Sweethearts at Home

On the other hand, he was useful when there were heavy weights to be lifted, boxes of materials for the little store-room at the back. Elizabeth could not move these, so she had either to unpack them on the street, or wait till Butcher Donnan drove his blue-and-gold wagon into the yard.

But Nipper delighted to show his strength, and would pick up a huge case, swing it on his shoulder, and deposit it wherever told. These were his moments of great joy, and almost repaid him for not being able to eat.

For Nipper's appetite had suffered. He indulged himself in startling neckties, and, as his girth shrank, the waistcoats which contained it became more and more gorgeous.

Poor Nipper! He could only gaze and wonder – that is, when there was no lifting to be done. His tongue forsook him when called upon to answer the simplest remark. When Elizabeth, taking pity upon him, asked about his week's receipts, he answered vaguely that he did not know.

Hearing this, she turned about, bearing a tray full of almond-cake fresh from Mrs. Donnan's hand, and said, "Nipper, do you mean to say you do not keep track of your sales? Why, you will get cheated right and left. Bring the books up to-night and I will go over them for you!"

To Nipper this seemed an opportunity too good to be lost. He imagined their two heads bent over the records of the down town shop, and perhaps also in time a corresponding approachment of ideas.

Beautiful dream! Foredoomed to failure, however. For Elizabeth, after a few questions, took up the books to her own room, and on the morrow furnished the disappointed Nipper with a few startling statistics as to receipts and expenditure.

"And what would you advise me to do?" said Nipper humbly.

"Oh, I don't know," said Elizabeth. "Ask Hugh John from the House in the Wood. He will tell you, if anybody can. He advised me to come to help your mother. If it had not been for him, I should not have been here now!"

The gleam of jealousy (which is yellow, and not green) in his eyes altered Nipper's countenance completely.

"Ah, Hugh John indeed!" he thought. That, then, was the explanation, was it? This coldness was owing to Hugh John – a boy, little more than a boy – while he, Nipper, was a man, a Councillor, with a shop and income of his own!

Yet he remembered, when he was already well-nigh Hugh John's present age, and the cock of all Edam, tying a pale-faced, determined little boy to a ring in a wall down in the dungeon of an ancient castle. He had determined then to make the cub give in, and there had been some sick work with string-twisting and wire-pincers. He did not care to think about that. But even then the cub had beaten them all. They had been good friends since – that is, in a way. But was it written in the Book of Fate (in which Nipper believed) that they should fight for the mastery on another and far more dangerous arena? It seemed preposterous, but still – well, he would see Hugh John and put the case to him, as Elizabeth had said.

Then, so Nipper told himself, he would know! Well —he might– supposing that Hugh John had been even as the young butcher, blushing half-a-mile away when a lissom, upright form and gait as of wind-blown corn told the world the important news (for Nipper Donnan) that Elizabeth Fortinbras was coming up the street in a hurry.

Hugh John listened quietly. Bygones were long bygones between him and Nipper. The "smoutchies" smoutched no more, but were (most of them) good servants of the King or honorable citizens of Edam. Already one wore the V. C., and for his sake and in the general interests of peace Hugh John tolerated those who remained. He even liked Nipper Donnan, and had no idea of the gusts of angry fury that were tearing his poor ignorant heart to pieces.

"Advise you – well, I don't know much about it," said Hugh John. "If it is a matter of your books, you had better show them to your father. No? You don't want to do that. Very well, then, tell me what Elizabeth Fortinbras said – exactly, I mean."

"Said I was to come to you – tell you about the week's deficit, and ask your advice."

"Then you must tell me all about it!" said Hugh John, calmly impartial. Nipper gave some figures of entrances and exits, marts and sales, gross, retail, and monthly book-debts.

"Hum!" said Hugh John, after a minute's thought, "if I were you I should get rid of the whole indoor crowd, and work the business myself for a month or two, with a couple of 'prentices and the toe of my boot!"

Hugh John's eyes were distant, grave, thoughtful – Nipper's little, black, and virulent with suppressed anger. But the Thinker had grown man of action also, and Nipper felt no security that he could win a victory against Hugh John even with his fists. As to the mind, he felt instinctively the grip of his master. That was not to be gainsaid.

"Yes," he said, jerking out his words like leaden pellets on a table, "I suppose that is the plan. I will fire the whole lot this very night!" Hugh John nodded quietly.

"It will be best!" he said, and the advice once given, his mind would have passed to another question had not Nipper recalled him suspiciously.

"Has my father not been speaking to you?" he growled ungraciously.

"Your father? No, not that I remember!" said Hugh John, staring in wonder.

"Nor my – Mrs. Donnan, I mean?"

"Never spoke to her in my life, I believe – Sis has, though!"

