Date: 1912-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Humor; Short Fiction; Edwardian Fiction; Home life; School life
Description: Eliza is long-suffering and intelligent, her husband is a pompous prig and a self-regarding idiot, in “some of the funniest stories in the English language” … ~ ~ ~ ~ “A gentle, yet deliciously humourous series of brief anecdotes, that follow the mundane, though surprisingly hazard-strewn lives of our rather pompous main character, and his long-suffering wife, Eliza.” (— Nigel Boydell at Librivox) ~ ~ ~ ~ This final collection in the “Eliza” series is narrated by young Ernest Junior, who seems to be very much his father’s son. ~ ~ ~ ~ Barry Pain’s comedic “Eliza” stories are perhaps his best-k
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA

ELIZA’S SON

BARRY PAIN

MobileRead Edition
2022

Eliza is long-suffering and intelligent, her husband is a pompous prig and a self-regarding idiot, in “some of the funniest stories in the English language” …

“A gentle, yet deliciously humourous series of brief anecdotes, that follow the mundane, though surprisingly hazard-strewn lives of our rather pompous main character, and his long-suffering wife, Eliza.”
(— Nigel Boydell at Librivox)

This final collection in the “Eliza” series is narrated by young Ernest Junior, who seems to be very much his father’s son.

Barry Pain’s comedic “Eliza” stories are perhaps his best-known works. The sequence is comprised of the collections Eliza, Eliza’s Husband, Eliza Getting On, Exit Eliza, and Eliza’s Son. These stories are often compared to the Weedon brothers’ Diary of a Nobody (1888-89) [praised by Evelyn Waugh as “the funniest book in the world.”]

Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 Sep. 1864 – 05 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet, humorist and writer. During his lifetime, he was perhaps best known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories, but now is also noted for his tales touched with fantasy, horror, and the supernatural. He also wrote stories of mystery and suspense. His humor has been characterized by some modern critics as “a surreal forerunner to Monty Python.”

Eliza’s Son, first published in 1913, is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS

… Cover

… Titlepage / About

ELIZA’S SON

Introducing Ernest
A Present from Mr. Bagshawe
April the Thirty-First
The Presentation
The Unsuccessful Sinner
Mr. Graham Campbell
By the Silver Sea
An Account and a Prospect

ELIZA’S SON

INTRODUCING ERNEST

On my last birthday but one, pa gave me a large notebook, and said that he thought I might find it useful in my studies at school, I thanked him quite properly, and said I hoped he had made the man who sold it take something off, as it was clearly a shop-soiled article. The truth then came out. He had bought the book twelve years before.

“I had intended,” said pa, “to write in it some illustrations of my methods in the management and education of a son. It would, perhaps, have been a useful guide to young fathers. But when I decided to go into partnership with Mr. Bagshawe—”

“When you which?” asked ma.

“My expression is correct, Eliza. The partnership was offered. I decided to accept it. There was no occasion for any interruption. When the business of my firm absorbed me, I was compelled to relinquish authorship. However, I thought the book would come in one of these days, and it has done so.”

Ma said that pa didn’t work any more now than he did before he was a partner, and took more holidays. And pa said there was such a thing as mental strain, which was the real reason why he sometimes dozed off after dinner.

I took the notebook to school and tried to sell or swop it. The only offer I got was one small apple, and apples were plentiful that year. So no business was done. I was naturally not going to use it for school exercises. The notebooks I get for them are paid for by pa, and I saw no reason why my birthday present should be used to save him money. It was a measly sort of present, anyhow. A shilling was the most he ever gave for it.

I have now got an idea. Pa had been going to use the book to write about him and me. Very well, then, instead of that, I’m going to use it to write about me and him.

I’ve got the same name as pa. It was a rotten notion, and it has never worked. After the twentieth time that pa had run upstairs to find that it was me that ma really wanted, he said that it was just as if it was done on purpose, and ma said he had brought it on himself. I was very young then — not more than six — but I have always been old for my years, and I said that, if I were asked, I should like to be called Ernest. Ma agreed, and gradually pa got into the way of it, though he said he shouldn’t. It is a suitable name for a boy of a serious disposition. At school the boys generally call me Cockeye. The reason for this, if it can be called a reason, is that I wear glasses to correct a slight strabismus.

Ma said that as a baby I was pretty, but that I now get more like pa every day. I asked her if she thought that was an improvement, and she said one could easily think too much about appearances. I have often noticed a man is not judged by his looks, but by something far higher — namely, by what he can make. All the same, I wish pa did not insist on my wearing an Eton jacket. I am not at Eton, but at a potty grammar school. The Eton jacket does not suit my style of figure, which is rather on the thick side; it does not wear well, and it is the cause of vulgar remarks by other boys. I heard our doctor tell pa that Eton jackets provided no proper protection for the kidneys. But a plucky lot pa cares about my kidneys, so long as a thing is good style.

The reader should not be misled by the above remark. I love, honour and obey my parents. I have been taught to do so, and I do it. But I am not blind to their faults, and, if this book is to be a truthful record, I may sometimes have to allude to them.

We are nearly all day-boys at the school, and almost all classes are included in it. The fact of the case is that the school gives a first-rate education for a very low fee. This is a chance for poor parents, and even the swells find it too good an opportunity to chuck. Sometimes they use it as a preparatory school for their sons until they are old enough to go to the public schools. Pa said that he felt rather nervous about sending me there, and he hoped I would be careful not to mix with boys of inferior social position. Of course, there are a good many boys at the school, such as young Buddilow, who are supposed to be superior to me. I asked, and pa said it would be all right for me to mix with them. Then I asked what their parents would think about it, and pa said: “Do stop this everlasting questioning.”

As a matter of fact, I don’t mix much with any of the boys; they seem to me to have very little sense. They have no proper ideas about money, and spend it in foolish ways, and often on sweets and other food which they do not really need. They think more about games than getting on in the world. I doubt if there is a boy in the school except myself who has made careful and serious plans for his future. Fortunately for me, the fact that I wear spectacles prevents me from taking any part in their games. I am not popular with the boys even now, and they sometimes make fun of me, but I get on better than I did. At first the fun was rather rough, if you could call it fun at all. It does not seem to me amusing to take a new cap from a boy’s head and fling it over a wall, so that the owner must commit trespass at great risk to himself to recover his property. Where is the fun in rolling a boy violently down a high and steep bank? A serious accident might happen. However, such incidents rarely befall me nowadays, The boys who were the leaders in such things were, as was to be expected, lazy and unintelligent, and in school they found me very useful. I have written Latin exercises for them, with enough mistakes in them to be possible, but showing improvement. In two or three minutes before prayers I have run over with them the Ovid that they were supposed to have prepared the night before. They in return have not only left me in peace themselves, but have even ragged other boys who were trying to rag me.

It will have been gathered that I am good at work, and I may without vanity say that I am. I am one form higher in the school than any other boy of my age, and I am top of that form. Pa has bought a special bookcase to keep all my prizes in, and always points them out to anybody who comes to the house. He even did it to the man who came for the gas-meter. And he always calls them “trophies of my son’s scholastic prowess.” It’s the kind of thing he enjoys saying. I have never yet had a report from school which did not say that I was a hard worker, and had unusual abilities, and that my conduct was excellent. So you would think that at any rate I should be very popular with the masters; but, as a matter of fact, most of them seem to dislike me, and say sarcastic things about me. I believe they try to provoke me to answer back, so that they can punish me for being disrespectful. But I see through them, and never give them a chance. Very poor incomes they have, I believe, though I’ve not yet been able to get the actual figures.

Ma says that she’s afraid I don’t act the right way to get myself liked. But if you do act the right way, you may be led into doing things for nothing, which I should object to very strongly. You can do without popularity, but you cannot do without money.

All the same, I was asked to young Buddilow’s party, although it happened in rather a funny kind of way.

Young Buddilow cheeks the masters, neglects work for play, has been publicly caned for laughing in prayer time, and has no common sense. But he is popular, and that shows what popular is worth. He is good at nothing except games. He can throw stones hard and straight. At one time he never saw me without throwing a stone at me, though I repeatedly asked him to remember that I wore spectacles. He is particularly foolish with respect to money. I suppose he gets more pocket-money than any boy in the school. It is paid him regularly every Saturday morning, and by Saturday evening he never has a penny. It does not all go to the sweet-shop by any means; in fact, when he is in training, as he calls it, he does not eat sweets at all. Almost all shops seem to have temptation for him. He buys just for the fun of buying. There is hardly anything that he will not buy. He buys things that he does not want in the least, and, perhaps, gives away the next minute. He bought a pocket corkscrew last week, and within five minutes exchanged it for silkworms. That sort of thing looks to me like madness.

One Saturday afternoon, as I was going to the free library, I met Buddilow coming from cricket.

He said, “Hallo, Cockeye. Got any money in your clothes?”

It seemed better to say that I was afraid I had not.

“Pity,” he said. “If you could have let me have twopence I’d have given you threepence for it next Saturday.”

“Well,” I said, “how could one be sure of that? Sometimes you spend all your money before you get to school.”

“But I wouldn’t if I owed it, you hog! Look here, Cockeye, you can wait outside our gates Saturday morning and get me as I start for school. I must have the money then, for I shan’t have had a chance to blue it.”

I said that in that case I would feel in my pockets to see if I had made any mistake. I found twopence and handed it to him, though with some misgivings.

During the whole of the following week he only shied stones at me once, and called out in quite a friendly way that I needn’t get in a funk about my blinkers as it was my shins he was going for. This showed a marked improvement on the previous week. At a quarter to nine on Saturday morning met him outside the gates of his father’s grounds, and he paid me the threepence quite cheerfully.

Next week he borrowed fourpence, and returned me sixpence. And so it went on week after week. He always borrowed something, though I would never go beyond fourpence, and he always paid me punctually. I saw to that myself, for I was always at the gates on Saturday to catch him before he could spend his week’s allowance. Sometimes, while I was waiting for him, I used to see through the gates a rather shabby old woman wandering about the drive in an aimless sort of way. I thought she might be the lodge-keeper’s wife.

These pleasant relations with young Buddilow had lasted nearly a term, when it became known that Buddilow was to have a party on his birthday, and that his parents permitted him to ask anybody he liked to it. A term before I should not have expected to be asked. But now things were different. Money-lending is strictly forbidden at the school. Pa has forbidden it as well, and says I must check my generous impulses. So I was really running a very great risk for Buddilow’s sake, and an invitation to his party would have been a way of showing that he appreciated it. But though he asked a lot of boys — some of them boys of what pa calls an inferior social status — he never asked me.

Of course, as I held no security whatever, it was not money-lending in the usual sense of the term. If it had been I should not have done it, for I am always careful to obey the school rules. But the risk was just the same, because it might have been mistaken for money-lending. So it was distinctly mean not to invite me, and meanness is a vice that | hate. Two or three days before the party took place I happened to be in our stationer’s shop buying a box of pens. I always keep a stock of pens at school, and less careful boys who find themselves without a pen come to me for one. I sell them at a fair profit, and thus, helping others, I help myself. As I was buying my pens, a large motor-car stopped in front of the shop, and out stepped the old lady whom I had seen in the drive at Buddilow’s place. She did not look at all shabby now. As soon as she got into the shop, she stared very hard at me through eyeglasses with a handle to them.

“Bless my soul!” she said. “I know your face, my boy. Where have I seen your”

So I told her.

“Of course. So you wait there to walk with Reggie to school. Most touching. David and Jonathan. Then I shall see you at Reggie’s party, of course.”

I explained that I had not been invited.

“How like Reggie! He has no mind and forgets everything. However, I invite you myself, and be sure you come.”

I thanked her politely and said I should be glad to come if my parents permitted it.

Pa was pleased about it, though he pretended not to be.

“The Buddilows?” he said. “Yes, I remember, your mamma and I spent an afternoon there once. Nice little place as far as it goes.”

