Читать книгу The Demon in the House - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 5

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Tony was cleaning his bicycle in the yard, near the kitchen door. Cleaning is perhaps not quite the right word for the languishing dabs which he made from time to time at the framework of the machine, and such was Stoker’s freely expressed opinion.

“Henry Brown’ll have something to say to you, Master Tony, if you don’t clean the bike no better than that. A lick and a promise, that’s your idea. And pick up that lamp off the ground. You’ll be putting your foot on it, and then where will you be?”

“You ride much better without a lamp,” said Tony. “You see, if you have a lamp it makes everything else seem much darker. Animals don’t need lamps at night. Their eyes get trained to see in the dark. My eyes are trained to seeing in the dark, Stokes. I bet you I could get from here to the Vicarage on the darkest night without a light. But if I had one I’d probably rush into a ditch or something.”

“Animals don’t need no lamps at night, seeing as they don’t go about,” retorted Stoker. “Lay down in the fields or the cowshed, that’s what they do. Anyway, Master Tony, you know your mother said you wasn’t to ride after dark.”

“I know. But everyone rides without lights, at least all decent riders do. And if you tied a lantern around a dog’s neck, what do you think would happen, Stokes? It would be quite dazzled and not know which way to go.”

“Get its hair burnt off, more likely,” said Stoker.

“But if it was alone in the dark,” continued Tony, disregarding this interruption, “it would find its way anywhere by instinct. I bet if you put me anywhere around about sixty miles from here with the bike, in the middle of the night, I’d find my way home. I have a kind of instinct like a dog.”

“That’s more than anyone can tell,” said Stoker. “You’d better get on with cleaning that bike, Master Tony.”

Shortly after this Tony came into the room where his mother was writing, left the door open and stood balancing on one leg. Her attention having been drawn by this pantomime, Mrs. Morland put down her pencil and looked up.

“Well, what is it?” she asked.

“Oh, mother, could I take the bike down to the garage?”

“Why?”

“The pump won’t work.”

“Rubbish, Tony, the pump was all right yesterday.”

“I know. But I’ve been pumping for simply hours and the back tire is much too flat to ride. It’s very bad for bicycles to be ridden with flat tires. It cuts the inner tube to pieces and strains the rim of the wheel.”

Laura got up and went down to the yard, followed by Tony.

“Now show me how it won’t pump up,” she said.

With a miserable despairing face Tony took the pump in a languid grasp and pushed it in and out two or three times. He then groaned and stood up exhausted.

“Ass,” said his mother unsympathetically, “give it to me.”

“Oh, very well.”

Laura gave about a dozen pumps and felt the back tire.

“Hard as nails,” she said briskly.

“I know,” said Tony. “But as soon as I’m on the road it will go down again. I have to spend simply all my time pumping it up. That’s why I was so late coming back from the station yesterday, that and the parcel I had to carry. Mother, it isn’t good for racing bikes to have parcels on them, and this was such a huge parcel it made the back tire go right down.”

“Why didn’t you take a basket and carry it on the handle-bars then, as I told you?” said his mother.

“Oh, mother, I couldn’t ride about with a basket. Everyone would stare at me. Oh, mother, Mrs. Gould is having a lunch picnic tomorrow at the Wishing Well, and can I go? And she wants you to come too.”

“Yes, I should think so. I haven’t anything special to do tomorrow. I’ll tell Stoker to make a sandwich lunch for us and we’ll start about half-past twelve. Does Mrs. Gould want me to fetch them?”

“No, mother, the Vicar doesn’t want the car, that’s why we are having a picnic.”

“Then it will only be you and me in our car.”

Tony’s face fell.

“But, mother, I thought you would like me to go on the bike. Then you could go in Mrs. Gould’s car, and it would be more of a rest for you than having to drive yourself,” said Tony sanctimoniously. “Besides, it’s really waste of money if I don’t use the bike when you are paying Henry for it, isn’t it?”

“But it’s such a long way for you to ride, Tony,” said his mother, weakly temporising, though she knew that defeat was inevitable.

“Oh, mother, it’s only about six miles, and I can do that in no time. I can easily do twenty miles an hour. Besides, Rose and Dora will be so disappointed if I don’t go on the bike. I promised they’d see me come whizzing along. I bet I can go faster than Mrs. Gould’s car up Southbridge Hill, mother. Henry’s bike is low geared, so it’s splendid for hill climbing. I can go on the bike, can’t I, mother?”

