"Weren"t you ever pretty?"
"I thought--so--once, but--but--I must have been mistaken. I guess I never was."
Freddie thought it over, and announced his decision seriously.
"_I_ would want you, anyway."
Aunt Amanda stretched out a trembling hand to him and ran her fingers through his hair; then she threw both her arms around him and pressed him against her knee. He was much annoyed. He was afraid she might be going to kiss him; but she did not; instead, she pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose.
"How many children were there that you didn"t have?" said Freddie, to change the subject. Aunt Amanda did not understand this at first, but she finally saw what he meant. What _did_ he mean? you may say. What he meant was--well, it is perfectly clear, but it is hard to explain.
Anyway, Aunt Amanda understood him. "Three," said she. "Bobby was the oldest, and Jenny next, and James was the littlest one."
"Did they all go to school?"
"Oh dear no. Only Bobby. And once he played hookey, and was gone all day, and didn"t come home until after dark, all muddy. I was terribly worried. He was a very mischievous boy, but he was his--mother"s--own----"
"Did he play marbles for keeps?"
"Yes, but he went to Sunday-school just as regular, and liked it, and----"
"He _liked_ it?"
"Yes, of course, and he always took good care of Jenny----. She had little yellow curls. They went to Sunday-school together hand in hand, and he didn"t even mind her carrying her dolly with her; she wouldn"t go without it. He was so careful of her at street-crossings. She loved her dollies. She used to pretend that James was one of them."
"Did James like that?"
"Not very well, but he put up with it for quite a few minutes at a time.
He couldn"t be still very long. But he was pretty lonesome when Jenny had the measles."
"I"ve had the chicken-pox. Did Bobby know how to mind his P"s and Q"s?"
"He didn"t mind anybody very well. Once I had a note from his teacher, and it said----"
But Freddie never learned what sin Bobby had committed in school; for at that moment the shop door opened, and Mr. Toby thrust in his head and said:
"Just got to get around to the barber-shop right away this minute; can"t put it off no longer. Won"t be gone twenty minutes. Freddie!"
"Yes, sir," said Freddie, standing up.
"Do you think you could look after the shop for twenty minutes, while I"m gone?"
Now Freddie did not know it, but this was in fact the most important question that had ever been put to him in his life. Everything depended on his answer; if he said no, we might as well stop this story right here; if he said yes----
"Yes, sir," said Freddie.
"All right. If anybody comes in, just tell "em to wait."
Freddie left Aunt Amanda, sitting very still, and gazing out of the window, with her hands folded in her lap, and followed Mr. Toby into the shop.
"All right, sonny," said Mr. Toby, "make yourself comfortable. I"ll be back in a jiffy. If anybody comes in, you tell "em to wait." And with that he went out of the door and up the street. Freddie was left alone in the shop.
Everything was very quiet now, for it was beginning to be twilight, and all the people seemed to be indoors. He knew he ought to be going home, but he had promised to mind the shop, and it would never do to leave before Mr. Toby came back. The street door and the door to Aunt Amanda"s room were both closed. He sat down on the chair by the front window and looked out across the bull-dog"s head. He thought of Bobby and his little sister in Sunday-school, and that led him to think of the hymn that did him so much good:
"Yield not to temptation, For yielding is sin."
He sang that tune to himself for a while, and he found himself singing other tunes, and finally one which began:
"There was an old codger, and he had a wooden leg, And he never bought tobacco when tobacco he could beg."
Tobacco! There was a world of tobacco on those shelves. Smoking tobacco, and churchwarden pipes. He strolled around behind the counter, and let down the back of the show-case. There were the churchwarden pipes; he selected one and took it out. It tasted cold and clammy when he put it in his mouth, and he wondered what it would taste like with tobacco in it. He brought the little ladder and got up on it, facing the shelves, and to his surprise he found himself looking directly into the slanting eyes of the porcelain Chinaman"s head. He stood there gazing thoughtfully into those eyes, and singing to himself the verse which was always such a help to him:
"Yield not to temptation, For yielding is sin, Each vict"ry will help you Some other to win."