“When we went,” said ma, “it was a charity entertainment, and we paid to go in. Had to pay for our tea, too. Had to pay for everything.”

Ma was not so pleased as pa. She said I could go if I wanted to, but she would sooner the boy had asked me himself. Pa became very busy. He went over my clothes and sent them to be cleaned and pressed. And he made a note to buy a white evening waistcoat and gloves for me in the City next day. Then ma said, “And don’t forget the diamond buttons.” and pa said, “Restrain yourself, Eliza!”

The next morning at school I told Buddilow all about it, and said that his mother was very kind.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s probably the reason. And then, of course, she didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?”

“Didn’t know you.”

“I accepted. It’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Quite. Jolly decent of her to ask you, and you’d be bound to accept. You couldn’t tell her why you waited for me at the gate. Well, what will stop you from coming tomorrow night will be a headache.”

“I never have such a thing.”

“You’ve got to have it, Cockeye. If you can’t get it any other way I shall shy bricks at you tomorrow afternoon and make a certainty of it. Now, are you going to give me all that trouble, or are you going to arrange it for yourself?”

I said that I would arrange it for myself, and I did, but it was most unpleasant, and I ought not to have been treated in that way at all. Pa was most annoyed, and said that he had spent eight shillings or more on my account, and it was practically money thrown into the gutter. Ma was more decent. But they both agreed that they would have to be very careful about my diet for the next few days, and they gave me hardly anything for supper except pills.

Very well. In a few days’ time Buddilow will be trying to borrow twopence again. It pays me much better to get sixpence from pa for a box of pens and to sell them to other boys at a halfpenny each. And I do not know of any rule against this, whereas if I lend Buddilow money there is a risk that I may be falsely accused of money-lending.

If I do let him have that twopence, he will have to return fourpence next Saturday. If he does not choose to act like a friend, he cannot expect to be treated like one.

A PRESENT
FROM MR. BAGSHAWE

Here are a few of the things I’ve noticed.

My godfather is pa’s partner. I used to call him Uncle Bags when I was a child, and I still do, though he’s not really my uncle. But pa generally says “Mr. Bagshawe.” Sometimes he says “sir,” and then corrects it.

Another thing. Sometimes in the evening I take pa a difficulty in my work. If it’s anything in commercial arithmetic, he’s all over it, and he’s always right. He even criticizes the question sometimes, and says they show lamentable ignorance of ordinary practice in the City. If it’s geography, he may chance it or he may not. History he’s very shy of. And if it’s French, Latin, Algebra or Euclid, he says that the only way I can learn self-reliance is by tackling my difficulties for myself. That kind of talk does not kid me, of course, though from respect I do not tell him so.

Some more things. Pa does up parcels just a bit too well. He must have had a lot of practice at one time. He blows to any extent about the importance of “my firm,” as he calls it, but he tells me precious little about his early days before he was partner. What he does say is sometimes swank, and I always know when it’s swank, because ma has her knife in it. “The last time I was travelling in France,” pa be one day, and then ma said he had never been out of England but once in his life, and then it was only a day excursion.

Putting these and other things together, I came to the conclusion that pa never had any proper education, and was at one time in a very lowly position — probably as errand-boy. I asked ma if this were not the case, and she said I was all wrong; but she only hoped I should get on in the world as well as my father had done. She didn’t half let me have it — seemed quite angry about it. That’s so queer about ma. She gives pa socks to any extent herself; she doesn’t go the full length if I’m in the room, but there is not much that happens in the house that I don’t get to know about one way or another. But she never lets me say a single word against pa. This seems to me most unfair. Why should I be asked to shut my eyes to the facts?

Whatever ma may say, one thing is perfectly certain — that pa’s in a mortal funk of Uncle Bags. If he says a thing “would annoy Mr. Bagshawe extremely,” he seems to think that disposes of it. At one time Uncle Bags used to order pa about and make him run around. I’m dead sure of that, whatever ma says. Even now, from the figures which I have been able to pick up from time to time and have subsequently put together, I can see that Uncle Bags draws at least eight times as much from the business as pa does.

Pa’s funk of Uncle Bags was never more surely shown than in the case of that dog. Pa did not want a dog. Ma did not want a dog. I myself did not want a dog. And nobody on earth would have wanted that particular dog. But we had to have it, because Uncle Bags made pa a present of it.

This was the way it came about. Uncle Bags’s sister had decided suddenly to spend the summer and winter touring about abroad. She had just bought the dog, and could not take it with her because of the trouble and the quarantine. So she sent the dog to the office with a note for her brother to say that she would be glad if he would take it.

I know what Uncle Bags said to pa about it, because pa told ma about it in the garden and my window happened to be open.

Uncle Bags said: “Most unreasonable — I can’t take the infernal dog home with me; my own dogs would eat it. Have you got a dog?”

Pa said: “No, sir; but—”

“Then that’s all right. I make you a present of it. It’ll be a guard for your house. It’ll be a companion for your wife when you’re away in the City, and I dare say your boy will like it. Every man ought to keep a dog — why, I’ve got six myself.”

So pa thanked him, and Uncle Bags dictated a letter to his sister to say that he wished she would not do these impulsive and idiotic things. He had found a good home for the dog, where it would be well looked after, but he hoped she would never give him the same bother and trouble again. Why should he be expected to waste the entire day in looking after other people’s dogs? And some more of the same kind. Rather hot stuff, Uncle Bags.

So pa brought the dog back with him on a lead, and even on the way home from the station it gave trouble. It walked round a lamp-post and sat down and howled. Pa began to unwind it, and the dog thought it would help, but got the wrong direction. So while pa was unwinding, the dog was winding up again. Pa put out his foot quite gently to get the dog to reverse, and an old lady told him he was a brute and not fit to have the charge of dumb animals. Pa carried the dog the rest of the way to avoid accidents, and was rather heated when he arrived home. He had taken the number of a policeman who had done nothing but grin instead of rendering assistance and keeping the crowd off, and pa said it was just about time some man in that division got a sharp lesson; but he never did anything else about it. There must really have been quite a number of people where pa and the dog got mixed up about the lamp-post. Everyone seemed to know pa had get a dog. Two men called that evening to know if they could have the job of engraving the address on the collar, and we had three lots of dog biscuits on appro. from different shops, and a photographer wrote that animals were his speciality and he hoped to be favoured with pa’s esteemed order.

When pa had got the dog home he came and told ma and me about it, and he seemed very depressed. It was one more responsibility piled on his shoulders, as if he had not enough to bear already. It would mean endless expense — dog licence, collar, chain, food, vet’s bills, and compensation to the people the dog bit. A dog would be absolute ruin to the garden on which he had spent years of labour, and perhaps it would be better to move at once into a smaller and cheaper house where there was no garden at all.

Ma said of course it was annoying, but pa need not talk in that silly, exaggerated sort of way. She didn’t want the dog herself, but, still, lots of people did manage to keep a dog without making much fuss. However, if pa felt like that about it, perhaps he had better give it back to Mr. Bagshawe.

“I wish, Eliza,” said pa, “that you would not say what you know to be absurd. Mr. Bagshawe gave me the dog as a present. Mr. Bagshawe said that I ought to keep a dog. If I had been in a position to return the dog, I should have returned it there and then; but I was not in that position.”

“What’s its name?” said ma.

“Don’t know,” said pa snappily.

“What’s its breed?” I said:

“None,” said pa, showing his teeth as if he’d been going to bite me.

“Where is it now?” said ma.

“In the coal-cellar. And there it can stop till it dies, for all I care.”

“Has it had anything to eat today?”

“Mr. Bagshawe said it was not to be fed till the evening, and that Miss Bagshawe had overfed it already. It has had some water, and it ate the back off a letter-book. Now I’ve got to go out and buy dog biscuits for it. Dancing attendance on a dog — nice work for a gentleman that is.”

After pa had gone I took a candle and went into the cellar to look at the dog. It sat on a large lump of coal, weeping; it was always howling about something or other the whole time we had it. It was really a kind of fox-terrier, but with more than the usual number of spots on it and very long in the ears and tail.

I said “Hallo!” and the dog suddenly went for me. I don’t mean that it tried to bite me — it never tried to bite anybody — but it wanted to get out of the cellar and I was in front of the door. It went through my legs, and I fell over. I bit a piece out of the candle in the fall, and got a lot of coal-dust on me. In fact, I was made to wash my face and hands at once — though it was so near my bedtime that they might very well have been left till next morning.

Pa came back with his lot of dog biscuits, and found the other three lots which had been left in his absence. The dog refused to eat them; they were almost the only thing in the house that he never even tried to eat. Pa’s temper was now getting beyond his control, and I voluntarily offered to go to bed, though it was some minutes before my right time. It seemed to be safer.

The dog never disturbed me all night, but I am an unusually sound sleeper. When I looked out in the early morning I saw a pair of pa’s boots in the middle of the lawn, and the dog was eating one of them. Then I knew there had been more trouble. I looked out again an hour later. The boots had gone, and pa was walking about the garden with a stick in his hand, saying, “Come here, sir. Just you come here, sir.” I think he was looking for the dog, but I did not see it anywhere. I doubt if the dog was quite such an absolute fool as pa always said he was, though he was certainly eccentric.

Things were miserable at breakfast-time. There was no milk, because the dog had knocked the can over. Pa came in from the garden and said: “The Lobelia cardinalis which I planted yesterday morning has been scratched up and destroyed. More money wasted.”

Ma said: “Jane’s given notice because she says kitchens are one thing and dog kennels are another.”

Then pa opened two letters from our neighbours complaining. The dog seemed to have kept everybody awake except myself.

“And after all the trouble we took to make a comfortable bed for him,” said ma. “It does seem too bad.”

“One more night like the last,” said pa, “and I speak to Mr. Bagshawe, come what may.”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t tell him this morning that you find the dog a nuisance and you can’t keep him.”

“No good in the least. He’d only say I hadn’t given the thing a fair trial.”

They weren’t exactly angry. They just looked worn-out and heartbroken. Nothing I said seemed to be right for them, and I left for school earlier than usual.

When I returned at midday ma was quite cheerful again. But she said that Jane had taken the dog out for exercise and had had the misfortune to lose him. I offered to write out notices describing the dog and offering a reward for his return, but ma said she would wait till pa got back and she found what he thought about it.

Pa said it was careless of Jane, but as she was probably not used to dogs it might be as well not to blame her for it. Ma said she had not blamed her.

I asked pa if I should write out a few notices for people to put in their shop windows. Pa said that perhaps it would be better to leave it for a few days. If tradespeople obliged you in one way, they always took it out out of you in another.

“We must just wait, and hope the dog will return of his own accord.”

“Hope what?” asked ma.

“Precisely what I said. Do not forget that it was a present from Mr. Bagshawe. He inquired today how the dog was getting on. It’s a providential thing, by the way, that I have not yet taken out the licence.”

I wonder why pa wouldn’t say he was glad the dog was gone. Of course, anybody could see that he really was glad. At breakfast-time he had called the dog names that he would never have allowed me to use. But now he said: “Poor little chap! I wonder where he’s roaming?”

I said: “They may have got him at the police-station. Shall I go up and see?”

He told me that I had homework to prepare, and he would thank me to concentrate my attention on that, and not to be forever interfering in matters which did not concern me. Just then Jane came in to say that a man had brought the dog back, and would like to see pa about it. One of the first things you learn at school is not to smile when you want to. I did not smile at all. Pa did not smile either, but I don’t think he wanted to.

As he left the door ajar I could hear a good deal of what pa and the man said in the passage.

“Yes, sir,” said the man; “I knowed it was your dog because I saw you trying to tie it up to a lamp-post yesterday evening. And I don’t suppose there are two of this sort alive. One by himself, he is. Head rather reminds you of a mule, don’t it, sir?”