“But what about the tires? I thought you said they couldn’t be pumped up.”

“I know. But if I pump them up jolly hard before we start, and about ten times on the way, I dare say it will do,” said Tony with gentle melancholy.

Mrs. Morland resigned herself, knowing that the expedition would be little but a cause of worry and anxiety, but with a vague feeling that Tony ought to be allowed to do everything that frightened her, in case he became a milksop.

Next morning Tony came down to breakfast with a white Sunday shirt, a rather vulgar-looking striped tie, distinctly the worse for wear, and his hair unpleasantly slabbed down with the Butygloss Hair Fixative.

“Must you wear that tie, Tony?” said his mother, “and wouldn’t a grey flannel shirt be nicer for riding?”

“Mother, I couldn’t wear a flannel shirt to ride to Southbridge. People will be looking at me all the way. Besides, I thought you liked me to look tidy when I go out.”

“So I do, but a flannel shirt looks just as tidy and much more suitable for riding. Anyway, do put on your school tie. This one looks like an old piece of string.”

“I know. But it’s a very good tie, mother. Don’t you think people would like me in this tie, mother? I got it myself for one and sixpence halfpenny. Oh, mother, need I wear my school tie? I promised Rose and Dora that I’d let them see this tie, and they’ll be awfully disappointed if I don’t. What are we taking for lunch?”

“I don’t know yet. I must go and see Stoker. You had better finish your breakfast and tidy up your playroom, because Stoker wants to clean it while we are out today.”

“Oh, mother, need I? Mother, I’m going to make a new railway system with a dirt track for bike races in the middle of it. There will be a station called Dirt Track Halt. Could I have some earth from the garden to make a dirt track?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then I just can’t have a racecourse,” said Tony reproachfully. “People can’t be expected to bicycle on linoleum, mother. Couldn’t I have just enough earth to make it look like a dirt track?”

“No, Tony. It would make far too much mess. Can’t you say the linoleum is concrete? A concrete track like Brooklands would be splendid.”

“But, mother, you don’t understand. Bicycling is quite different. At my dirt track at Drippingham—”

But his mother, who had been edging towards the door, escaped into the kitchen, leaving Tony to finish his breakfast and meditate on the system of tyranny which made one have to tidy one’s playroom and forbade one to bring earth into it.

At twelve o’clock Tony, still wearing his white shirt and striped tie, set off for the Wishing Well. His plan to ride beside the car, dazzling the little girls by feats of bicyclemanship, had been squashed by Laura. Quite unimpressed by his repeated assertions that he could go twice as fast as Mrs. Gould’s car, she packed him off ahead of the Vicarage party. She felt that it would be happier for her on the whole to anticipate discovering his mangled corpse by the road than to imagine the corpse on the road behind her, while the distance between them increased rapidly.

Stoker had worked off some of her feelings towards the Vicarage cook by preparing a lunch which would have done credit to Fortnum and Mason. As Mrs. Gould drove up to the house, with Rose and Dora jiggling about in the back seat, Stoker came to the front door, carrying a large basket.

“Good morning, Stoker,” said Mrs. Gould.

“Morning,” said Stoker. “I thought you mightn’t have enough for lunch, so I’ve put you up something as you can eat.”

“What is it, Stoker?” shrieked the two little girls.

“Something you wouldn’t get at home,” said Stoker darkly.

“Is it jam and ham and beer in the bottle and sherry and sham?” said Rose eagerly.

“What on earth are you talking about?” asked Laura, coming out of the house.

“It’s a lovely poem of Stoker’s, Mrs. Morland. She told it us the day we all had tea in the kitchen when you were out.”

“Do tell me the rest of it,” urged Laura.

Rose went pink with pleasure and embarrassment, but appeared to be struck dumb. Then flinging her arms around her mother’s neck she whispered into her ear.

“Rose wants you to say it, Stoker,” said Mrs. Gould.

Stoker smiled indulgently and shook her head.

“Go on, Rose,” said Laura, suddenly envisaging Tony under the wheels of a motor coach, and anxious to start.

“Go on, Rose,” said Dora, “or I’ll say it.”

