike.

"There, now," she said, "I've done it. I promised I would, and what's more, I'll say it out loud – 'I love you!' There! And if you don't mind and behave, I'll tell people. I will, now then. But all the same, I'm sorry I was a beast to you."

"Well, don't do it again," said Hugh John, somewhat mollified, slightly dropping the point of his defensive elbow. "Anybody might have seen you, and then what would they think?"

"All right," said Cissy soothingly, "I won't any more."

"Say 'Hope-you-may-die!'"

Cissy promptly hoped she might come to an early grave in the event of again betraying, even in private, the exuberance of her young affection.

"Now, Hugh John," said Cissy, when peace had been restored in this manner, and they were wandering amicably across the back meadow where they could not be seen from the house windows, taking alternate sucks at a stick of brown toffee with crumbs stuck firmly on it, the property of Cissy, "I've something to tell you. I've found the allies for you; and we can whop the Smoutchies and take the castle now – any time."

The eyes of General Napoleon Smith glistened.

"If that's true," he said, "you can kiss me again – no, not now," he added hastily, moving off a little, "but after, when it's all over, you know. There's a good place behind the barn. You can do it there if you like."

"Will you say 'I love you, Cissy'?"

But this was more than Hugh John had bargained for. He asked time for consideration.

"It won't be till the Smoutchy boys are beaten and the castle ours for good," pleaded Cissy.

Hugh John felt that it was a great price to pay, but after all he did want dreadfully to beat the Smoutchy boys.

"Well, I'll try," he said, "but you must say, 'Hope-you'll-die and double-die,' if you ever tell!"

Again Cissy took the required oath.

"Well?" said he expectantly, his mind altogether on the campaign.

Cissy told him all about the gipsy encampment and the history of the meeting with Billy Blythe. Hugh John nodded. Of course he knew all about that, but would they join? Were they not rather on the side of the Smoutchies? They looked as if they would be.

"Oh, you can't never tell a bit beforehand," said Cissy eagerly. "They just hate the town boys; and Bill Blythe says that Nipper Donnan's father said, that when the town got the castle they would soon clear the gipsies off your common – for that goes with the castle."

Hugh John nodded again more thoughtfully. There was certainly something in that. He had heard his father say as much to his lawyer when he himself was curled up on the sofa, pretending to read Froissart's "Chronicles," but really listening as hard as ever he could.

"You are a brick," he cried, "you are indeed, Cissy. Come on, let's go at once and see Billy Blythe."

And he took her hand. She held back a moment. They were safe behind the great ivy bush at the back of the stables.

"Couldn't you say it now?" she whispered, with a soft light in her eyes; "I wish you could. Try."

Hugh John's face darkened. He unshipped his elbow from his side to be ready for action.

"Well, I won't ask you till after," she said regretfully. "'Tain't fair, I know; but – " she looked at him again yet more wistfully, still holding him by the hand which had last passed over the mutual joint-stock candy-stick; "don't you think you could do the other – just once?"

"What other?" grumbled Hugh John, sulking. He felt that Cissy was taking an unfair advantage.

"Oh, you know," said Cissy, "what I did to you a little while ago."

"'Twasn't to be till after," urged our hero, half relenting. Like a woman, Cissy was quick to see her advantage.

"Just a little one to be going on with?" she pleaded.

Hugh John sighed. Girls were incomprehensible. Prissy liked church and being washed. Cissy, of whom he had more hopes, liked kissing.

"Well," he said, "goodness knows why you like it. I'm sure I don't and never shall. But – "

He ran to the corner and looked round into the stable-yard. All was quiet along the Potomac. He walked more sternly to the other corner, and glanced into the orchard. Peace reigned among the apple-trees. He came slowly and dejectedly back. In the inmost corner of the angle of the stable, and behind the thickest of the ivy bush, he straightened himself up and compressed his lips, as he had done when the Smoutchies were tying him up by the thumbs. He felt however that to beat Nipper Donnan he was ready to undergo anything – even this. No sacrifice was too great.

"All right," he said. "Come on, Cissy, and get it over – only don't be too long."

Cissy was thirteen, and tall for her age, but though fully a year younger, Hugh John was tall also, so that when she came joyously forward and put her hands on his shoulders, their eyes were exactly on a level.

"You needn't go shutting your eyes and holding your breath, as if it were medicine. 'Tisn't so very horrid," said Cissy, with her hands still on his shoulder.

"Go on!" said Hugh John in a muffled voice, nerving himself for the coming crisis.

Cissy's lips just touched his, rested a moment, and were gone.

Hugh John let out his breath with a sigh of relief like an explosion; then he stepped back, and promptly wiped off love's gage with the sleeve of his coat.

"Hold on," cried Cissy; "that isn't fair. You know it ain't!"

Hugh John knew it and submitted.

Cissy swept the tumbled hair from about her eyes. She had a very red spot on either cheek; but she had made up her mind, and was going through with it properly now.

"Oh, I don't mind," she said; "I can easily do it over again – for keeps this time, mind!"

Then she kissed him once, twice, and three times. It was nicer than kissing Janet Sheepshanks, he thought; and as for Prissy – well, that was different too.

A little hammer thumped in his heart, and made it go "jumpetty-jump," as if it were lame, or out of breath, or had one leg shorter than the other. After all Ciss was the nicest girl there was, if she did behave stupidly and tiresomely about this. "Just once?" He would do it after all. It wasn't much to do – to give Cissy such a treat.

So he put his arms about her neck underneath her curls, pulled her close up to him, and kissed her. It felt funny, but rather nice. He did not remember doing that to any one since he was a little boy, and his mother used to come and say "Good-night" to him. Then he opened his arms and pushed Cissy away. They walked out through the orchard yards apart, as if they had just been introduced. Cissy's eyes were full of the happiness of love's achievement. As for Hugh John, he was crimson to the neck and felt infinitely degraded in his own estimation.

They came to the orchard wall, where there was a stile which led in the direction of Oaklands. Cissy ran up the rude steps, but paused on the top instead of going over. Hugh John was looking the other way. Somehow, do what he would, his eyes could not be brought to meet hers.

"Are you not coming?" she said coaxingly.

"No," he answered, gruffly enough; "to-morrow will do for Billy."

"Good-night," she said softly. Her voice was almost a whisper.

Hugh John grunted inarticulately.

"Look here!" she said, bending down till her eyes were on a level with his chin. He could not help glancing up once. There was a mischievous smile in them. It had never struck him before that Cissy was very pretty. But somehow now he was glad that she was. Prissy was nice-looking too – but, oh! quiet different. He continued to look at Cissy Carter standing with the stile between them.

"Wasn't it splendid!" she said, still keeping her shining eyes on his.

"Oh, middling," said Hugh John, and turning on his heel he went into the stable without even saying "Good-bye." Cissy watched him with a happy smile on her face. Love was her fetish – her Sambo Soulis – and she had worshipped long in secret. Till now she had let the worm concealment prey upon her cheek. True, it had not as yet affected her appetite nor kept her a moment awake.

But now all was different. Her heart sang, and the strangest thing was that all the landscape, the fields and woods, and everything seemed to be somehow painted in brighter colours. In fact, they looked just as they do when you bend down and look at them through between your legs. You know the way.