Then the dog began to wail, and I missed the next bit. When it stopped the man was saying:

“Well, sir, I leave that entirely to you. I’d some trouble in catching him, and, of course, it’s a three-mile tramp for me.”

Pa said something in a low voice that I could not hear. And then the man said: “Afraid I couldn’t do that, sir. You see, I’ve got no room to keep a dog, and then, of course, he ain’t everybody’s dog. More like a curio, ain’t he, sir?”

I did not ask pa at the time how much he had given the man for bringing the dog back, but I found out afterwards that it was ninepence. In his place I should not have paid so much as that, even if I had wanted the dog back. But, of course, pa can be talked over — I’ve done it.

They took a lot of trouble to make the dog comfortable for the night, and it did sleep for a good part of the time. But it howled at intervals, for about a minute at a time, once every half-hour. After five a.m. there was no more howling. It never woke me once, but the rest were not so fortunate. When pa got down in the morning he found that the dog had eaten most of the rope it was tied up with, had eaten the new Lobelia cardinalis, and had gone. It was Sunday morning, which was more than some of papa’s language was; but I wish to be just, and I do not think he intended me to hear it.

And then came a bit of papa’s special luck. Uncle Bags drove up in his new car about tea-time unexpectedly.

Pa was in no end of a stew. “What on earth am I to say to him about that dog?” he said.

“Oh, I’ll talk to him about that,” said ma.

Ma and I are not nearly so frightened of Uncle Bags as pa is. As a matter of fact, nobody had any need to say much, because Uncle Bags had run over the dog and killed it about half a mile from the house. He was not particularly apologetic about it; but, then, that is not Uncle Bags’s way. He said it was all the dog’s fault, and it was better dead, and what his sister had ever bought such a monstrosity for was more than he could say. He did offer pa another dog, but ma chipped in and said there was so much traffic in our road she hardly liked to take the responsibility. He drank three cups of tea, took down the name of the fertilizer pa uses for the roses, called me a genius in rather a sneering sort of way, but gave me five shillings, and went snorting off again.

Very hot stuff, Uncle Bags!

However, everybody was pleased, and pa let me off church that night.

That is a queer thing about parents. Whenever they really want to give you a treat, they either let you do something they know to be bad for you, or they let you off doing something they know to be good for you. Looks as if there must be a mistake somewhere.

APRIL THE THIRTY-FIRST

What with the people pa’s stopped knowing and the people that he hasn’t begun to know, he doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends. Ma’s got more; but then her friends are all female. On ma’s first Thursday I’ve known as many as six ladies in the drawing-room at one time. Ma never wanted to have any first Thursday, but pa worried at it off and on for about three years, and at last he tired her into it. If it’s in the summer and a fine afternoon, they have tea in the garden and play croquet. Ma’s good at it, pa’s rotten, and I never try it myself. If it’s in the winter, they just sit inside and talk. I never go in now. I am sick of bang told that I have grown and of handing things for other people to eat. So while they sit in the drawing-room I am in the dining-room, which opens into it. I take tea more seriously than they do, and sometimes I prepare work for the next day, and sometimes I do my accounts. I can hear pretty be everything that is said in the drawing-room, and so occasionally I pick up things I should not otherwise have been told. But mostly it is uninteresting stuff about servants and hats and kids. I would far sooner hear men talk business.

On the first Thursday pa always comes back by an earlier train that gets in at 4.38. If it’s punctual he enters the house at a quarter to five. He opens the dining-room door very softly, and comes in on tip-toe. I then hand him a paper on which I have written the names of the ladies who are there — I know the voices of all of them. Neither of us says a word, and pa tip-toes out again. He arranged all this himself, because he says it enables him to be dressed appropriately for the occasion.

For instance, if there is nobody there but Miss Sakers, he just washes his hands and sails straight in. If there are three or four, he changes his coat and puts on patent leather boots. And the day that there were six, including one lady who had never been to the house before, he must have changed every rag. It was twenty to six before he came down, and by that time they had all gone except Miss Sakers; and he wasn’t half ratty about it, either! He takes a lot more trouble about them than they ever do about him. He is my father and a man of experience, and he may have reasons of which I know nothing. I am not criticizing him, but I must say it looks to me like a mug’s game.

Pa always buys two evening papers on the first Thursday. Other days he only buys one, and if he has been able to pinch one that somebody has left in the train he does not buy any. He takes his two papers into the drawing-room with him, and begins speaking about them to ma as he comes in, as if he had not expected to find anybody else there. He says: “Nothing much in the papers tonight, my love,” or “The suffragettes are giving more trouble,” or “Another strike threatened, my dear.” And then he switches round suddenly to the visitors and says: “Ah! good afternoon, Mrs. Poplington. How do you do, Miss Sakers?”

Many a time I have heard pa going through that act, and I have put aside the quadratic equation I was working on, or the savings-bank account I was checking, and wondered what on earth he did it for. I did ask him once. At least, in a respectful sort of way I gave him the chance to explain it. He said it was simply and solely a question of tact. The evening papers provided pleasant and safe topics of conversation, and people were interested to have the latest news. It’s all very well as far as it goes, but if you’ve naturally got nothing to talk about, then why talk? I don’t see where you come in on it.

There was just one of ma’s first Thursdays when I should have liked to have been in the drawing-room. But I was not there, and did not see what happened. I was not even in the dining-room, and so I did not hear either. But I got to know all about it afterwards, partly from ma, partly from Jane, and partly from pa himself. For two days pa hardly talked about anything else.

We had been having a spring-cleaning, and the drawing-room and two bedrooms were to be repapered. Pa went to a decorator and chose the papers with ma’s help, and told the man to send in an estimate. That estimate simply made pa snort. He said he would show that den of thieves with whom they were dealing. Most men would have sent a postcard with “Estimate declined” or something like that on it. Not pa. That’s not his way. He sat down and composed a letter with sarcasm in it to send to the decorator. It took him the best part of an hour. He said there appeared to be some misapprehension, that he merely required his rooms to be papered with the papers selected by him at the price per piece as marked on the patterns. He did not require his drawing-room to be papered with Bank of England notes, nor did he wish the walls of his servant’s bedroom to be gold-plated. He read it all out to ma and me when he had finished, and seemed as pleased as Punch about it. He was still more pleased when the decorator called round next morning.

“Aha!” said pa, “I thought that letter would have its effect on Mr. Busher.”

So it did, of course. And a postcard would have had the same effect and been less trouble.

Pa got the figures cut down as low as he could, and then gave the order. So, as pa had sweated off most of the profit, usher didn’t send his best men. We got two young chaps who were very slow, and didn’t make the pattern fit in properly, and the whole thing looked absolutely rotten. Pa used to stand over them while they were at work and say sarcastic things to them, until they lost their tempers and made disrespectful personal remarks. So off went pa to Mr. Busher. Pa said his drawing-room had been ruined by the incompetence of Mr. Busher’s workmen, and, in addition to that, they were foul-mouthed blackguards, who never ought to have been sent to a gentleman’s residence. Pa said it was a grave question with him whether he should pay anything at all for the so-called work which had been done, and in any case Mr. Busher could consider the order for the two bedrooms cancelled.

Mr. Busher said he was sorry there had been any unpleasantness, but he couldn’t have any cancelling. Pa had accepted the estimate, and it was a contract.

“That estimate,” remarked pa, “states in the clearest and most definite terms that the work is to be done to my satisfaction. And it is not done to my satisfaction — very far from it.”

By this time Mr. Busher himself was beginning to lose his wool. He asked pa how on earth men could be expected to do their work satisfactorily when they were being everlastingly interfered with.

“Who interfered with them?” said pa.

“Why, you did. Mooning about under the ladders, and passing comments, and trying to talk like a comic paper — my men complained to me about it, and no wonder. Enough to put anybody off.”

Pa said that if that was to be the tone, he totally and altogether declined to hear another word. The order was cancelled.

Mr. Busher said that goodness knew he was not keen on having the job. There was no credit to be got from decorating these third-class houses and getting good workmen upset by a lot of fat-headed interference. And there was no profit in it, either. Personally, he would be glad to be quit of it. But, as a matter of principle, he was not going to allow himself to be swindled by pa or any other City clerk, and he should put the matter in the hands of his solicitor at once.

Pa replied that Mr. Busher could not possibly do anything which would please him better. It was exactly what he wanted. And pa’s own solicitor would be instructed to fight the case — right up to the House of Lords if need be.

Then Mr. Busher said: “Meantime, get out of my shop; I am busy.”

And then pa left.

The case never got as far as the House of Lords — in fact, it never started. Mr. Busher met pa in the street, and said he was afraid he had been a little heated the day before, and might have dropped some expressions which were not quite the thing. Win or lose, lawyers only meant expense, and he would be glad to come to some arrangement. He was sure a gentleman of pa’s standing would not suggest anything unreasonable.

He got round pa all right. Pa says they compromised it. Mr. Busher did not insist on painting the bedrooms, because he jolly well knew that he couldn’t insist. And pa paid 14s. 6d. too much for the drawing-room. I had figures to prove this, but thought it better not to show them to pa.

When ma heard about it she said it was all very fine, but those two bedrooms really wanted doing, and she would sooner her spring-cleaning got finished some time this side of Christmas.

“You may make your mind perfectly easy, Eliza,” said pa. “Those two bedrooms will be done, and they will be done properly. And I venture to think that the style of the work and the price paid for it will compare favourably with anything that Mr. Busher’s men could produce.”

“Who is going to do them?” asked ma.

“Ah,” said pa, “that is a little surprise which I am reserving for you. You will know all about it in due course, and I am confident that you will not be displeased with it.”

So, of course, I knew that pa meant to paper the rooms himself. He had not been watching Busher’s men for nothing. I rather fancy that ma knew it too. But we both pretended to be puzzled, and that pleased pa. As he seemed to be in a suitable frame of mind, I took the opportunity to ask him something.

A boy at school that day had wanted a pen in a hurry, and had no actual money with which to buy pens from me. But he had a free pass to the sixpenny seats at the picture palace on the following day. After a certain amount of discussion, I gave him three pens for it. I believe now I could have got it for two.

So I said: “If you don’t mind, pa, I thought of going to the picture palace after school tomorrow afternoon. One of my schoolfellows has kindly given me a pass for it.”

As it was a sixpenny pass, and the boy had only got three pens for it, he had, of course, practically given it.

Pa raised no objections at all, and said he hoped I should see some amusing and instructive films.

I knew that the next day was Thursday, May 1st, and consequently one of ma’s first Thursdays, and I naturally supposed that pa knew it as well. But it seems he did not. He knew that it was Thursday, but he had got it into his head that it was Thursday, April 31st. Of course, he knows as well as I do that April has only thirty days, but he did not happen to think about it. The right date was on the paper he read in the train and on the letters he signed at the office, but it never soaked through, as you might say. Perhaps he was thinking too much about the paperhanging he was going to do, and what a surprise it would be to everybody. Anyhow, he came back by the early train, things being slack at the office, and entered the house with the fixed idea that it was the last Thursday in April, whereas it was really the first Thursday in May.

He said afterwards that this mistake was the most extraordinary thing that had ever occurred in the whole course of his experience. He called it a psychological phenomenon, and several other things. Of course, pa would not say what he knew to be untrue, but I think he must be wrong. Even in my brief experience I have come upon several blunders as to the day of the month, and should say that they were not uncommon. But pa has got rather a habit of finding things very extraordinary.

He had all his paper-hanging tools and materials ready — rolls of paper, scissors, paste-pot and brush — everything. He took off his coat, waistcoat, collar and tie, put on an old pair of trousers, a long white apron and carpet slippers, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves. He thought the time had then come to play off his little surprise on ma. So he hung the scissors round his neck, took the paste-pot and brush in one hand, put a roll of paper under his arm, and trotted downstairs. He burst into oho drawing-room, announcing loudly: “Behold the paper-hanger!”