Stimulated by this threat, Rose hastily gabbled in a high voice:

“We’d jam and we’d ham,

We’d beer in the bottle and sherry and cham,

And never in your life did you see such a jam

As there was when we all sat down.

We’d forks and we’d knives,

And we pegged away like working for our lives.

With the girls and boys and the fellows and their wives,

We ate up half the town.”

“That’s right,” said Stoker approvingly. “Miss Rose doesn’t recite too bad. I used to be a great one for reciting myself when I was a girl. You had ought to have heard me on the platform at the socials.”

“I wish I had,” said Mrs. Gould.

“Thank you, Rose,” said Laura, getting into the front seat beside Mrs. Gould. “Good-bye, Stoker. We’ll probably be back to tea.”

“Please yourselves,” said Stoker, and departed into the house whistling loudly.

No sooner had they started than both little girls rattled off a fire of questions about Tony’s bicycling exploits.

“I don’t know,” said his mother, “but I shouldn’t think he could go at forty miles an hour, and I shouldn’t think he could ride up Southbridge Hill, or race the motor coach. But when we find him we’ll ask him to tell us. I shall be so glad when the bicycle is broken,” she added plaintively to Mrs. Gould, “even if I have to pay Henry Brown for a new one. You can’t think how agitating it is to have Tony all over the country, always expecting to be rung up and told he has had his arms and legs cut off, or is awaiting identification at the mortuary. But he always breaks everything he has sooner or later, so I hope he will break the bicycle soon.”

“Well, we are sure to see him before we get to the picnic,” said Mrs. Gould, far too carelessly. “I told him to go straight to the Wishing Well at the end of the Long Ponds. We shall catch him up long before then.”

Meanwhile Tony had been having a delightful ride. He had found it difficult to make up his mind whether to ride at great speed through the village, so raising fear and admiration in the hearts of beholders, or to ride very slowly, frequently turning around in the road, which would in its turn compel admiration, though not awe. This second method also had the advantage of enabling one to show off to practically all one’s friends.

Scorching up the little drive, head down over the handles, Tony turned the corner into the road too rapidly, skidded on the tarmac, and fell off. He picked himself up with a cross expression on his soft face, remounted and rode on.

Mr. Brown of the garage was standing by his petrol pumps talking to Dr. Ford when Tony dashed up, applied both brakes violently, got off and stood breathing loudly.

“Well, Tony,” said Dr. Ford, “how’s the bicycle?”

“All right, sir,” said Tony briefly. “Oh, Mr. Brown, I just fell off once and the mudguard got all on one side. People make such rotten mudguards. Of course a real racing bike oughtn’t to have mudguards at all. They reduce speed. Dr. Ford, what do you think is the fastest a racing bike could go? I bet I could speed at about forty if you paced me in your car.”

“If I hadn’t any patients I might consider it,” said the doctor, getting into his car. “Goodbye, Tony; don’t break your neck today, because I have a long consultation at Southbridge.”

“Dr. Ford doesn’t seem to understand,” said Tony to Mr. Brown and a large imaginary audience, “that one doesn’t break one’s neck on a racing bike. Anyone who can ride decently never hurt themselves when they fall off. You just fall properly. Of course, if people will put rotten mudguards on bikes they naturally get bent. Do you think you could straighten it, Mr. Brown?”

“Don’t you go falling off again,” said Mr. Brown when the job was done. “That bike wasn’t made to be thrown about.”

“I know. But I didn’t fall off. I was just coming around the corner rather fast—I can go round corners at a terrific angle—and it fell over.”

Tony remounted and rode on in a triumphant progress. Fortune was so far on his side that most of his friends were in their front gardens or at their shop doors. He was able to wave his hand to Mrs. Mallow outside the surgery and to Mr. Reid outside the shop, before he slowed down near the Vicarage. Rose and Dora, who were standing at the gate waiting for their mother to bring the car around, greeted him with admiring shrieks. Tony waved a lordly hand, wobbled perilously, and came rather uncomfortably to rest against the Vicarage garden wall.

“Did you see me wave my hand?” he asked. “I can ride with one hand just as easily as with two. In fact I really don’t need to hold the handle bars at all. I can’t think why people have handle bars. Anyone could ride without them; you just have to balance. Wait till you see me simply dashing down the Southbridge Hill on the way home, with my hands in my pockets. I expect I’ll have to wait for hours for you at the Wishing Well. I’ll be doing about twenty-five all the way.”

