The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith

"Don't you speak against my father!" cried Sammy Carter, glowering at General Napoleon in a way in which privates do not often look at their Commanders-in-Chief.

"Who's touching your father?" the latter said, a little more soothingly. "See here, Sammy, you've got your coat on wrong side out to-day. Go home and sleep on it. 'Tisn't my fault if you did run away, and got home before your sister – with a blue place on your back."

Sammy Carter flung out from under the shelter of the elm and went in search of Prissy, from whom in all his moods he was sure of comfort and understanding. He was a somewhat delicate boy, and generally speaking hated quarrelling as much as she did; but he had a clever tongue, which often brought him into trouble, and, like most other humorists, he did not at all relish a jest at his own expense.

As he went, he was pursued and stung by the brutally unrefined taunts of Hugh John.

"Yes, go on to Prissy; I think she has a spare doll. Go and play at 'house'! It's all you're good for!"

Thus encouraged by their general, the rest of the company – that is, Cissy and Sir Toady Lion, joined in singing a certain stirring and irritating refrain popular among the youth of Bordershire.

"Lassie-boy, lassie-boy, fie for shame!Coward's your nature, and Jennie's your name!"

Sammy Carter stood poised for flight with his eyes blazing with anger.

"You think a lot of your old tumble-down castle; but the town boys have got it in spite of you; and what's more, they've a flag flying on it with 'Down with Smith!' on it. I saw it. Hooray for the town boys!"

And with this Parthian arrow he disappeared at full speed down the avenue.

For a moment Hugh John was paralysed. He tried to pooh-pooh the matter, but he could not but admit that it might very well be true; so he instantly despatched Toady Lion for Prissy, who, as we know, was the fleetest runner of them all. Upon her reporting for duty, the General sent her to bring back word if the state of affairs was as reported.

It was. A large red flag was flying, with the inscription in white upon it, "Down with Smith!" while above the inscription there was what looked like a rude attempt at a death's head and crossbones. Hugh John knew this ensign in a moment. Once upon a time, in his wild youth, he had served under it as a pirate on the high seas; but of this he now uttered no word.

It was in such moments that the true qualities of the born leader came out in General Napoleon Smith. Instantly he dismissed his attendants, put his finger to his forehead, and sat down to draw a map of the campaign in the genuine Napoleonic manner.

At last, after quite a while, he rapped upon the table.

"I have it," he cried, "we must find an ally." The problem was solved.

CHAPTER XXIII

CISSY CARTER, BOYS' GIRL

NOW Prissy Smith was a girls' girl, while Cissy Carter was a boys' girl. That was mainly the difference between them. Not that Prissy did not love boys' play upon occasion, for which indeed her fleetness of foot particularly fitted her. Also if Hugh John teased her she never cried nor told on him, but waited till he was looking the other way and then gave him something for himself on the ear. But on the whole she was a girls' girl, and her idea of the way to fight was slapping her dolls when they were naughty.

Now, Mr. Picton Smith said that most religion was summed up in two maxims, "Don't tell lies," and "Don't tell tales." To these Hugh John added a third, at least equal in canonicity, "Don't be dasht-mean." In these you have briefly comprehended all the Law and the Prophets of the house of Windy Standard.

Cissy Carter, however, was a tom-boy: you could not get over that. There was no other word for her. She never played with girls if she could better herself. She despised dolls; she hated botany and the piano. Her governess had a hard but lively time of it, and had it not been for her brother Sammy coaching her in short cuts to knowledge, she would have been left far behind in the exact sciences of spelling and the multiplication-table. As it was, between a tendency to scramble for scraps of information and the run of a pretty wide library, Cissy knew more than any one gave her credit for.

On one memorable occasion it was Cissy's duty to take her grandmother for a walk. Now the Dowager Mrs. Davenant Carter was the dearest and most fairy-like old lady in the world, and Cissy was very proud to walk into Edam with her. For her grandmother had not forgotten how good confections tasted to girls of thirteen, and there was quite a nice shop in the High Street. Their rose-drops especially were almost as good as doing-what-you-were-told-not-to, and their peppermints for use in church had quite the force of a religious observance.

But Mrs. Davenant Carter had a weak eye, and whenever she went out, she put a large green shade over it. So one day it happened that Cissy was walking abroad with her grandmother, with a vision of rose-drop-shop in the offing. As they were passing one of the villas nearest to their house, a certain rude boy, Wedgwood Baker the name of him, seeing the lame old lady tripping by on her stick like a fairy godmother, called out loudly "Go it, old blind patch!"