There was a lady there who had never seen pa before. She thought it was really the paperhanger, but that he had gone mad. She screamed

Miss Sakers knew that it was pa, but she thought that pa had gone mad. She turned faint.

For a second or two ma was inclined to think the same as Miss Sakers, and was also rather frightened. Then she saw what had happened, and pa in his agony dropped the paste-pot.

And to think that I should have been spending my time at an ordinary cinematograph show when things like that were happening at home!

Ma says that, the way things worked out, it was the most successful Thursday she ever had, and about the only one that was at all amusing. Pa explained and apologized frantically. He kept on saying that he was extremely sorry it had occurred. He had quite thought that ma was alone, and he was playing off a joke upon her. “Merely a little of my fun,” he said desperately.

Once they had grasped that it was a joke, they would not leave it. Everybody laughed continuously, except pa, and he never even smiled. He said: “You will permit me now, I hope, to go and put on some attire more suitable to the occasion.”

But they would not let him go. They said it was too good to alter, and they had never seen anything like it in their life before. Even when two other visitors came in, they still kept him, and the other visitors joined in the laughter. Miss Sakers wanted to fetch her camera and take a snapshot of the paperhanger at tea. And the more serious and dignified pa became, the more they all enjoyed it.

But if ma liked it, pa did not. He said: “The thing was carried very much too far. The right course would have been to have laughed in moderation at my joke, and then to have permitted me to resume the garb of an ordinary English gentleman. The way that Miss Sakers and the other lady stood in front of the door when I wished to escape was, to be frank, not quite ladylike. I think, Eliza, that a little remonstrance from you would not have been out of place. Let us be merry and wise, that is what I always say. Moderation in all things. Laughter, but not hysteria. A drawing-room should treated as a drawing-room, but on that occasion it was pandemonium or even worse.”

He said all this at breakfast, and it was just like a man delivering a lecture. I thought he had finished, but he just took a gulp of tea and went on again:

“I must request you, Eliza, to make no mention of the occurrence in speaking to any of your friends who were not actually witnesses of it. And you, Ernest, will be particularly careful to say nothing whatever about it to any of your school-fellows. You understand me? Nothing whatever. Not a word.”

“Yes, pa,” I said. “I had never meant to say anything.”

“Very good. It is not that I fear ridicule. I have, perhaps, less cause than most men to fear that. As a dramatic impersonation the thing was a success. It is that I object to misrepresentation, and that in a case like the present is not improbable.”

One more gulp of tea, and he was off again:

“What, if I may say so, Eliza, you have failed to see, is that this little domestic incident really has a serious scientific interest. Here am I, a man in the prime of life, and in full possession of mental faculties that are nor, I believe, below the average, not subject to hallucination of any kind, and yet at 4.50 p.m. on the first of May I still have the conviction that it is the last day of April.”

And then ma got in just one punch.

“Ah,” she said. “We thought it was the first day of April that you’d mistaken it for.”

“As a retort, not bad,” said pa; “otherwise, silly. More tea, please.”

THE PRESENTATION

I do not like gardening. When I am grown up, if I think my means justify it, I shall employ somebody whose time is less valuable than my own to do work of that kind. If not, I shall not have a garden. However, I put my own inclinations aside when my parents ask me to do anything, and this afternoon ma asked me to run the mower over the lawn, and not to wobble it as much as I generally do. I did about two thirds of the lawn, and then ma came out and finished it while I looked on. Pa had just come back from the City, and he came out of the house as ma was doing the last turn. He began to speak, but the mowing machine made too much noise for us to hear what he said. This annoyed him.

Ma called out, “What?”

Pa shouted back, “I decline to shout.”

However, in a minute or two the lawn was finished, and pa got an opportunity to speak.

“I have rather an important piece of news for you, Eliza. I am to take the chair at a public dinner and deliver an address.”

Ma said, “Oh?”

“Pridgeon is leaving us after eighteen years’ faithful service. He has saved money, and an uncle has left him a little more, and he is retiring. The rest of the staff have subscribed for a testimonial to Pridgeon. The presentation is to be made at a dinner which we are giving him. Mr. Bagshawe subscribed a couple of guineas, but regretted that he was unable to take the chair at the dinner. The duty therefore devolves upon me. I am determined—”

“How much did you subscribe?”

“I did not see that I could give less than a sovereign.”

“If you had asked me,” said ma, “I could have told you. If Mr. Bagshawe’s got money to throw away, you have not. Ten shillings would have been enough for old Pridgeon.”

Judging the question on an arithmetical basis, both my parents were wrong. If my figures are correct, as I have reason to believe, pa’s income from the business is one-eighth of Mr. Bagshawe’s. Consequently, if Mr. Bagshawe subscribes two guineas for a charity connected with the firm, pa should have subscribed precisely five shillings and threepence. However, although a boy may not be able to shut his eyes to the mistakes of his parents, he is not expected to call attention to them, and I said nothing.

“Unfortunately,” said pa, “the time is short. The dinner takes place a fortnight from today.”

“Well,” said ma, “you ought to be able to change your clothes by then if you stick at it.”

“As usual,” said pa, “you do not see what is involved. I have already told you that I am to deliver an address. On such an occasion I do not think the address should occupy less than ten minutes. A great deal of care will have to given to the composition of it — to the selection of suitable phraseology and the introduction of occasional humorous touches. I must make a fair copy of it, and from that two other copies must be typed.”

“Why?” said ma.

“Because I have some reason to think that it would be a graceful act on my part to present Mr. Pridgeon with a bound copy of the address delivered on that occasion. The other copy is naturally required for our family archives.”

“I never knew we’d got any,” said ma.

“If everybody thought like that,” said pa, “there would never have been any family archives at all. Everything must have a beginning. Then, again, there is the question how the money subscribed is to be spent. I have been consulted, and I must have time to decide what I shall advise.”

“It is generally a clock,” said ma.

“Whatever else it is on this occasion, it will certainly not be a clock. Mr. Pridgeon’s only fault in his office work has been a slight tendency to unpunctuality. The gift of a clock would seem to remind him of this, and would be in the worst of taste.”

They then sent me into the house on the excuse that I had my preparation work to do for school. Of course, what they really wanted was to be able to speak with greater freedom. I took my work to a table by an open window, but I could hardly hear anything that was at all amusing. Ma began, “How can you be so cantankerous?” But then, unfortunately, she lowered her voice.

I heard no more about the presentation that day. Next day pa said that after a great deal of consideration he had decided what the present to Pridgeon was to be.

“What is it?” asked ma.

“It is to be a clock. Everybody else seemed to want a clock, and so I withdrew my suggestion of a tea-service. However, the choice of the clock will be entirely in my hands.”

And we had very little peace with pa for the next few days. The trouble seemed to lie in the amount which had been subscribed for the testimonial. All the clocks that pa saw and approved either cost too much or too little. Occasionally he did find one which was just the right price, but it was always one which, so he said, had no artistic merit. All the time that he could spare while he was in the City he spent in clock-shops, and all the time he was at home he talked about clocks. I made a note of the figures, and on his showing pa had been insulted by the assistants in nine clock-shops in the East Central district of London. He found the right clock at last, and had it sent to the office. Pa said he was very sorry that ma and I could not see that clock, for it was really a beautiful piece of work. He described it off and on during the greater part of one evening. As far as I could make out, it was just like any other old clock.

Then the trouble took a new form. A silver plate with an inscription engraved on it was to be attached to the clock. Pa had got an inscription already, covering about a sheet and a half notepaper. But the expense of it would have been too great. It had to be cut down to twenty-four words. Pa was constantly busy with pencil and odd bits of paper. The first words were always the same:

TO JAMES PRIDGEON, ESQUIRE,
AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF ESTEEM FROM

After that the thing went variously. Sometimes it was “from the partners and staff,” and sometimes “from a few friends and business associates,” and sometimes “from his fellow-workers in the firm of ———” At breakfast-time I used to see pa playing an imaginary piano on the tablecloth. Then knew he was counting words for the inscription, and I was careful not to interrupt. Ma was not so careful.

Ma said, “There’s one thing that beats me altogether.”

Pa said, “One moment, please. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three; I made sure it was twenty-four. However, no matter. You were saying, Eliza?”

“Oh, nothing. I said there was a thing that rather puzzled me.”

“If you will let me hear what it is I may possibly be of some assistance.”

“Well,” said ma, “if there is to be this almighty fuss every time a clerk leaves his place, how do you manage to find time in the City for any business?”

Pa controlled himself perfectly. His eyes seemed to stick a little farther out of his head, but he spoke quite calmly. This was an exceptional case. Pridgeon was an old and valued servant. The organization of the whole thing had fallen upon pa. Pa was determined to make it a success. He represents the firm. Time spent on cultivating pleasant relations between the staff and the employers was not time thrown away. The limited company with its hide-bound rules and narrow limitations never obtained the same devoted service from—

Then ma said that pa had got just time, and only just, to catch his train. He spent two minutes in arguing about what the time really was. He missed that train.

But naturally the worst trouble of all was about the address, Pa sets himself a very high standard in everything. He had determined that the address ought to last ten minutes. But he could not find enough things to say about Pridgeon to last even two. He put in all that bit about cultivating pleasant personal relations between employers and staff, but even then there was a considerable shortage. He kept on reading out addresses and asking us to time them. One can have too much of almost anything. There were times when I wished there had never on any Pridgeon or any testimonial.

It is a very curious thing that though pa seems to be able to go on talking any length of time and rather to enjoy it, when he starts writing he finds he has said all he has got to say in about a dozen lines. Try as he would, he could not get that address beyond six minutes. I made one or two suggestions as to things which he might put in, but they were not well received. Last of all, he put in a long quotation from a leader in one of the daily papers, which brought the thing up to seven minutes thirty-five seconds, and at that he left it. He was very particular about the way it was typed. It was done on special paper, and there were wide spaces between the lines to make it cover the largest possible number of pages. One copy of the address, together with a list of the subscribers, was sent off to be bound in vellum. It could not be finished in time for the dinner, but was to be forwarded to Pridgeon afterwards. Ma said it was a needless expense. I thought so, too.

The dinner was fixed for a Saturday evening, and pa spent the whole of the afternoon up till five o’clock in rehearsing his speech and sucking voice lozenges in the drawing-room. I heard it through twice, and said that I thought it went splendidly. Pa said he was afraid that I was a somewhat prejudiced critic, but he told me I could go to the cinematograph, and paid for my entrance. Kind words, I find, are not always thrown away.

Pa went up to dress at five. The dinner was not till eight, but he had to fetch the clock from the office and make the final arrangements at the restaurant. It was about six when he left the house, and the story of his subsequent troubles we heard from him on the following day.

The clock being heavy, pa decided to have a taxicab from the office to the restaurant, and on the way there he made a further study of his copy of the address, trying different effects of intonation. I should say his mind was a good deal preoccupied with that address. He reached the restaurant at seven, which gave him an ample margin of time. He wanted it. He inspected the room which had been reserved for the dinner. He arranged about tipping the waiters. He telephoned to the man who was to take the flash-light photograph. With these things he managed to fill in twenty minutes, and then he made the rather shocking discovery that he had left the clock behind him in the cab.

“Not for an instant,” he said, “did I lose my head. There was still time to save the situation. I got another cab and drove to Scotland Yard, telling the driver to go as quickly as was compatible with safety. As I expected, the clock had been brought there, and after the usual formalities it was handed over to me.”

“How much did you have to pay?” asked ma.

“There is a regular tariff for these things. I was back again at the restaurant at a quarter to eight, resuming the study of my speech on the return journey, and being specially careful this time to keep the clock in my mind.”

Pa said that the dinner was quite satisfactory. Even in France he had seldom seen anything of the kind better done. The waiters were efficient and attentive. Everybody, including Pridgeon, thanked pa very much for coming and for all the trouble he had taken. And then came the awful moment. Just one minute before he had to deliver the address pa found that he had left his copy of it in the cab in which he had brought back the clock from Scotland Yard.