“Dorland has got a dirt track,” said Dora suddenly.

“I know,” said Tony. “But there isn’t really one, because I told you they aren’t invented yet. Anyway, it probably isn’t a proper dirt track at all. What do you have on it?”

“Dirt,” said Dora decidedly.

“What sort of dirt?”

“The proper sort.”

“Well, it can’t be the proper sort, because the right dirt is only in Morland. I have an enormous quarry for dirt. The Dorland kind is all wrong; in fact, you couldn’t bicycle on it. Your dirt track is probably just concrete.”

“Is there a dirt track at Rosebush?” asked Rose anxiously.

“No. But you can come and see me ride on mine, and Dora can come too. I’ll send a Morland steamer to fetch her.”

“Thank you,” said both little girls rapturously.

“Now you can see me start,” said Tony, pushing himself away from the wall.

“Wave your hand, Tony,” shrieked Dora.

Tony raised a hand in a brief uninterested salute and disappeared around the corner. The tarmac road was in good condition, and he rode happily along between the hedges, making the noises of a motor bicycle as he went. The road to the Wishing Well lay along a ridge, dipped to a stream, and then rose to Southbridge Hill, famous for its motor tests. The winding descent to the little River Rising was successfully negotiated, but just as Tony was preparing to take off across the bridge for the upward climb on the other side he remembered a certain little spit of meadow that stuck out into the stream. For some time it had been in his mind to cut a canal across this isthmus, so making an island of his own, and here was a heaven-sent opportunity with no grownups to interfere. Slackening speed, he hurled himself to the ground, put the bicycle in the ditch, and went down to the waterside. A canal a couple of feet long would do the job, if one had anything to dig with. A broken piece of fencing made a good temporary spade. Tony shook off his jacket, turned his shirt sleeves up to the shoulder and his stockings down over his boots, and was soon so absorbed in the work in hand that he never noticed the Vicarage car go by. Nor did his unsuspecting mother notice the bicycle lying in the ditch among last year’s bracken.

The canal was unexpectedly difficult. Mud and sand poured in as fast as one dug, silting up the channel. Roots impeded one’s progress, squelchy mud came up over one’s shoes, but Tony dug resolutely till he came to a piece of masonry, apparently the end of an old drain.

“Of course people would put concrete just where people want to dig,” he said aloud in an indignant voice. “Simply wasting a person’s time. Oh, well, if people don’t want canals they needn’t have them.”

He stood up, threw his spade into the stream, watched it until it ran ashore in an eddy, and returned to his bicycle. His plan of whizzing up Southbridge Hill was rather damped by the necessity of going back a couple of hundred yards to get up speed for the final dash. He pedalled with dogged determination up the road by which he had come, and when he could push on no further turned around and dashed downhill. The impetus carried him a short way up the steep ascent on the other side, but his strength was not enough to take him up to the top. In spite of furious pressure exerted with the whole weight of his body, first on one pedal and then on the other, in spite of veering and tacking across the road, he was obliged to dismount and push his bicycle to the top of the hill. Here he got on again, rode a little way along the road, and turned off into the woods by the Long Ponds.

The Vicarage car had got to the Wishing Well just about the time when Tony was attempting the hill. Laura, who had been controlling herself very well on the journey, looked anxiously around, but saw no sign of her son.

“Where is Tony?” said Rose.

“I expect he is somewhere about,” said Mrs. Gould, comfortably aware that it was not her child who was missing. “You and Dora go and look for him while we get lunch ready.”

The little girls wandered off. Mrs. Morland helped Mrs. Gould to unpack, but was feeling sick with fear. Quite obviously Tony had either been run over on the way and picked up by a passing motorist and was now unconscious in Southbridge Hospital or he had ridden on so far ahead that he had lost his way and would probably never be heard of again.

“What a lovely lunch Stoker has made,” said Mrs. Gould a little enviously.

“What? Oh, yes,” said Laura. “You don’t think we could possibly have passed Tony on the road, do you?”

“We would have seen him if we had. I expect he is just exploring a bit,” said Mrs. Gould with hateful calm.

A bicycle bell was heard. Laura was just calling herself an idiot for worrying so unnecessarily when a man and a girl on a tandem passed them and disappeared into the woods. She felt more mortally sick than before, and knew that she would cry on the slightest provocation. The lunch was all laid out and Mrs. Gould shouted for Rose and Dora, who almost immediately appeared.

