Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 28

A few other lads did actually pay toll to the keepers, and some penniless ones were brought before the magistrates and fined for trespa.s.s, "because they could not afford it," as Caroline said, and to the Colonel's great disgust she sent two sovereigns by Allen to pay their fines and set them free.

"It was my own money," she said, in self-defence, "earned by my models of fungi."

The Colonel thought it an unsatisfactory justification, and told her that she would lay up trouble for herself by thus encouraging insubordination. He little thought that the laugh in her eyes was at his complacent ignorance of his own son's narrow escape.

Allen was at home for Easter, when Eton gave longer holidays than did St. Kenelm, so that his brothers were at work again long before he was. One afternoon, which had ended in a soaking mist, the two pairs of Roberts and Johns encountered him at the Folly gate so disguised in mud that they hardly recognised the dainty Etonian.

"That brute Barnes," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; "I had to come miles round through a disgusting lane. I wish I had gone on. I'd have proved the right of way if he chose to prosecute me!"

"Father says that's no go," said Robin.

"I say, Allen, what a guy you are," added Johnny.

"And he's got his swell trousers on," cried Jock, capering with glee.

"I see," gravely observed Bobus, "he had got himself up regardless of expense for his Undine, and she has treated him to another dose of her native element.

"She had nothing to do with it," a.s.severated Allen, "she was as good as gold--"

"Ah! I knew he wasn't figged out for nothing," put in Jock.

"Don't be ashamed, Ali, my boy," added Bobus. "We all understand her little tokens."

"Stop that!" cried Allen, catching hold of Jock's ear so as to end his war-dance in a howl, bringing the ponderous Rob to the rescue, and there was a general melee, ending by all the five rolling promiscuously on the gravel drive. They scrambled up with recovered tempers, and at the sight of an indignant housemaid rushed in a general stampede to the two large attics opening into one another, which served as the lair of the Folly lads. There, while struggling, with Jock's a.s.sistance, to pull off his boots, Allen explained how he had been waylaid "by a beast in velveteens," and walked off to the nearest gate.

"Will he summons you, Ali? We'll all go and see the Grand Turk in the dock," cried Jock.

"Don't flatter yourself; he wouldn't think of it."

"How much did you fork out?" asked Bobus.

Allen declaimed in the last refinement of Eton slang (carefully treasured up by the others for reproduction) against the spite of the keeper, who he declared had grinned with malice as he turned him out at a little back gate into a lane with a high stone wall on each side, and two ruts running like torrents with water, leading in the opposite direction to Kenminster, and ending in a bottom where he was up to the ankles in red clay.

"The Eton boots, oh my!" cried Jock, falling backwards with one of them, which he had just pulled off.

"And then," added Allen, "as I tried to get along under the wall by the bank, what should a miserable stone do, but turn round with me and send me squash into the mud and mire, floundering like a hippopotamus. I should like to get damages from that villain! I should!"

Allen was much more angry than was usual with him, and the others, though laughing at his Etonian airs, fully sympathised with his wrath.

"He ought to be served out."

"We will serve him out!"

"How?"

"Get all our fellows and make a jolly good row under his windows," said Robin.

"Decidedly low," said Allen.

"And impracticable besides," said Bobus. "They'd kick you out before you could say Jack Robinson."

"There was an old book of father's," suggested Jock, "with an old scamp who starved and licked his apprentices, till one of them dressed himself up in a bullock's hide, horns and hoofs, and tail and all, and stood over his bed at night and shouted--

"'Old man, old man, for thy cruelty, Body and soul thou art given to me; Let me but hear those apprentices' cries, And I'll toss thee, and gore thee, and bore out thine eyes.'

And he was quite mild to the apprentices ever after."

Jock acted and roared with such effect as to be encored, but Rob objected. "He ain't got any apprentices."

"It might be altered," said Allen.

"Old man, old man, thy gates thou must ope,"

Bobus chimed in.

"Nor force Eton swells in quagmire to grope."

"Bother you, don't humbug and put me out.

"Old man, old man, if for aught thou wouldst hope, Thy heart, purse, and gates thou must instantly ope.

Let me but--"

"Get Mother Carey to write it," suggested his cousin John.

"No; she must know nothing about it," said Bobus.

"She'd think it a jolly lark," said Jock.

"When it's over," said Allen. "But it's one of the things that the old ones are sure to stick at beforehand, if they are ever so rational and jolly."

"'Tis a horrid pity she is not a fellow," sighed Johnny.

"And who'll do the verses?" said Rob.

"Oh, any fool can do them," returned Bobus. "The point is to bell the cat."

"There'd be no getting in to act the midnight ghost," said Allen.

"No," said Jock; "but one could hide in the big rhododendron in the wolf-skin rug, and jump out on him in his chair."

In Allen's railway rug, Jock rehea.r.s.ed the scene, and was imitated if not surpa.s.sed by both cousins; but Allen and Bobus declared that it could not be carried out in the daylight.