When he was telling us about it, he said again that not for one moment did he lose his head. It seemed to have been about the only thing he did not lose that night. The long quotation from the newspaper had to go. It was impossible to remember it. He found, too, by a very curious coincidence, that the things he remembered most easily were the things which at mature consideration he had decided to leave out. He says that he also trusted to a considerable extent to the inspiration of the moment. He must have spoken for at least two-minutes. He did not appear to think much of Pridgeon’s reply. It was far too long, and although it caused much laughter, it was not in the best of taste. It seems to have included several stories about pa in his early days. I wish I had been there.

At the end somebody proposed a vote of thanks to pa, and pa made another speech. This had not been prepared at all, and lasted for fourteen minutes, which, pa said, showed the irony of fate. Ma said it showed something or other, anyhow. Pa got the last train home all right, and was rather proud of the fact that he woke up nobody in the house on his return. The only strange thing about it was that he left his latchkey in the door. The milkman saw it there next morning and called attention to it. Pa said it was nothing to make a fuss about. It might have happened to anybody.

The bound copy of the address was not wasted after all. It was true that it had never been delivered, but pa said it was something like the address which he actually delivered, and he had good reason to believe that Pridgeon would not remember any discrepancies. Pridgeon sent pa quite a nice letter of thanks for it, and said it would be one of his proudest possessions.

I do not want any more of these presentations. One way and another they cost a good deal of money, and afterwards we get the reaction, and that affects me personally. When I pointed out to pa that the new programme at the picture palace was of exceptional interest and contained many things which would have a real educational value for any boy, he said that if I liked to fool away my own pocket-money on things of that kind I could, but he shouldn’t encourage it. I tried ma, and she seemed to think the same.

And what has pa got for the money? He has got a flash-light photograph in a frame, which cost six shillings, and has been a bitter disappointment to him. The really important people, he says, by which he means Pridgeon and himself, seem to be sitting about a mile away and have come out very small. On the other hand, two junior clerks (one of whom has since been dismissed for intemperance), as they happened to be sitting next to the camera, occupy far more space in the picture than their position could have justified. The price of the clock with the inscription was £6 15s. 6d., and so pa must have paid ten shillings at Scotland Yard. This is not a mistake in arithmetic, because I know perfectly well pa would not have put the price of the clock a farthing higher than £5 to the policeman.

The only people who benefited were the cab-man and the restaurant people and Pridgeon, and I do not see any reason to oblige any of them. I hate unnecessary expense with nothing to show for it. If pa had just handed over that money to me, I should have done much better with it.

Of one thing I am quite certain. When I am at the head of that firm, as must in the nature of things happen sometime — Uncle Bags being my godfather, and not, I should think, a good life — there will be no more presentations.

THE UNSUCCESSFUL SINNER

It has very seldom happened that I have received any punishment at school or have deserved any. On one occasion I was punished when I was in the right and had rather deserved to be commended. We were sitting at our desk, writing answers to a Scripture paper. I was at one end of the form and Balgood was next to me. He knew nothing whatever about the subject, and had never tried to know anything. Consequently, he attempted to copy from me the account which I was writing, correct in every detail, of St. Paul’s first missionary journey.

Balgood at this time had a habit, if he ever saw me in the playground, of giving what he called “An Exhibition of the Intelligent Jumping Cockeye.” He hurled things at my feet which might have hurt me considerably if they had struck me, and naturally I jumped to get out of the way of them. It would have been foolish of me if I had not done so. While doing this he would shout out “Hoop-la!” and other expressions used by the trainers and exhibitors of performing animals. Other boys, as idiotic as himself, would gather round and laugh. So I was not disposed to oblige Balgood, unless I received some assurance he would cease these silly “exhibitions,” as he called them, in future. Besides, a boy who copies is cheating.

So I sat somewhat sideways at the desk with my back turned towards Balgood, and arranged my paper so that he could see nothing. I quite expected he would whisper, “Let’s have a squint, and I’ll let you off jumping.” I should then have changed my position, so that, if he cared to take the reaper he could see what he wanted.

But he did not do what I expected. He completely lost his temper, charged into me violently, and sent me off the end of the form on to the floor, So great was his impetus that he came down on the top of me, and, having lost his presence of mind, he clutched at an ink-pot and brought it down with him. It was the merest chance that my spectacles were not broken. I got some of the ink on my face and hair, there was a good deal on Balgood’s collar and neck, and the rest went across the floor.

Of course the disturbance, the ink, and the laughter of the other boys irritated Mr. Mellish, the master who was taking the class, but he might have kept some sense of justice. As soon as I could get up I said, “It was not my fault, sir”; but he never even inquired into the facts of the case. He punished us both. We each had to write out a hundred times: “I should try to act like a gentleman and not like a gorilla.” We were kept in after school in the afternoon to do this imposition. I wrote it as quickly as was compatible with neatness, and was then allowed to go. Balgood, however, made up twenty-five different ways of spelling “gorilla,” and used each one in turn. I have not the least idea why he did this, and I doubt if he knew himself. But when he showed up the imposition, it was detected, and he was made to do it all over again twice. This made him all the more angry with me, though quite without reason. I had never asked him to play the fool with the imposition in that way.

He caught me in the playground next day. Regular cricket is played on the cricket field, of course, but there are generally a few old stumps in the playground. Balgood had collected these, and as soon as he saw me he called out: “Ladies and gentlemen, I will now present to your notice the highly trained jumping pig, Cockeye. One, two, three, and up! Observe his action.” When he had finished throwing the stumps at me, he picked up a few small stones and said he would now feed the beast. It was most unpleasant, and more than once I had a great mind to hit him. However, I am glad to say that next day he got the measles, and that finished with him for the rest of the term.

But I must say I was surprised at the way ma took it when I told her I had been punished by Mr. Mellish. She was pleased. Of course, she pretended that she was not, but grown-up people do not take me in quite so easily as they suppose. Anyhow, I felt so certain of it that I never even told her that it had not been my fault. I said I had been punished for ragging with another boy during school. She said it was silly of me, but she supposed all boys had to have a lark sometimes. I had not had a lark — very far from it — but I said nothing.

I got some further light on the subject later, when I happened to overhear a conversation between pa and ma. She was telling pa about it.

“I say,” she said, “I do believe Ernest’s going to turn into an ordinary human being at last. He has actually managed to get himself punished at school.”

“For nothing disgraceful, I trust?” said pa, a bit anxiously.

“Of course not. Ernie’s all right. Just high spirits. He was rotting with another boy when he ought to have been at work,”

“Ah, well!” said pa. “I dare say I was rather a young devil when I was at school myself.”

“Not you!” said ma. “Tell that to somebody who don’t know you.”

“I may as well point out, Eliza, that at that time you didn’t know me. If I cared to tax my memory, I believe I could recall several instances in which I behaved most improperly. Did you give Ernest a good talking to?”

“Of course not, and don’t you do it either. He’s had his punishment already. As a matter of fact, I was rather glad — seemed more natural,”

“Well, it’s a curious thing,” said pa, “but I do believe Mr. Bagshawe would take the same view. In fact — well, yes — I shall mention this to him if I get a chance. It has become quite useless to speak of the prizes which Ernest has taken. The last time I did so he said he’d far sooner hear that the boy had knocked up a good score at cricket, or had been licked for cheeking a master. A funny thing to say, I thought.”

“Oh, old Bagshawe knows what he’s talking about. You bet he’s right.”

Now, here was a very extraordinary state of things. It really bothered me, All my life I had been taught to be good. My parents, and even Uncle Bags himself, had always been rubbing it into me. It was the same thing over again at school. I believe I was the best boy that ever went to a school. I tried to be, and I never did anything wrong. It was because I was good that I got prizes. Boys who were bad got punishments. In fact, Mr. Mellish had punished me just because he thought I had done wrong, though I do not see how he can have thought it. When a boy hurts himself by falling violently on the floor with a heavy boy on the top of him, and has ink spilled on his face, which must sooner or later involve extra washing, you may be sure that he is not acting intentionally.

If people had meant me to be generally good, but occasionally to have high spirits, they ought to have said so. How was I to know that they wanted me to rot about with other boys instead of doing my work? They had always told me the exact opposite. It did not seem to me to be reasonable, but I know it is not for me to criticize those who are older and wiser than myself, and I quite saw that I should have to make some alteration in my conduct.

In this decision I was thinking of Uncle Bags especially. I had seen for some time past that he was not satisfied. When I took my first lot of prizes he was very smiling, and gave me a sovereign. When I got my last lot, he called me a genius in a sneering sort of way, and never gave me anything. You can’t help noticing things like that. He had also called me a plaster saint and a young nincompoop.

I now saw what was the matter. My spectacles do not permit me to play at cricket, a game which wastes much valuable time; but I could, though it was distasteful to me, get into some mischief, if that was what he wanted. There was no immediate hurry about it. He calls about three times a year, and a visit from him would not be due for at least a month.

For a month I kept, as I prefer to do, to the paths of virtue, and made good progress with my work. I was also enabled to make a considerable addition to my bank account at the post office. I had been trying to explain the arithmetic of chance and the folly of betting on horse races to some boys, and had only been laughed at for my pains. I had, therefore, to convince them in some practical way, and the simplest seemed to be to allow them to bet with me on the Derby. I made twenty-five and twopence after clearing expenses.

And then papa announced that Uncle Bags would be motoring on the following Sunday, and had said that he might look in for a cup of tea on his way back. It was time, therefore, that I did something wrong. Some people might think I had done wrong by keeping a “book” on the Derby, but this was not really so. My only object — or almost my only object — had been to show other boys the folly of betting, and it cannot be wrong to do that. But apart from that, I thought Uncle Bags would prefer something with a little more fun and high spirits in it.

It was on the Friday night that I heard, and Saturday is a half-holiday. So I really only had half a day to get myself punished.

I started quite early by telling the French master that he was a cuckoo. I was afraid at the time that I was overdoing it, and that it might lead to a caning, which I did not want, instead of an imposition, which I did. However, the French master knows little English, and he must have misunderstood.

All he said was: “I was not desiring that you flattair me.”

The next hour I was with Mr. Mellish, and with him I had every hope. What he hates most is for a boy to eat sweets in class. He is quite smart at detecting it, and it makes his eyes bulge out of his head. I had not got any sweets because I never buy anything of that kind. I like them, but it amounts to eating money. The boy next to me had got quite a lot, but selfishly refused to lend me one. The only thing I could do was to suck a small marble which I had picked up in the playground. When I was put on to construe, I removed it from my mouth under cover of blowing my nose. This trick hardly ever succeeds with him, but it did this time. Whenever he seemed to be looking at me, I sucked violently or pouched the marble so that it made my cheek project. It was difficult to believe that he could miss it, but he did. If that marble had been a real sweet, and I had wanted to eat it undetected, he would have caught me in the first two minutes. As it was, at the end of an hour I was still unpunished.

I finished the morning with the headmaster, and it was not safe to risk much with him. As a rule, if he punishes at all, it’s a much larger-sized punishment than I was looking for. But he generally gives a small imposition for writing untidily and making blots on your paper. I showed him up a Latin prose that was written on a slant, and | had also dropped the paper on the floor and put my foot on it to make quite certain. All he said was: “Don’t let this occur again. Your work is generally satisfactory, or you would have had an imposition this time.”

So there it was. At the end of the morning I was still without a punishment. I had done my best — or perhaps I should say that I had done my worst — and I had got nothing to show for it. It was not much good to say that I had done a lot of these daredevil things unless I had got a punishment to prove it. If I had done so, Uncle Bags would only have said I was bragging.