It was growing a little darker now, and he could not examine the Chinaman"s head very well without bringing it closer. He took the head in his hands, lifted it from the shelf, got down off the ladder, and sat down on the floor with his back against the counter; and while he was doing this he hummed to himself the next part of his tune:
"Fight manfully onward, Dark pa.s.sions subdue."
He put the head on his knees, and took off the Chinaman"s little round cap, which proved to be in fact a lid. He put his hand inside and drew out a good fistful of absolutely black tobacco, fine and powdery like coal-dust; he held it to his nose, and it smelt very sweet, in fact much like brown sugar. He wondered if it would taste like brown sugar through the pipe-stem; and humming quietly to himself, "Each vict"ry will help you," he poured the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. He was disappointed, on sucking in through the pipe-stem, to find that there was no brown-sugar taste at all. Of course, the only way to give tobacco any taste was to light it; he reached up and got a match off the counter behind him, and sitting down again struck the match on the floor. It made a very pretty glow in the twilight, and he watched it as it burned away in his fingers; it would be burnt out in another second, so, humming to himself those ever-helpful words, "Yield not to temptation,"
he put the pipe in his mouth and touched the lighted match to the tobacco.
It is painful to have to tell these things, but it can"t be helped; for the consequences were so strange, and so important to Freddie and his friends, that----
Anyway, he lit the pipe and drew in a long breath through the stem. He nearly choked to death. Smoke got into his nose and his eyes and his throat, and he coughed and coughed; but he remembered the words, "Fight manfully onward," and he determined that he would not give up so soon.
He stopped coughing and pulled again at the pipe; this time he did not swallow the smoke, but blew it out of his mouth as he had seen it done a thousand times. He gave another pull, and blew the smoke out again; it did indeed taste like brown sugar; it was extremely pleasant; he puffed again and again. He was astonished that he could have produced so much smoke in a few whiffs; there was quite a cloud over his head. He gave another puff, and when he blew out the smoke the white cloud above him was so thick that he could not see through it. It began to settle down on him. He put the Chinaman"s head on the floor, and looked up into this cloud.
It was growing thicker and thicker, and it was beginning to churn about as if in a whirlwind; it turned all sorts of colours, mostly yellow and green, and parts of it looked like barber"s poles revolving at a terrific speed. He became dizzy as he gazed at it; his head began to swim; the cloud was coming down closer and closer upon him, and whirling about more and more wildly; he crouched down lower, and became dizzier and dizzier. The counter and the shelves began to go round and round, so that he had to put his hand on the floor to steady himself; in another moment the shop disappeared altogether, and there was nothing under him but a little square of floor, and nothing over him but the wild, churning cloud, now sparkling with jets of fire. He felt himself falling, falling, and as he came to the bottom with a crash, he heard the shop door open and close, and found himself sitting on the floor with his back to the counter as before, with no smoke anywhere to be seen; and he was aware that a hoa.r.s.e voice was speaking on the other side of the counter, and it was saying these words, very loud and brisk:
"Avast, there! Belay that piping! All snug, sir, hatches battened down, makin" way under skysails and royals, hands piped to quarters, and here"s your humble servant ready for orders! Shiver my timbers, where"s the skipper? Piped me up with a "baccy pipe, he did, and where"s he gone? Skipper ahoy! Come for orders, I be, and ever yours to command, Lemuel Mizzen! That"s me!"
Freddie put the pipe down on the floor, rose to his feet, and looked over the counter.
Leaning on his elbow on the other side of the counter was a Sailorman, with a wide blue collar open at the throat, a flat blue cap with a black ribbon on the back of his head, and a green patch over his right eye.
CHAPTER VI
LEMUEL MIZZEN, A.B.
Freddie looked at the Sailorman, and the Sailorman straightened up and touched his cap. His face was brown as weathered oak, and creased like bark; his one eye was black and glittering; the hand which he raised to his cap was of the shape and nearly the size of a ham; and the chest and throat which emerged from his wide-open shirt-collar was as brown as his face, and big with muscles. There was a delicious odour of tar about him; you positively could not look at him without hearing wind whistling through ropes. He hitched up his trousers with his other hand and said:
"Ay, ay, skipper! Here I be as big as life, all ready fer orders!"
As Freddie gazed at him, the Little Boy slowly collected his wits, and a light began to dawn upon him.
"Have you been to China?" said he.