He was sorry the minute after, for in one moment Cissy Carter had pulled off her white thread gloves, climbed the fence, and had landed what Hugh John would have called "One, two, three – and a tiger" upon the person of Master Wedgwood Baker.

I do not say that all Cissy Carter's blows were strictly according to Queensberry rules. But at any rate the ungallant youth was promptly doubled up, and retreated yelling into the house, as it were falling back upon his reserves.

That same evening the card of Mrs. Baker, Laurel Villa, Edam, was brought to the diningtable of Mrs. Davenant Carter.

"The lady declines to come in, m'am. She says she must see you immediately at the door," said the scandalised housemaid.

Cissy's mother went into the hall with the card in her hand, and a look of gentle surprised inquiry on her face. There, on the doorstep was Mrs. Baker, with a young and hopeful but sadly damaged Wedgwood tagging behind her, like a weak-minded punt in tow of an ancient threedecker.

The injured lady began at once a voluble complaint.

"Look at him, madam. That is the handiwork of your daughter. The poor boy was quietly digging in the garden, cultivating a few unpretending flowers, when your daughter, madam, suddenly flew at him over the railings and struck him on the face so furiously that, if I had not come to the rescue, the dear boy might have lost the use of both his eyes. But most happily I heard the disturbance and went out and stopped her."

"Dear me, this is very sad," faltered little Mrs. Carter; "I'm sure I don't know what can have come over Cissy. Are you sure there is no mistake?"

"Mistake! No, indeed, madam, there is no mistake, I saw her with my own eyes – a great girl twice Wedgwood's size."

At this point Mr. Davenant Carter came to the door with his table-napkin in his hand.

"What's this – what's this?" he demanded in his quick way – "Cissy and your son been fighting?"

"No indeed, sir," said the complainant indignantly; "this dear boy never so much as lifted a hand to her. Ah, here she comes – the very – ahem, young lady herself."

All ignorant of the trouble in store for her, Cissy came whistling through the laurels with half-a-dozen dogs at her heels. At sight of her Mrs. Baker bridled and perked her chin with indignation till all her black bugles clashed and twinkled.

"Come here, Cissy," said her father sternly. "Did you strike this boy to-day in front of his mother's gate?"

"Yes, I did," quoth the undaunted Cissy, "and what's more, I'll do it again, and give him twice as much, if he ever dares to call my grandmother 'Old Blind Patch' again – I don't care if he is two years and three months older than me!"

"Did you call names at my mother?" demanded Cissy's father, towering up very big, and looking remarkably stern.

Master Wedgwood had no denial ready; but he had his best boots on and he looked very hard at them.

"Come, Wedgwood dear, tell them that you did not call names. You know you could not!"

"I never called nobody names. It was her that hit me!" snivelled Wedgwood.

"Now, you hear," said his mother, as if that settled the question.

"Oh, you little liar! Wait till I catch you out!" said Cissy, going a step nearer as if she would like to begin again. "I'll teach you to tell lies on me."

Mrs. Baker of Laurel Villa held up her hands so that the lace mitts came together like the fingers of a figure of grief upon a tomb. "What a dreadful girl!" she said, looking up as if to ask Heaven to support her.

Mr. Davenant Carter remembered his position as a county magistrate. Also he desired to stand well with all his neighbours.

"Madam," he said to Mrs. Baker, in the impressive tone in which he addressed public meetings, "I regret exceedingly that you should have been put to this trouble. I think that for the future you will have no reason to complain of my daughter. Will you allow me to conduct you across the policies by the shorter way? Cissy, go to bed at once, and stop there till I bid you get up! That will teach you to take the law into you own hands when your father is a Justice of the Peace!"

This he said in such a stern voice that Mrs. Baker was much flattered and quite appeased. He walked with the lady to the small gate in the boundary wall, opened it with his private key, and last of all shook hands with his visitor with the most distinguished courtesy. Some day he meant to stand for the burgh and her brothers were well-to-do grocers in the town.

"Sir," she said in parting, "I hope you will not be too severe with the young lady. Perhaps after all she was only a trifle impulsive!"

"Discipline must be maintained," said Mr. Davenant Carter sternly, closing, however, at the same time the eyelid most remote from Mrs. Baker of Laurel Villa.