It was most disheartening. It looked as if I could only get punished for things that I had not done. The only thing left, so far as I could see, was for me to play off some little practical joke on Uncle Bags himself when he came. This would amuse him, and show him that if his godson did not play cricket, he was still a bright, high-spirited boy. This, in its turn, would lead him to give me a tip, and I rather wanted half a crown to make my bank account up to even money.

I may as well say at once that I never got the half-crown. I did the practical joke, but it did not work right.

While Uncle Bags was having tea in the garden, I went out to the chauffeur and said: “Mr. Bagshawe says you are to take the car home, as he will be returning later by train.”

I could not help smiling to myself as I imagined what Uncle Bags’s look of consternation would be when he came out and found the car gone. But it worked out differently. Uncle Bags heard the man start the engines, and came out to see what he was up to. Pa and ma came with him. And every one of them was angry with me.

Pa said it passed his comprehension how any son of his could be such an idiot. Uncle Bags said that a boy who played the fool and thought it was funny was mostly the better for a good hiding. Ma said I was a perfect nuisance. The chauffeur scowled at me as if he would have liked to kill me. I was sent up to my room for the rest of the day, and was not given a proper amount and variety of food. And in the temper in which they all were — Uncle Bags seemed to have lost all control of himself — it was hopeless to attempt to explain.

This is my last experiment of the kind. They seemed to want me to be a mischievous: high-spirited boy, and I did my best to oblige them. Then when they had got it they did not like it. It is much easier for me to go on in my ordinary course, always behaving properly and speaking respectfully, and never playing jokes on anybody, and on the whole I find it more remunerative. I have made a resolution never to do anything high-spirited again. And I shall keep it.

But I see now where I was wrong. It is generally accepted that all boys must be a nuisance, and that there must be something wrong with them if they are always good. But the adult likes the boy to be a nuisance to some third party, and not to himself or his friends. That is where the catch is.

MR. GRAHAM CAMPBELL

When pa first took up with photography ma was quite pleased about it. She said she liked a man to have some occupation outside his business. But at that time pa had a five-shilling camera, and got the films developed and printed by the chemist, and it did not satisfy him for very long. I dare say the chemist was partly to blame. He talked to pa and told him about the different things he might buy, and made him ambitious. The next camera cost £3 10s., and pa bought it from the chemist. He also took lessons in photography from him. Ma was slightly sniffy about the second camera, but by this time pa had become rather learned about lenses, and said he must either do the thing properly or leave it alone. He took a series of photographs of the garden, which made it look as if it were about four miles square, and much finer than it really is. He took two photographs of me, but even ma says that I do not photograph well, and then pa fitted up a dark room in a corner of the big attic, and took to calling the attic the studio. Hardly anybody could enter the house now without being photographed by pa. He even photographed Uncle Bags. He filled some big scrapbooks with his photographs, and asked people if they would like to look at them. He would stand over them to see that they did not go through the books too quickly and paid proper attention to everything. He took one of the photographic papers regularly now, and ma told him that she liked moderation in everything.

And then one day he came back from the City with yet a third camera. It did not look much bigger than the second. I asked pa how much it cost, because I always like to know the price of everything, and he told me to mind my own business. Later, when ma asked him how much it cost, he said it was impossible to get a camera which would do such good work any cheaper. But when I was not there she got the actual figures out of him, and she was very much annoyed. She said that if she had known that photography led men to fool away money like that, she would never have encouraged him to begin. He might almost as well have started a motor-car or racing stable. They then shut the door, and I could not hear the rest. Next morning at breakfast pa said he should now be able to get some very interesting views of interiors, and ma said he had better photograph the interior of the bankruptcy court. Later on from other allusions I gathered that the price of the camera was not under £20.

After that for quite a long time pa did not buy anything photographic, so far as I actually knew, but sometimes he came from the City with his pockets rather bulgy and went straight up to the attic. When he came down again the pockets no longer bulged, and he looked as if he had committed a burglary.

Late one afternoon I was preparing my work for next day and pa was mounting some photographs in one of the albums, when a man called to see pa. His card said that he was Mr. Graham Campbell, author and journalist.

“I’ve not the slightest idea what he wants,” said pa, “but I suppose I may as well see him. Show him in.”

As pa did not tell me to go away I remained where I was. Mr. Graham Campbell was a well-dressed man of about forty. His eyes were all over the place. He must have seen everything in the room as soon as he got inside it. He was very polite, and began by thanking pa very much for seeing him.

“The fact of the case is,” he said, “that I have been engaged by an important firm of publishers to prepare a large illustrated work entitled ‘Workers at Play.’ It deals with workers of all kinds, professional men, City men, statesmen, artists, and their hobbies. It will be most sumptuously produced, and the price of it will be three guineas net.”

“I’m afraid I could not think of it,” said pa.

“But, my dear sir, you misunderstand me. I was not proposing that you should buy a copy. Your name was given to me as a representative City man, and all I wanted was to ask you if you would oblige me with some information as to your own hobby, if you have one. If you are so kind as to do this, of course a complimentary copy of the book would be sent you.”

“Oh,” said pa, “that certainly puts rather a different complexion on the matter.”

“I think you will have no reason to be ashamed of the company in which you will find yourself in that book. The Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition will both be there, The Archbishop of Canterbury has also promised. Lord Kitchener is practically a certainty. Now if I get to work at once on that understanding, perhaps you will be good enough to tell me what your hobby is.”

“For some time past I have been taking a great interest in photography- I think I may say that for an amateur I have been moderately successful with it.”

“I wish I were you,” said Mr. Graham Campbell regretfully. “I have done a little photography with a snapshot camera, but, of course, that kind of thing is no use for a book like ‘Workers at Play.’ I did show some of the publishers my attempts, but they told me frankly that they were not up to the mark. That is a pity, too. If I were at all expert, could have made a hundred pounds or more by taking the photographs for that book. As it is, they will have to employ somebody else.”

“Well,” said pa, “perhaps you would like to see some of my latest productions.” He brought out two of the scrapbooks. “One of these,” he said, “contains what I call my garden series. The other consists of studies of child-life.”

Mr. Campbell went through the books very carefully. He seemed greatly interested, and praised everything he saw. He said he never would have believed it possible that an amateur would turn out such work. He put a pencil mark against two or three photographs which he said he should like to reproduce in the book.

“Do you think they would be up to the publishers’ standard?” asked pa.

“I can say without hesitation that they will. It is extremely improbable that there will be anything better in the book. Of course, a fee will be paid you for any of these that are reproduced.”

“Well,” said pa, “it is a work which fascinates me very much. I like doing it. I believe I have some aptitude for it. Do you think it would be possible for me to undertake the other photographs for the volume?”

“I really cannot say,” said Mr. Campbell. “They may have already engaged a photographer. But it is extremely unlikely, for I have only just left them. If you will permit me I will submit specimens of your work to them tomorrow morning, and let you know. At what time are your services available?”

“Any day after four in the afternoon, and after midday on Saturdays. I might even be able occasionally to get away for a morning. I am obliged to you, Mr. Campbell. Perhaps you would now like to come up to see the studio.”

They were upstairs for nearly half an hour, and when they came down Mr. Campbell left, and pa looked extremely pleased with himself. He said that Mr. Campbell was one of the most intelligent men he had ever met, that it was a pleasure to show work to anybody so appreciative.

“Are you going to get the job, pa?” I asked.

“I should prefer, Ernest, that you did not use those vulgar phrases. I am in all probability going to accept a commission from the publishers of this important book. It is not certain, and I will say no more about it at present. I shall know tomorrow afternoon when Mr. Campbell will be here again.”

But as a matter of fact pa did say a lot more about it. He talked about hardly anything else that evening. He said that thoroughness in all things had always been a motto of his. It was true he had paid a large sum for a camera, but if he received this commission the expense would be fully justified.

Ma said that there must be a catch in it somewhere. She did not see any reason why pa should be put into a book of that kind. Pa’s firm was not a particularly big firm, and pa was not the senior partner by a long way.

“I think, Eliza,” said pa, “that you tend to over-suspiciousness. I am not asked to subscribe to the book. I am not asked for any money at all. On the contrary, money is to be paid me. Mr. Campbell will submit my photographs to the publishers tomorrow morning, and will let me know their decision in the afternoon. It is just possible that the publishers will have already engaged a photographer, or that they will not show the same appreciation of my work that Mr. Campbell did. In that case I may make nothing, but under no circumstances can I lose anything. Be reasonable, Eliza.”

Mr. Campbell arrived on the following afternoon in a taxicab. He seemed a little excited. He said it was all right — that the publishers appreciated the photographs even more than he had done, and that they would be glad to give pa the commission. But there was one condition.

I guessed at once what the condition was: that pa was to pay a sum of money down as security, or something of that kind; and I may admit that my guess was entirely wrong. Mr. Campbell never asked for money.

“The fact is,” said Mr. Campbell, “that the publishers are in a bit of a hurry. Several of the distinguished people who are to be included in the book have already fixed dates for the interviews and photographs, and we cannot very well ask them to alter these dates. One of these people has fixed on this afternoon, and I am just off to see him. If you can come with me, bringing your photographic apparatus with you, you can have the commission for the whole of the photographs. If not, I am instructed to arrange with a professional photographer. Well now, there is the taxicab outside — the publishers pay for that, of course, and if you are free we can start at once.”

Pa accepted the offer eagerly, and hurried upstairs to get his apparatus. He decided to take both his cameras with him. He would not let me help him to carry the things down for fear of an accident. He packed both the cameras carefully in the cab, and then an idea seemed to strike Mr. Campbell.

“I say,” he said, “I wonder if you would do me a kindness. You’ve got a small snapshot camera upstairs. If you would bring that down I could take one or two photographs with it on my own account — not for the book, of course, but just for my own pleasure. You would be able to show me how it worked, and what were the best bits to select, and so on.”

Pa seemed very grateful to Mr. Campbell for all he had done for him, and said he would be only too happy to fetch the little camera, and would explain the working of it to him as he went along. So he ran upstairs to the attic for it. When he came down again the taxicab had gone, with Mr. Campbell and both cameras and a lot of other apparatus inside it.

Pa gave him plenty of time. I do not know why, but the idea came into his head that Mr. Campbell had gone to buy a notebook and would return. In about ten minutes pa found ma, and said to her that he thought it was very ungentlemanly of Mr. Campbell to keep him waiting in this way. Ma heard the story, and told him to go to the police-station at once. I do not think he would have gone, but ma said that if he did not she would.

Next day a man came down from Scotland Yard to see pa. He was a detective, and he had got a photograph of Mr. Campbell in his pocket which pa recognized.

“Yes,” said the detective thoughtfully, “we’ve been wanting him for some time. His real name is Smith, and he has any amount of aliases. He has had seven years for this kind of thing. Sometimes it is a clock, sometimes it is a motor-car. He is specially fond of following up expensive cameras. He understands all about them, and is a very good mechanic. He can alter a camera so that no one could recognize it. A description of your two has been circulated, of course, to all the pawnbrokers, but I do not think there is much hope that they will be recovered.”

“How did he get to know that I had a camera?” asked pa. “I suppose he bribed the assistant who served me to give him my name and address.”

“Unlikely,” said the detective. “He could manage to see the label when the thing was sent out without much trouble.”

“And does he tell everybody the same story that he told me — about giving them a commission to take photographs for ‘Workers at Play’?”

“Oh, no. He tells many stories, and chooses one which he thinks will suit the case. Very often he represents himself as a man from the shop, and says that an inferior quality of camera has accidentally been delivered, and that the firm wish to change it. He shows the firm’s trade card as proof of his bona fides. Of course, it is no proof at all. Anybody can get a trade card by asking for it. We know of five different cameras that he has had this week.”

“Well,” said pa, “it is a most amazing thing. How did he know what story to tell me? He’d never seen me in his life before.”

“He knows the type of man he is dealing with in two minutes. Once he gets inside the house, the clock, or the camera, or whatever it is, is as good as gone.”