“Did you see Tony?” said their mother carelessly. “Oh, well, he can’t be far off. We’ll begin lunch and he can join in when he comes.”

For the first time in her life Laura hated the Vicar’s wife, and formed in her mind contemptuous remarks about people who only have girls. It was now so evident that Tony was in hospital, urgently needing her but unable to explain who he was, that her eyes began to swim. Already she was following a small coffin to the churchyard, supported by her publisher, Adrian Coates, on one side and her old friend, George Knox, the famous biographer, on the other. Already, repulsing their anxious offers of help and sympathy, she remained alone by the newly filled grave in the gathering twilight. A doubt passed through her mind as to whether people were buried at twilight: didn’t one have to be buried before three o’clock, or was that only for weddings? But putting this doubt aside, she fell into a miserable ecstasy, contemplating the sable robed figure standing mute by a child’s grave, from which she was only roused by the little girls’ shouts of “Tony, Tony.”

“Did you ride all the way up the Southbridge Hill?” asked Dora, as he got off the bicycle.

“Practically.”

“Did you really do twenty-five?” asked Rose.

“I averaged about twenty-five,” said Tony carelessly.

“Why are you so late?” asked his mother. “You started long before we did.”

“I know. Oh, mother, did Stoker give us sausage rolls? I could eat about twenty.”

“Yes,” said his mother. “But what were you doing? And why are your shoes all muddy? And do pull those stockings up.”

“Well, mother,” said Tony, ignoring the question of mud, “if one has a rotten pump and a rotten mudguard, you can’t expect to get along fast all the time. If you had let me ride behind the motor I could have speeded all the way, but anyone would tell you that you can’t keep up a record speed by yourself.”

Lunch proceeded. Tony gave great satisfaction to Rose and Dora by cramming two sausage rolls into his mouth at once. He then gave several dull and pointless imitations of M. Dubois, Mr. Prothero, and other school characters, to which the little girls listened with rapt attention.

“ ‘Oh, I die for food,’ ” Tony declaimed, as his mother passed around a plate of meringues.

“ ‘Here I lie down and measure out my grave.’ ”

“What?” said Mrs. Gould, much startled.

“It’s only As You Like It,” said Laura. “Tony’s school are doing it next term.

“Oh, Tony, are you really acting?” said Rose adoringly.

“What are you?” said Dora.

“Adam, of course.”

“Who is that?”

“Haven’t you read any Shakespeare?” said Tony pityingly. “But I dare say no one has ever heard of Shakespeare in Dorland.”

“Yes, they have.”

“Well, you don’t know much about him if you don’t know that Adam is a very important person in As You Like It. They wouldn’t have anyone to do Adam who wasn’t pretty good. I don’t know how it is, but when I speak my voice always seems to sound better than the other chap’s. Somehow their voices sound quite unfavorable compared with mine. I expect I have a kind of gift for the stage.”

“I’d like to see you act,” said Dora. “I expect you’d forget your part.”

“I couldn’t. I know all my own part and everyone else’s too, I don’t know why, but somehow I seem to acquire all the parts. I could act As You Like It all through by myself. I’ll tell you what, we’ll act it at my theater in Morland. There isn’t a theater in Dorland,” he added hastily, seeing Dora about to speak; “only a cinema, so you can’t act it there. I expect I’ll get quite a lot of applause.”

Mrs. Morland, who had been discussing the Women’s Institute with Mrs. Gould, now called out to Tony to help in clearing away the remains of lunch.

“Oh, mother, need I? We’ve only just finished and I am quite ready to rest.”

“Get on with the job, Tony,” said his mother unkindly. “You’re not so old as all that.”

“ ‘Though I look old’,” remarked Tony getting up, “ ‘yet am I strong and lusty;

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,

Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo

The means of weakness and debility.’ ”

“That’s enough,” said his mother hastily, as her son’s ringing accents filled the clearing where they sat. “Clear away, and then you can each have a penny to drop into the Wishing Well.”

The Wishing Well was a little bubbling spring with a sandy bottom, overhung by a natural arch of stone. Custom decreed that tribute must be paid with a coin or a pin, which ensured the fulfillment of one’s wish.