"It shows what a humbug pa is," muttered Cissy, as she went upstairs; "he knows very well it is bed-time anyway. I don't believe he is angry one bit!"

When her father came in, he looked over at his wife. I am afraid he deliberately winked, though in the interests of morality I trust I may be mistaken. For how could a Justice of the Peace and a future Member of Parliament demean himself to wink?

"Jane," he said to Mrs. Carter, "what does Cissy like most of all for supper?"

"A little bit of chicken and bread-sauce done with broiled bacon – at least I think so, dear – why do you ask?"

He called the tablemaid.

"Walbridge," he said sternly, "take that disgraceful girl up the breast and both wings of a chicken, also three nice pieces of crisp bacon, four new potatoes with butter-sauce, some raspberrytart with thick cream and plenty of sugar – and a whole bottle of zoedone. But mind you, nothing else, as you value your place – not another bite for such a bold bad girl. This will teach her to go about the country thrashing boys two years older than herself!"

He looked over across the table at his son.

"Let this be a lesson to you, sir," he said, frowning sternly at him.

"Yes, sir," said Sammy meekly, winking in his turn very confidentially at a fly which was having a free wash and brush-up on the edge of the fingerbowl, after completing the round of the dishes on the dinner table.

CHAPTER XXIV

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME – AND ENDS THERE

NOW all this has nothing to do with the story, except to show what sort of a girl Cissy Carter was, and how she differed from Prissy Smith – who in these circumstances would certainly have gone home and prayed that God would in time make Wedgwood Baker a better boy, instead of tackling missionary work on the spot with her knuckles as Cissy Carter did.

It was several days later, and the flag of the Smoutchy boys still flew defiantly over the battlements of the castle. The great General was growing discouraged, for in little more than a week his father might return from London, and would doubtless take up the matter himself. Then, with the coming of policemen and the putting up of fences and notice-boards, all romance would be gone forever. Besides which, most of the town boys would have to go back to school, and the Carters' governess and their own would be returning to annoy them with lessons, and still more uncalled for aggravations as to manners.

Cissy Carter had given Sammy the slip, and started to come over by herself to Windy Standard. It was the afternoon, and she came past the gipsy encampment which Mr. Picton Smith had found on some unenclosed land on the other side of the Edam Water, and which, spite of the remonstrances of his brother-landlords, he had permitted to remain there.

The permanent Ishmaelitish establishment consisted of about a dozen small huts, some entirely constructed of rough stone, others of turf with only a stone interposed here and there; but all had mud chimneys, rough doorways, and windows glazed with the most extraordinary collection of old glass, rags, wisps of straw, and oiled cloth. Dogs barked hoarsely and shrilly according to their kind, ragged clothes fluttered on extemporised lines, or made a parti-coloured patch-work on the grass and on the gorse bushes which grew all along the bank. There were also a score of tents and caravans dotted here and there about the rough ground. Half-a-dozen swarthy lads rose silently and stared after Cissy as she passed.

A tall limber youth sitting on a heap of stones examining a dog's back, looked up and scowled as she came by. Cissy saw an unhealed wound and stopped.

"Let me look at him," she said, reaching out her hand for the white fox-terrier.

"Watch out, miss," said the lad, "he's nasty with the sore. He'll bite quick as mustard!"

"He won't bite me," said Cissy, taking up the dog calmly, which after a doubtful sniff submitted to be handled without a murmur.

"This should be thoroughly washed, and have some boracic ointment put on it at once," said Cissy, with the quick emphasis of an expert.

"Ain't got none o' the stuff," said the youth sullenly, "nor can't afford to buy it. Besides, who's to wash him first off, and him in a temper like that?"

"Come over with me to Oaklands and I'll get you some ointment. I'll wash him myself in a minute."

The boy whistled.

"That's a good 'un," he said, "likely thing me to go to Oaklands!"

"And why?" said Cissy; "it's my father's place. I've just come from there."

"Then your father's a beak, and I ain't going a foot – not if I know it," said the lad.

"A what – oh! you mean a magistrate – so he is. Well, then, if you feel like that about it I'll run over by myself, and sneak some ointment from the stables."

And with a careless wave of the hand, a pat on the head and a "Poo' fellow then" to the white fox-terrier, she was off.

The youth cast his voice over his shoulders to a dozen companions who were hiding in the broom behind. His face and tone were both full of surprise and admiration.