“And you don’t think you will be able to get my cameras back again for me?”

“We might. We shall get Smith all right in the end. We are setting one or two little traps for him. If he has not disposed of your property by then, you will get it back. But I don’t hold out any hopes of it.”

For some time pa was rather depressed, and told us every day that the loss must be made good by the strictest economies. It was not of the slightest use to talk about picture palaces to him, and if I had not made a little money by a private speculation at school I should have been deprived of these educational forms of entertainment.

And then pa became rather proud of the whole thing, though I don’t know why. He liked to tell the story to people, and when he did so, if ma was not there and he thought I was not listening, he always overstated the price of the camera. He also always said that Campbell was recognized by the police to be the cleverest thief at large in Europe at present. Now the detective had not said that. If I myself were a thief, I should look a little higher than twenty-pound cameras, but I am glad to say I have no inclinations towards dishonesty or vice of any kind. My last school report again states that my conduct has been uniformly excellent.

Pa has not recovered his camera, and so far Mr. Campbell has not stepped into the police trap. One of the bad results of the incident is that pa has become very distrustful, and will allow nothing to be taken out of the house without written permission and fuss of that sort. The boy left the wrong newspaper at our house the other morning, and came back for it, but pa would not allow it to go. Of course, it is not for me to criticize him, but I can’t shut my eyes to the fact that he is inclined to carry things too far. Ma said so too. That was the day she had told the shop to send for the knife-machine that needed repairing, and pa refused to let it go when the man called for it. In fact, pa was just sending out for a policeman when luckily ma returned.

BY THE SILVER SEA

Ma says that there never was a boy like me since the beginning of the world, and she doesn’t seem altogether pleased about it. Yet the only time I ever tried to act like other boys and to do something spirited and mischievous, she objected as much as anybody. Personally I see a good many boys at my school, and I have no wish to resemble them. I think that, with my abilities and industry, and my sense of the value of money, I ought to do better than any of them. They are a lazy lot. They all love holidays, whereas I myself hate them.

It is supposed that during the holidays boys can do as they like. If they wish they can play rough games, such as cricket and football. They can collect butterflies or birds’ eggs. But my spectacles make rough games unsuitable for me, and I never indulge in them. I have made inquiries, and I find that the very best professional players do not make an income which would satisfy me, and they soon get too old to make anything at all. That being so, why should I try to play games? As for birds’ nesting and butterfly collecting, they are messy occupations and may be actually dangerous. And when you come to sell your collection, you get little or nothing for it. What I should like to do real be to sit in the house and busy myself with my own occupations, and occasionally to visit a cinematograph. But I find that in the holidays I can very seldom do what I like.

Yet all my occupations are quite innocent and helpful to myself and others. In the morning I like to study the advertisements in the papers, and learn what the prices of things are. At present I can tell what almost every motor-car I meet on the road cost when it was new. I find out how much people make in different professions and trades. Schoolmasters seem to get very little, although they give themselves such airs. When I think it worth-while, I write for free samples. I was forming a complete medicine chest in this way, and had already got several different kinds of hair-restorer and three cures for obesity. I also obtained a good deal of cocoa by this method. But a postcard costs a halfpenny, and the sample sent is so small that it would be almost cheaper to buy it at the shop. Ma stopped this occupation, because she said it did not seem to her honest, and she thought it was dangerous to play about with medicines. After all, there is really not very much profit in it. Very often the advertiser will only send you one thing free if you buy something else from him. I am fond, too, of studying anything connected with the business. I am teaching myself bookkeeping, shorthand and commercial letter-writing. But frequently I am taken away from my work and made to go for a walk. I am also compelled at times to play croquet. This constant interference with serious occupations is very annoying.

But it is the summer holidays that I dislike most, for then we spend a fortnight at Selton-on-Sea. I dislike swimming, which turns me blue, and I dislike rowing, which makes me sick, and I am compelled to do both. I dislike our lodgings. I dislike the smell of the sea. I dislike everything about it. But pa and ma have got into a groove now. They will to Selton-on-Sea every summer for the rest of their lives. Ma really enjoys it, pa thinks he does, and I have to pretend I do.

It was the usual thing this year. Pa always has three seats in the train reserved for us, but he also insists on being at the station half an hour before the train starts. He spreads things over all the seats, to make them look as if they were all taken. He gives a porter sixpence to lock the door. He stands at the window and talks loudly about scarlet fever. He does everything he knows (short of paying for the extra seats) to get us the entire compartment to ourselves. And he has never once succeeded, and he never will succeed. About two minutes before the train starts, the guard comes along, unlocks the door, and puts another family in on the top of us. Trains to the seaside are always full in the holiday season. I think pa must have great patience and perseverance. If I tried a trick every year for three years, and it never came off, and there were good reasons why it never could, I should give up trying it. Perhaps pa may have some special reason for it, and for the sandwiches too.

We start just after luncheon, and we reach Selton just before tea-time, but pa always takes sandwiches with him. He seems to have got the idea that it’s not legal to travel without sandwiches. He eats one or two himself, and we have to finish the others later in the day, when they have curled up at the edges and are perfectly beastly. I wish somebody would tell him.

Our landlady was all smiles when she received us, which was to be expected. If I had a £30 house and were letting half of it for £3 a week I should smile myself. Of course, we have nothing like the same comfort that we have at home. There is only one sitting-room, and I can never get on with my work. If I am not interrupted in one way I am in another. Pa says: “Come along, Ernest, and get some ozone into your lungs.” If ozone is what that beach smells of at low tide, I would sooner have plain air.

Of course, it is not for me to criticize, but to me the whole thing seems too silly. At home ma always shows a sense of the value of money, and if pa spends too much on anything he always makes up for it by spending too little on something else. But at the seaside they spend money just anyhow. It goes on all day. They pay to walk on the pier, and they pay to sit in deck-chairs, though you can walk in the street and sit on the sand for nothing. This year they paid for the brake to Skilby Castle, and they paid for admission. They did the same last year and the one before. Why? There was precious little of the castle left the first time we went, and it has not got any bigger since. Pa always photographs it, and it always comes on to rain. I am fed up of Skilby Castle, and I don’t care how historical it is; I would cheerfully pay money to be left at home and practise my shorthand. But I always have to go, and I am always expected to regard it as a treat. I need hardly say that we take far too many sandwiches with us, and get the sandwiches for breakfast next morning.

But, as a source of expenditure, the musicians annoy me most. This year there are two gangs of them — “The Masked Minstrels” and “The Screamers.” I dislike any kind of music myself. Pa and ma really like “The Screamers” best, because they are comic, but they also patronize “The Masked Minstrels” because they are high class. But why give them money? They have no legal claim. If they choose to provide an entertainment on a public beach, that is their affair, and anybody has a right to listen to them for nothing. But pa always subscribes.

Pa and ma had rather a disagreement about “The Masked Minstrels.” Pa asked ma what she supposed they were.

“Ordinary street performers like the others. Those masks are just a bit of kid.”

“On the contrary,” said pa, “they are black satin.”

“What I meant was that they only put them on just to humbug you into thinking they’re somebody special.”

“I think, Eliza, that I have as much power of observation as most people. Perhaps more. I have been complimented on it before now. I go by the intonation of the voice, the choice of repertoire, and the general manner. And I say without hesitation that ‘The Masked Minstrels’ are not ordinary street performers.”

“Oh? What are they, then?”

“Talented amateurs who wear masks to conceal their identity, and are really doing it for the love of the thing.”

“Well, they’re pretty handy with the collecting-box considering. However, have it your own way.”

“It is not a question of my own way, Eliza.”

“Then have it the other way. I don’t care, anyhow. Your blessed ‘Minstrels’ are out for what they can make, just the same as the ‘Screamers’ are.”

Pa was out all next morning, and when he came in to lunch he was excited and important.

“I’ve solved the mystery, Eliza.”

“Solved which?”

“I know who the ‘Masked Minstrels’ are. At any rate, I know who their leader is.”

“Oh, did you ask him?”

“I did not. Neither have I been told. Neither have I seen him without the mask. But I have recognized him, and it turns out to be one of the most extraordinary coincidences that have ever occurred. Believe me or not, the fact remains — that man is one of my own clerks, Williams by name.”

“Well, how did you come to know?”

“Because I observe and remember details which would escape most people. He was singing ‘The Lost Chord’ — a good song and one which ought to be more widely known — and in the position in which he was standing the sun lit up his open mouth. I saw that he had three gold stoppings in his back teeth. Williams also has three — in just exactly the same position.”

“Oh? And when did you see inside of the clerk’s mouth?”

“That was due perhaps to the one indiscretion in his career. He was speaking to a bookmaker over the office telephone. Mr. Bagshawe and I had entered unobserved. When he looked up and realized that Mr. Bagshawe had heard him put a dollar each way on Antelope for the Cesarewitch his jaw dropped. That was how I came to see. The gold stoppings were most noticeable. Mr. Bagshawe gave him a most serious warning, and fined him ten shillings for improper use of the office telephone.”

“That makes four gold stoppings altogether.”

“Do not trifle, Eliza. You must see that this is most remarkable.”

“I don’t see that it proves anything. Lots of men have got gold stoppings in their teeth.”

“That, taken by itself, might not have been conclusive, but everything else fits in. I happen to know that Williams has his holiday now. Williams is the same height and build as this man, and has hair of the same colour — though done differently, which is what one would expect. His speaking voice is not quite the same, but naturally a man who masked his face would also alter his voice. Taking one thing with another, there can be no doubt of it. The leader of ‘The Masked Minstrels’ is no other than Williams, my clerk.”

“Did he recognize you, pa?” I asked.

“He must have done, of course, though naturally he was not going to give himself away. The interesting thing is that he will not have the slightest idea that I have recognized him. Later, at the office, I shall tell him that I know how he spent his holidays — saying something about it in a light and chaffng way. But I shall never tell him how I found out — that will be a mystery to him as long as he lives.”

This incident seemed to give pa a taste for detective work. He bought two detective stories that same afternoon, and was very pleased to be able to say he had spotted the guilty man long before the detective in the story did. But for the cares responsibilities of his business he says that he would write a detective story himself, which at any rate would be totally different from anything the world has seen yet.

Otherwise the holiday this year has been very much as usual. The weather has unfortunately been uniformly good, and I have in consequence been made to swim in the sea every day. The man whom pa paid last year to teach me to swim was a brute, who ought to have six months’ hard labour. He frequently allowed me to come within an ace of drowning, and when I complained that I had got a mouthful of sea water he simply laughed. I have read somewhere that, when shipwrecked sailors on a raft are compelled by thirst to drink sea water it always drives them mad, and they then eat one another and jump overboard. I complained several times about my instructor to both pa and ma, but I never could get them to take a right view about it. In fact, ma is always wanting me to do things. This year I was as nearly as possible taught to ride. Fortunately the charge for the hire of ponies at Selton-on-Sea is so much in excess of the usual rates that I managed to get this postponed.

This bathing business is the more shameful because pa himself never does it. Pa can’t swim. He never will say that he can’t, and I never can get ma to admit that he can’t, but I am not easily deceived. They only tell me that sea-bathing is unsuitable at his time of life. This, of course, is skittles, because my instructor was at least five years older. But the whole thing is most unjust. I cannot see that a knowledge of swimming is any use to a boy who intends to embrace a commercial career. Pa never had any knowledge of swimming, and there can be no doubt that he has got on quite a good deal. If I had spent the time that I have been made to waste in this way on acquiring a knowledge, say, of the law as affecting limited liability companies, I should have been acting much more sensibly. Pa has the advantage of me that he at any rate spends his holiday just as he likes. He goes on the pier every day, and sometimes twice a day. He sits on a deck-chair (price twopence), and reads novels (price sixpence), and buys bananas (price two for three-halfpence) totally in excess of his real requirements. But if I try to do what I like, which would be to sit at home and study shorthand, pa immediately begins to talk about ozone.

