"Pip" Part 2

They gravely drank Pip's soup, turn about, and then applied themselves to the matter in hand.

First, they lifted the receiver of the telephone from its rest and surveyed it doubtfully. There was a cup-shaped receptacle at one end into which soup could easily be poured, but the "tube" which connected it to the instrument was of very meagre dimensions.

"Are you sure there's a pipe all the way?" inquired Pip doubtfully.

"Certain. It's just the same as the Talking-Hole, only thinner. And the Talking-Hole has got a pipe all the way, 'cause don't you remember you put a gla.s.s marble in one day when I told you not to, and it fell out in the hall?"

Pip's doubts were not quite satisfied even with this brilliant parallel.

"It'll take a long time to get through," he said. He was fingering the silk-coated wire. "This pipe's awful thin. A marble would never get down _it_."

"No, but the soup will twickle down all right," said Pipette, whose mind, busy with works of mercy, soared far above these utilitarian details. (In later years she was a confirmed bazaar organiser.)

"We'll ring and tell him first, shall we?" suggested Pip.

"Yes, let's!" murmured Pipette joyfully.

She turned the call-handle, and Pip held the receiver, just as he had seen Mr. Evans do. After a decent interval he remarked into the cup--

"Are you there, Mr. Pipes? This is us."

This highly illuminating statement met with no response.

"I suppose he can hear you," said Pipette anxiously.

"Oh, yes. I'm talkin' just as loud as Mr. Evans does."

"I suppose you'll be able to hear him, then?"

"I expect so. But it's a long way. Ring again."

This time, in turning the call-handle, Pipette accidentally placed her hand on the receiver-hook, with the result that she actually rang up the Exchange Office.

Presently a voice inquired brusquely of Pip what he wanted. His reply was a delighted yell, and an announcement to Mr. Pipes that he had something for him. Further revelations were frustrated by Pipette, who tore the receiver from his grasp, and, holding her hand over the opening to prevent eavesdropping on the part of the _beneficiaire_, whispered excitedly in his ear--

"Don't tell him any more! We'll just pour it in now, and give him such a surprise!"

Consequently the young lady in the Exchange Office was soon compelled to relinquish her languid efforts to find out what No. 015273 really wanted, and incontinently switched him off, recking little of the way in which two small philanthropists at the other end of the wire were treating the property of the National Telephone Company.

Very carefully Pip poured the soup into the cup-shaped receiver of the telephone, which Pipette held as steadily as her excitement would permit.

From the first it became obvious that soup-delivery by telephone was going to be a slow business, for the cup transmitted the generous fluid most reluctantly.

"It's such a _very_ thin pipe," they explained to each other hopefully.

At length Pip remarked--

"I should think some of it had got there by now."

"Not bewwy much, I don't fink," said Pipette; "this handle thing's still pretty full."

"But the basin's nearly empty," said Pip. "The stuff must have gone somewhere."

"Some of it has gone on the floor," said Pipette truthfully.

At this moment the clock struck one.

"Father will be in soon," said Pip. "We'd better wipe up."

They propped the telephone receiver on the little table between the directory and a bookstand, and cleared up the mess on the floor with a handkerchief--Pipette's. As they finished they heard the brougham drive up.

"It isn't nearly all gone," said Pip gloomily, peering into the receiver. "If we hang it up on its hook the stuff will all fall out.

Let's leave it like it is. Father doesn't never use the Terriphone till after lunch, and it will be all gone by then. Come on, Pipette."

The two Samaritans turned their backs upon the telephone and stole out of the room, leaving that sorely tried instrument to digest its unaccustomed luncheon as best it might.

It was Mr. Evans who suffered most. He was sent into the Consulting Room just before dinner to telephone a message to a patient. The telephone stood in a dark corner, and the gas in the room was turned low. Mr.

Evans was surprised to find that the receiver, instead of hanging on its hook, was lying on the little table, carefully propped between the directory and a bookstand.

On lifting it up he was surprised by an unwonted feeling of stickiness; but when he held the instrument to the light, the reason revealed itself to him immediately in the form of a dollop of congealed chicken-broth, nicely rounded to the shape of the cup, which shot from its resting-place, with a clammy thud, on to his clean s.h.i.+rtfront, and then proceeded to slide rapidly down inside his dress waistcoat, leaving a snail-like track, dotted with grains of rice, behind it.

Pip was sent supperless to bed, where Pipette, completely broken down by remorse and sisterly affection, voluntarily joined him not much later.

The following week they were sent to school.

CHAPTER II

MR. POCKLINGTON'S

SO Pip and Pipette went to school, and life in its entirety lay at their feet.

Hitherto the social circle in which they moved had been limited on the male side to Father, Mr. Evans, and Mr. Pipes, together with the milkman, the lamplighter, and a few more nodding acquaintances; and on the female to Tattie Fowler, Cook, and a long line of housemaids. The children could neither read nor write; the fact that they possessed immortal souls was practically unrevealed to them; and their religious exercises were limited to a single stereotyped prayer, imparted by Cook, and perfunctorily delivered night and morning by the children, at the bidding of the housemaid in charge, to a mysterious Power whose sole function, so far as they could gather, was to keep an eye upon them during their attendant's frequent nights-out, and to report delinquencies (by some occult means) on her return.

Of the ordinary usages of polite society they knew little or nothing. To Pip and Pipette etiquette and deportment were summed up in the following nursery laws, as amended by the Kitchen:--

I. Girls, owing to some mysterious infirmity which is never apparent, and for which they are not responsible, must be helped first to everything.

II. A boy must on no account punch a girl, even though she is older and bigger than himself. (For reason, see I.)

III. A girl must not scratch a boy. Not that the boy matters, but it is unladylike.

IV. Real men do not play with dolls. (However, you may pretend to be a doctor, and administer medicine, without loss of dignity.)

V. Real ladies do not climb the trees in the garden in the Square. (But you can get over this difficulty by pretending to be a boy or a monkey for half an hour.)