"Say, chaps, did you hear her? She said she'd 'sneak' the ointment from the stables. I tell 'ee what, she'll be a rare good plucked one that. And her a beak's daughter! Her mother mun ha' been a piece!"

It was half-an-hour before Cissy got back with the pot of boracic dressing and some lint.

"I had to wait till the coachman had gone to his tea," she explained, "and then send the stable boy with a message to the village to get him out of the way."

The youth on the stone heap secretly signalled his delight to the appreciative audience hiding in the broom bushes.

Then Cissy ordered him to get her some warm water, which he brought from one of the kettles swinging on the birchen tripods scattered here and there about the encampment.

Whereupon, taking the fox-terrier firmly on her knee and turning up the skirt of her dress, she washed away all the dirt and matted hair, cleansing the wound thoroughly.

The poor beast only made a faint whining sound at intervals. Then she applied the antiseptic dressing, and bound the lint tightly down with a cincture about the animal. She fitted his neck with a neat collar of her own invention, made out of the wicker covering of a Chianti wine flask which she brought with her from Oaklands.

"There," she said, "that will keep him from biting at it, and you must see that he doesn't scratch off the bandage. I'll be passing to-morrow and will drop in. Here's the pot of ointment. Put some more on in the morning and some again at night, and he will be all right in a day or two."

"Thank'ee, miss," said the lad, touching his cap with the natural courtesy which is inherent in the best blood of his race. "I don't mean to forget, you be sure."

Cissy waved her hand to him gaily, as she went off towards Windy Standard. Then all at once she stopped.

"By the way, what is your name? Whom shall I ask for if you are not about to-morrow?"

"Billy Blythe," he said, after a moment's pause to consider whether the daughter of a magistrate was to be trusted; "but I'll be here to-morrow right enough!"

"Why did you tell the beak's daughter your name, Bill, you blooming Johnny?" asked a companion. "You'll get thirty days for that sure!"

"Shut up, Fish Lee," said the owner of the dog; "the girl is main right. D'ye think she'd ha' said 'sneaked' if she wasn't. G'way, Bacon-chump!"

Cissy Carter took the road to Windy Standard with a good conscience. She was not troubled about the "sneaking," though she hoped that the coachman would not miss that pot of ointment.

At the foot of the avenue, just where it joined the dusty road to the town of Edam, she met Sir Toady Lion. He had his arms full of valuable sparkling jewellery, or what in the distance looked like it as the sun shone upon some winking yellow metal.

Toady Lion began talking twenty to the dozen as soon as ever he came within Cissy's range.

"Oo!" he cried, "what 'oo fink? Father sented us each a great big half-crown from London – all to spend. And we have spended it."

"Well," said Cissy genially, "and what did you buy?"

"Us all wented down to Edam and boughted – oh! yots of fings."

"Show me what you've bought, Toady Lion! I want to see! How much money had you, did you say?"

Toady Lion sat plump down in the thickest dust of the road, as he always did just wherever he happened to be at the time. If there chanced to be a pool there or a flower-bed – why, so much the worse. But whenever Toady Lion wanted to sit down, he sat down. Here, however, there was only the dry dust of the road and a brown smatter of last year's leaves. The gallant knight was in a meditative mood and inclined to moralise.

"Money," said Toady Lion thoughtfully, "well, dere's the money that you get gived you, and wot Janet sez you muss put in your money-box. That's no good! Money-box locked! Janet keeps money-box. 'Get money when you are big,' she sez – rubbage, I fink – shan't want it then – lots and lots in trowsies' pocket then, gold sixpences and fings."

Toady Lion's eyes were dreamy and glorious, as if the angels were whispering to him, and he saw unspeakable things,

"Then there's miss'nary money in a round box wif a slit on the top. That's lots better! Sits on mantlepiece in dining-room. Can get it out wif slimmy-jimmy knife when nobody's looking. Hugh John showed me how. Prissy says boys who grab miss'nary's pennies won't not go to heaven, but Hugh John, he says – yes. 'Cause why miss'nary's money is for bad wicked people to make them good. Then if it is wicked to take miss'nary money, the money muss be meaned for us – to do good to me and Hugh John. Hugh John finks so. Me too!"

Toady Lion spoke in short sentences with pauses between, Cissy meantime nodding appreciation.

"Yes, I know," she said meditatively, "a thinbladed kitchen knife is best."