“You wish first,” said Mrs. Morland to the Vicar’s wife, who dropped a pin into the water and silently wished for a new kitchen range. Mrs. Morland followed, with a silent prayer for Tony to get home safely and the bicycle to be broken. With a good deal of giggling and pushing the three children dropped their pennies in.

“What did you wish?” asked Rose of Dora.

“Well, what did you wish?”

“You won’t get your wish if you tell it,” said Rose.

“Oh, Rose, I didn’t think you would be so supersistious,” said Tony.

“You mean superstitious,” said Rose, from the altitude of fourteen.

“I know. But it’s stupid to be supersistious. I wished I could have a dirt track in the garden. I dare say I shall, too. What did you wish?”

“I wished to see As You Like It,” said Rose self-consciously.

“Good for you,” said Tony briefly.

“Oh, Rose,” said Dora, “that was my wish.”

“That’s all right,” said Tony. “You can both come to the Morland Theater Royal.”

“But we meant really acted, at your school.”

“I dare say I can fix that for you.”

Both little girls bent admiring grateful glances on their companion. All three then besieged the mothers with questions about what they had wished. At first they would not tell, but a compromise was arrived at by which Mrs. Gould was to tell hers and Mrs. Morland to keep it secret. The result would show whether the wishing well really favored reticence. Mrs. Gould’s choice of a kitchen range roused no interest among the children, and the subject dropped.

When the time came to go home Laura begged Mrs. Gould to drive very slowly, or halt frequently, so that Tony could keep up on his bicycle.

“I simply couldn’t stand another hour of anxiety,” she said earnestly.

Her plan was accordingly adopted, and Tony had the pleasure of showing off to his audience and keeping them in fits of admiring giggles by such brilliant jokes as pretending to fall off, or wobbling his front wheel violently. When they came to the Southbridge Hill he shot rapidly ahead and in spite of his mother’s expostulations, vanished from their sight.

“Catch him, mummy, catch him,” shrieked Rose and Dora in chorus. Mrs. Morland turned such an agonized face to her friend that Mrs. Gould drove down the hill a good deal faster than she meant to. At the bottom Tony was sitting on the bank, gloomily rubbing one leg, the bicycle lying at his feet.

“Are you all right?” asked Mrs. Gould, stopping the car.

Tony merely groaned and went on rubbing his leg.

“Don’t be an ass, Tony,” said his mother with the anger of fright. “What idiot’s trick have you been up to now?”

“If people will make back brakes that won’t work properly,” said Tony, ceasing his groans for a moment, “of course people will have accidents.”

“What’s wrong with your leg?” asked his mother, getting out of the car. “It’s nothing but a few scratches, Tony.”

“I know. But I expect I’ll get blood poisoning. I didn’t put my iodine pencil in this jacket. You always ought to put iodine on cuts to prevent germs getting in.”

“That’s enough,” said his unsympathetic mother. “Get up and stop that noise and come home.”

Tony rose and limped to his bicycle. He mounted with a very good imitation of a rheumatic octogenarian, but in a moment he was off again, letting the bicycle fall heavily on its side.

“It’s no good,” he said despairingly. “If they make such rotten brakes that they get out of order and scrape the back rim all the time, they can’t expect a person to ride.”

It was only too true. The brakes, bent from their proper position, were bearing heavily on the rim of the back wheel, making progress slow and difficult.

“All right,” said Laura, who mysteriously enough seemed to be in an excellent temper. “Get in, Tony, and we’ll take the bicycle to Mr. Brown.”

Still groaning, Tony climbed into the back seat with the little girls. The bicycle was packed in on their legs and in a few moments they drew up at Mr. Brown’s garage.

Mr. Brown came out, raised his eyebrows, and took the bicycle out of the car. Laura asked him to cast an eye over it and say what was wrong.

“I expect it’s a defect in the steel,” said Tony. “That’s the way all the worst accidents happen. Is it a defect in the steel, Mr. Brown?”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Brown, concluding his examination. “The back fork is nearly fractured, Mrs. Morland. Master Tony’s come off easy. He might have broke his neck.”

Concealing her intense pleasure, Mrs. Morland asked what the repairs would cost. Mr. Brown expressed the opinion that the defect was so serious that the makers would be bound to replace the back fork, under the guarantee given at the time of purchase.