"Nor Elizabeth?"

Nipper's eyes were like gimlets now, but the calm serenity in those of Hugh John baffled them.

"Elizabeth Fortinbras? Oh, yes," said Hugh John tranquilly, "when she wants to ask me about anything – as you are doing now – then she speaks to me."

"Is that all?" Nipper's face worked. His lips were bitten so close that the words had almost to force themselves between the clenched teeth. Hugh John regarded him a moment gravely, as he did all things, with gaze unhurried, undismayed. Then he put his hands in his pockets and turned his back on Nipper with only the words, "Enough for you to know, anyway!"

And if ever Nipper came near striking any one a dastardly blow from behind, it was Hugh John who was in danger and at that moment.

XII

FIGS AND FIG-LEAVES

September 23. And my Age still going Sixteen.

It was the week before Hugh John went to college that what I am going to tell took place. September is almost always nice about Edam – with the corn standing white in stooks all down the valley, waving blonde half-way up the sides of the wide glen, and looking over into it from the heights of Kingside still as green as grass. Yes, in our part September is wonderfully quiet and windless – generally, that is. Yet withal, there is the stir of harvest about the farm-town, the merry whirr of the "reaper" over the hedge, and always the clatter of voices as the workers go homeward in the twilight. The big scythe is now only used about our house for "opening up" a field. After that the horses pull the red-and-blue "McCormick" round as neatly as a toy. The squares get less and the yellow stooks rise, as it were, out of the very ground.

This year it was a specially gay time for us all. Mr. Ex-Butcher Donnan had more customers. His wife had taken a laboratory assistant in the shape of an apple-cheeked lass, Meg Linwood, the daughter of the station-master at Bridge of Edam – honest as the day, but at first incapable in the kitchen as a crossing-sweeper of goldsmith work.

Mrs. Donnan told me of Meg's iniquities in her frank impulsive Irish way.

"There's not a thing breakable the craitur has not broke, or at least tried her best to break. And what she can't knock to flinders with one skelp, she will fall over like an applelaunche (avalanche?) and rowl out flat like so much sheet lead. I dare not show the master the tenth of her breakages, or there would be bloodshed and wounds. And yet she is the honest, well-meaning craitur too, and would not hurt a fly. Only it is the heaven's pity she has no power of her feet! Hear to that now!"

Poor Mrs. Donnan ought, of course, to have remained unmoved where she was and entertained me with a stomach-aching smile so long as I chose to stay. But, being an Irishwoman and natural, she sprang up and ran forthwith into the kitchen.

She came out with tears in her eyes.

"It's the épergne," she said, "I might have known it. The green figs is just come in, and as they are a new thing in Edam I thought to make a kind of trophy out of them. And now – !"

Mrs. Donnan's motherly eyes overflowed, good, kindly soul, without very much anger at the breaker, but with real grief for the loss of the "trophy" she had counted upon to display in her plate-glass shop window.

I patted her on one plump shoulder, and she murmured my undeserved praises – undeserved, I mean, at that moment. But I had remembered that there was in our china-closet at home a huge épergne of many storys, which Somebody had taken a prejudice against, because when loaded it shut off the entire view of the people at table, and they played at "Bo-peep" all the time around it and about – all right for us little ones who, unseen, could convey extra fruits and comfits to our plates, but abhorred by Somebody who was thus prevented from keeping a kindly, governing eye upon us. So the tall épergne was banished – a life sentence firmly expressed.

I went quickly home and excavated it from a general ruck of odd plates and cupless saucers. In triumph I carried it to the good mistress of New Erin Villa.

"Oh, Miss Sweetheart," she said, "I cannot – I cannot indeed – "

"Suppose that your – that 'Somebody' were to come along and see that épergne in my window – sure they might have in the police!"

Finally I satisfied Mrs. Donnan that though I had not asked special permission, it was only because there was no need, and that Somebody, if duly approached, would be the first of her customers, and the most helpful of her friends. I said so because I knew.

"It would look like all Dublin Castle and Sackville Street!" said Mrs. Donnan, visibly flinching as her own inner eye built up the green figs, and decorated the épergne with the leaves that had proved so useful early in the history of the world.

"Well," I answered, taking my leave, "Hugh John and I will be round about four to see if it is as fine as you say."

"It will be finer," cried Mrs. Donnan eagerly; "I have got another idea entirely since I set eyes on it."

But after all it was the deft hands of Elizabeth Fortinbras which decorated our long-condemned and dusty épergne. She polished it, she set it on foot again as good as new, mingling the tawny-red-bitten oak-leaves and acorns with the deep green figs, and making the thing a joy, if not for ever, at least for as long as it remained in Mrs. Donnan's window.