But Sir Toady Lion had started out on the track of Right and Wrong, and was intent on running them down with his usual slow persistence.

"And then the miss'nary money is weally-weally our money, 'cause Janet makes us put it in. Onst Hugh John tried metal buttons off of his old serge trowsies. But Janet she found out. And he got smacked. An' nen, us only takes a penny out when us is tony-bloke!"

"Is which? Oh, stone-broke," laughed Cissy Carter, sitting down beside Toady Lion; "who taught you to say that word?"

"Hugh John," said the small boy wistfully; "him and me tony-bloke all-ee-time, all-ee-ways, all-ee-while!"

"Does Prissy have any of – the missionary money?" said Cissy; "I should!"

"No," said Toady Lion sadly; "don't you know? Our Prissy's awful good, juss howwid! She likes goin' to church, an' washing, an' having to wear gloves. Girls is awful funny."

"They are," said Cissy Carter promptly. The funniness of her sex had often troubled her. "But tell me, Toady Lion," she went on, "does Hugh John like going to church, and being washed, and things?"

"Who? Hugh John – him?" said Toady Lion, with slow contempt. "'Course he don't. Why, he's a boy. And once he told Mr. Burnham so – he did."

Mr. Burnham was the clergyman of both families. He had recently come to the place, was a well-set up bachelor, and represented a communion which was not by any means the dominant one in Bordershire.

"Yes, indeedy. It was under the elm. Us was having tea. An' Mist'r Burnham, he was having tea. And father and Prissy. And, oh! such a lot of peoples. And he sez, Mist'r Burnham sez to Hugh John, 'You are good little boy. I saw you in church on Sunday. Do you like to go to church?' He spoke like this-a-way, juss like I'm tellin' oo, down here under his silk waistcoat – kind of growly, but nice."

"Hugh John say that he liked to go to church – 'cos father was there listenin', you see. Then Mist'r Burnham ask Hugh John why he like to go to church, and of course, he say wight out that it was to look at Sergeant Steel's wed coat. An' nen everybody laugh – I don't know why. But Mist'r Burnham he laughed most."

Cissy also failed to understand why everybody should have laughed. Toady Lion took up the burden of his tale.

"Yes, indeedy, and one Sunday I didn't have to go to church – 'cos I'd yet up such a yot of gween gooseb – "

"All right, Toady Lion, I know!" interrupted Cissy quickly.

"Of gween gooseberries," persisted Toady Lion calmly; "so I had got my tummy on in front. It hurted like – well, like when you get sand down 'oo trowsies. Did 'oo ever get sand in 'oo trowsies, Cissy?"

"Hush – of course not!" said Cissy Carter; "girls don't have trowsers – they have – "

But any injudicious revelations on Cissy's part were stopped by Toady Lion, who said, "No, should juss fink not. Girls is too great softs to have trowsies.

"Onst though on the sands at a seaside, when I was 'kye-kying' out loud an' kickin' fings, 'cos I was not naughty but only fractious, dere was a lady wat said 'Be dood, little boy, why can't you be dood?'

"An' nen I says, 'How can I be dood? Could 'oo be dood wif all that sand in 'oo trowsies?'

"An' nen – the lady she wented away quick, so quick – I can't tell why. P'raps she had sand in her trowsies! Does 'oo fink so, Cissy?"

"That'll do – I quite understand," said Cissy Carter, somewhat hastily, in dread of Toady Lion's well-known license of speech.

"An' nen 'nother day after we comed home I went into the park and clum up a nice tree. An' it was ever so gween and scratchy. 'An it was nice. Nen father he came walking his horse slow up the road, n' I hid. But father he seen me. And he say, 'What you doing there, little boy? You break you neck. Nen I whip you. Come down, you waskal!' He said it big – down here, (Toady Lion illustrated with his hand the place from which he supposed his father's voice to proceed). An' it made me feel all queer an' trimbly, like our guinea pig's nose when father speak like that. An' I says to him, 'Course, father, you never clumb up no trees on Sundays when you was little boy!' An' nen he didn't speak no more down here that trimbly way, but laughed, and pulled me down, and roded me home in front of him, and gived me big hunk of pie – yes, indeedy!"

Toady Lion felt that now he had talked quite enough, and began to arrange his brass cannons on the dust, in a plan of attack which beleaguered Cissy Carter's foot and turned her flank to the left.