“I’ll just see Henry about it, Mrs. Morland,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s all right.”

“And how long will it take?” asked Laura, staking her happiness on one throw. Mr. Brown was of the opinion that Master Tony wouldn’t be likely to get it back before the end of the holidays.

“Well, that’s very sad,” said Laura, her heart lighter than it had been for many days. “If there is anything to pay you must let me know. Goodbye.”

Mrs. Gould drove on to the Morlands’ house, Tony in the back seat expounding to the girls what feats he would have performed if the bicycle had not broken down.

“If the car hadn’t been so slow you’d have seen me going down Southbridge Hill like lightning,” he said. “I’d have gone up the hill on the other side as easily as winking and got home hours before you. I don’t know how it is, but I have a sort of instinct for bikes. I had an instinct that there was a defect somewhere in it. Anyone who knows about steel knows when there is a defect. I expect the steel wasn’t made properly. In Morland the bikes are all made of aluminum. I don’t think much of these makers if they can’t mend a bicycle before the end of the holidays. At my works in Morland they can mend a bike in twenty-four hours, whatever it is.”

“So they can in Dorland,” said Dora.

“I know. But they can’t, because they haven’t got proper plant. I have a wonderful instinct about plant. If I had a lathe and a welding machine I could mend anything.”

The car drew up at Mrs. Morland’s drive and she got out.

“Goodbye,” she said to Mrs. Gould, “and thank you for a lovely picnic. I haven’t been so happy for days as today. Goodbye, Rose; goodbye, Dora; come again soon.”

“Goodbye, Tony,” called the little girls.

Tony nodded at them and went around to the kitchen door.

“Hello, Stokes,” he said, entering the kitchen. “The bike’s smashed. There was a defect in the steel. If I hadn’t had an instinct to get off I’d have been killed.”

“Not you,” said Stoker robustly.

“I wish I had a bike of my own,” said Tony, “but mother won’t let me have one till my legs are longer. Some of the chaps at school are much younger than me, but they have longer legs. I’ll tell you what, Stokes. The tall ones are very good at games, but I can beat them easily at work. Some of the little short ones that are younger than me are awfully good at their work, but they don’t seem to have much sense for games. I expect they use up all their strength in swotting. I don’t know why, but I seem to be about fifty-fifty, because I’m good at games and good at work.”

“Didn’t see no prizes last term,” said Stoker, who was putting tea on a tray.

“I know. The chaps that are best at work don’t always win the prizes. If I wasn’t so good at work I dare say my legs would grow a bit longer.”

“I dare say if you didn’t talk so much your tongue would get a bit longer,” said Stoker. “You’ll wear it out one of these fine days.”

“I know. But really, Stokes,” said Tony, following her into the drawing room, “if I didn’t work so hard with my brain I would grow faster. Mother, do you think if I didn’t do Greek my legs would get any longer? All the chaps who are good at Greek are very short.”

“Come and have your tea,” said his mother. “That was a lovely lunch you gave us, Stoker. We had it at the Wishing Well.”

“Get your wish?” asked Stoker. “I never got mine.”

“Was that because you told it?” asked Tony.

Stoker nodded portentously and left the room.

After eating a heavy tea in comparative silence, Tony rushed upstairs and came down again with something in his hand.

“What’s that?” asked his mother.

“My iodine pencil, mother. Don’t you want me not to get infection with germs? You don’t remember that I got my leg cut when the bike had defective steel at the bottom of the hill.”

As he spoke he dropped the glass pencil on the floor.

“Oh, did you get your wish, mother?” he said, walking on the pencil and crushing glass and iodine into the carpet.

“Yes, I did. Oh, Tony, look at the mess you’ve made.”

“I know. If people will make iodine pencils of such weak glass, mother, one can’t help breaking them.”

“You needn’t have walked on it, though,” said his mother mildly. “Give me a hug, and then go and tell Stoker to come and clean up the carpet.”

Tony hugged his mother long and throttlingly, his arms tight around her neck, her arms enfolding him. Then he went off to find Stoker.

Mrs. Morland looked placidly at the mess and stain which would mark her carpet forever. Stoker, coming in with broom and wet cloth, could not understand why her mistress took the disaster so lightly. What she did not know was that Laura still felt in her arms Tony’s hard, beloved, uncaring little body; and that she had got her wish.