The holiday came to an end at last, as even the worst things will, and we had the same old farce at the railway station going back. Pa tipped the porter and spread out the luggage Just as before, and the guard put in another family two minutes before the train started, just as before. By a coincidence it was just the same family with just the same baby, and the baby was just as sick as it had been on the journey down. It is a relief to me to feel that it is all over until next year.

Next morning pa went up to the City in quite a cheerful frame of mind. He was looking forward to chafing Williams about his leadership of “The Masked Minstrels.”

When he got back in the afternoon, he came straight into the room where ma and I were sitting and said: “Eliza, a most extraordinary thing has happened.”

“What — again?” said ma.

“You will remember that I was able to identify beyond any possibility of doubt the leader of ‘The Masked Minstrels’ as being our clerk, Williams.”

“Is that all?” said ma.

“You would perhaps like to know the nature of the evidence. It appears that Williams obtained permission from Mr. Bagshawe to change holidays with another clerk. Williams preferred to take his in September, because his aunt, who happens to live in Dulwich—”

“Oh, never mind about his aunt.”

“It is not uninteresting, but if you do not wish to hear it you need not. All that I need say is that Williams was at work at the office every day while we were at Selton.”

“I see,” said ma. “Well, that rather dishes the extraordinary coincidence you made such a fuss about.”

“Nothing of the Kind, Eliza. You should really reflect a moment before you give these hasty judgements. If you did, you would see that it makes the coincidence still more extraordinary. Here we have two men, probably strangers to each other, acting without any mutual arrangement or collusion, going about the world with their back teeth stopped in exactly the same manner.”

“At least two men, I should think,” said ma.

“And in addition to that, both those men happen to come across me under circumstances which enable me to examine their back teeth: in one case from the exigencies of music, and in the other from fear and surprise. It would make an interesting subject for a letter to one of the newspapers.”

But ma managed to persuade him out of it.

AN ACCOUNT
AND A PROSPECT

I have just paid the penalty of an act of carelessness. I am by nature more careful and methodical than most boys. In fact, ma says that in this respect I am more like some old woman than a boy; but the incident which has just occurred shows how even the best of us may be guilty of an occasional lapse. It is a little strange too, because the lapse in this case had its origin in an effort which I make annually to realize my exact financial position. I refer to my Christmas Present Account.

Every year when the Christmas season comes round I give and receive presents. At one time I used to give two presents — one to pa and one to ma. But I have now found it more economical and quite as satisfactory to them to give them one present between them. It is generally some trifle of household use. Last year it was an inkstand, I personally having been inconvenienced often by the shortage of inkstands in the house. The money which I expend in this way I enter on the debit side.

On the other hand, I receive presents regularly from pa, ma, Uncle Bags and Miss Sakers. I sometimes receive one from Uncle Frank, but he is not to be depended upon. I make a list of these with a fair estimate of their cash value and enter them on the credit side. I then balance and see how much I am to the good on that Christmas. This seems to me to be a very wise precaution. It prevents one’s generous impulses from running one into undue extravagance. It shows you exactly how you stand. If I found that in any year I had expended more than I received, I should, of course, correct it in the following year. It is, I am convinced, sound business. But at the same time I am tactful enough to keep these accounts locked away in the desk, which I reserve for my business papers. They concern nobody but myself, and I know how easily things of the kind can be misunderstood.

I also practise an economy which may seem to be trifling, but it is those who take care of trifles who ultimately become rich, When pa and ma receive letters at breakfast-time, which are written only on the one sheet, I always get them to give me the half-sheets. I keep these in a little case, formed of the covers of an exercise book. The waste of paper which goes on, even in well-conducted households, is much to be regretted.

Last year I made out the Christmas Present Account as usual, and then came the act of carelessness. I cannot remember exactly how it happened. Probably I was putting away my things hurriedly, or somebody spoke to me and distracted my attention. At any rate, instead of locking away that account in my desk, I put it in the case where I keep those half-sheets, and now, several months later, this act of carelessness has been visited upon me. I have been much misunderstood. For instance, the thing that I am blamed for is not carelessness at all. But I make no complaint about that, feeling that, after all, I have brought it on myself, and hoping it will teach me to be more careful in future.

It happened in this way. Miss Sakers had been playing croquet with ma. They are just about equal and very keen on the game. They never play for money, and it can lead to nothing, and I do not see what there is to be keen about. There is, perhaps, some reason for it which a boy cannot understand. Anyhow, they nearly always lose their tempers over the game, and are especially polite after it to show that nothing serious was intended. This afternoon they had just got to the polite stage. Miss Sakers said that ma’s game had improved enormously. Ma said that she had only been lucky, and that on a really good lawn, such as the vicarage lawn — which is where Miss Sakers lives — Miss Sakers would always beat her. Then it was Miss Sakers’s turn, and she said she had always been meaning to ask ma where she bought her tea. It was so difficult to get good China tea at a reasonable price, and ma’s was so much better than the tea they had at the vicarage.

Ma said that she always got it from the same place in the City, and that Ernie should write down the address for her.

Miss Sakers said it was too sweet of her.

Ma added: “Not at all.”

I took a half-sheet from my case and wrote down the address, Miss Sakers thanked me and put the paper in the bag she was carrying. I did not know it till next day, but I had written that address on the back of my last Christmas Present Account.

Some people if they found that, by accident, an address had been written for them on the back of a private memorandum, would be too honourable to read the memorandum. And nobody with nice feelings could make use of information obtained in that way. At least, I should have thought so, but no doubt I was wrong, for Miss Sakers did read that memorandum, and did make use of it in a spiteful way.

I think I know what made her so spiteful. That Christmas she had given me a stylographic pen, and I had entered the value of it in the account as one shilling and sixpence. It was a fair estimate. I know of two shops in our neighbourhood where precisely similar stylographic pens can be bought at that price. Apparently, she paid three shillings and sixpence. At any rate, she says she did. And I suppose it made her angry to find that her present had not been appreciated at its value. I am not a vindictive boy, and have been taught to make allowances for others, and so I try to find what excuse I can for her. Perhaps she did not even know that she would be getting me into trouble when she brought that account back and showed it to ma. But I think she might have guessed.

I was not in the drawing-room when she called, and had not the faintest idea that there was anything wrong. Out in the garden I could hear ma and Miss Sakers laughing. In fact, they laughed so much that I almost thought of going in to see if they had got anything amusing. But I did not go. I have been so often disappointed before.

And after Miss Sakers had gone there was no more laughing. Ma called me in, and she didn’t half pitch into me. Then she told pa, and he took a turn at it. He said he trembled to think what Mr. Bagshawe would say if he ever got to hear of it. There was no reason why he ever should hear of it, and if he did I could not see that it mattered what he said. But I did not point this out. I took it all quite meekly, At one time I got rather nervous, because they talked about abolishing Christmas presents for me altogether. That would not suit me at all. My Christmas Present Account has so far always shown a balance on the right side, and for a boy in my position a rather considerable balance. Not seeing exactly what to say, I just kept on expressing regret until could get time to think something out for them. At first I was a good deal taken aback, because the charge they were bringing against me was so totally unexpected. It was so incredible as to be ridiculous. But I have only to set it down to show how absurd it was. They actually accused me of meanness. What my own conscience accused me of was carelessness.

I like order. There should be a place for everything, and everything in its place, as it says in the Bible. Business papers should be kept locked up, and should not be allowed to fall into the hands of people who may take advantage of the accident. That was where I reproached myself.

However, I soon got to understand their point of view, mistaken though it was. I went to bed early; as I was being treated as a kind of leper there was no particular encouragement to sit up. In my own room I at once saw the line to take and worked out the details.

Next morning I came down to breakfast with everything ready, and appeared depressed. I said that, of course, I was not defending myself, but I should like to explain how it had happened. I had known that I was to go into business, and had tried to fit myself for it. I had made accounts out of all manner of things, simply for the sake of practice, and not because I really cared whether there was any profit or loss. I had even made out an account for the garden for one month, although it was not my garden, showing an expenditure of sixteen and three and an income of one penny in respect of a lettuce. It was just a sort of game, and I was very sorry it had been misunderstood: I did not know there was anything wrong in it, and, of course, I thought just the same about Christmas as they did themselves. However, I would promise, if they wished it, never to do any accounts again.

And it all went very well indeed. In fact, before breakfast was over I could see that they were beginning to ask themselves if they had not been too hard on me. But I noticed one thing that I have often noticed before — it is much easier to convince pa than it is to convince ma.

My Christmas Present Account will always be kept locked away in future. And to prevent the possibility of an accident it will be written in shorthand. Nobody in the house can read shorthand. Nor can Miss Sakers. And though, as I said, I am not vindictive, if I ever do get a chance of being even with Miss Sakers, there is a strong probability that I take it.

That night while I was in my room I heard some quite interesting scraps of conversation from the garden. Pa and ma were talking about me and trying to settle which one of them I was more like. I could not hear all of it, because they kept walking about. Pa said that he could not make out how the boy got that love of money, amounting almost to avarice. He himself had always been a singularly open-handed man.

“Yes,” said ma, “and a pretty fool you’d have made of yourself with your open-handedness if you had not had me to look after you. Do you mean to say that the boy gets his meanness from me?”

“You are always and perpetually,” pa began — and then they moved on.

When they came round again ma was saying: “Well, he’s got your figure, at any rate. I was always on the slim side myself. And he’s got your way of talking. In fact, he doesn’t talk like a boy at all, and I don’t suppose you ever did.”

“But I fancy he’ll get on in the world,” said pa.

“Oh, yes,” said ma. “He’ll get on in the world, if that’s the only thing to think about.”

It was not altogether flattering, but very much the kind of thing that I had expected. No allusion whatever was made to the numerous prizes that I had taken at school, or to my uniformly good reports, or to my exceptional abilities, and there seemed rather to be an anxiety to look for faults.

•   •   •

Some months have elapsed since I wrote the above. I see there are still two or three pages left in the book pa gave me, and I propose to occupy them by recording a very probable change in my future career.

About a fortnight ago, the headmaster of the grammar school called on pa and ma. This was a thing that he had never done before. I knew that he had not called to make any complaint about me, because I never do anything about which a complaint can be made. But it struck me that it might be interesting to discover the reason for the call, and I strolled casually into the drawing-room. I was almost immediately sent out again. The door was shut and I was not given any opportunity to hear what was being said. After the headmaster had gone, pa and ma had a long discussion together in private. Next afternoon Uncle Bags came down, and there was another conference of the three of them, while I was sent out in Uncle Bags’s motor-car.

However, I was not kept long in suspense. The next day I was told that the headmaster had suggested that it might possibly be worth-while to send me to Oxford or Cambridge. The matter had been discussed with Uncle Bags, and it had been decided that I should go if I could get a scholarship. I understood that the headmaster had said that in his opinion there was very little doubt that I should get a scholarship if I continued to work as well for the next few years as I had done in the past. Uncle Bags had offered, of his own accord, to defray part of the expenses, which, of course, was very decent of him.

I cannot say that just at first the prospect appealed to me. The sooner one goes into business, the sooner one becomes experienced in it. The assistant masters at the grammar school had all been to a university and had all taken degrees, and whatever else it had done for them it had not helped them to make money. Probably though, they had not a good business to step into as I had — nobody becomes a schoolmaster if he can possibly be anything else. I agreed with the headmaster about that scholarship. I have always been good at work, particularly mathematics. But what would it come to? Perhaps sixty or seventy pounds a year for three years, and during those three years my expenses would be very much increased. If the decision had been left to me I should have carried out what had always been my plan — to leave school at sixteen and go straight into the business.

But then, of course, the decision was not left to me, and everybody seemed so certain that it was a splendid chance for me, that I have gradually got resigned to it. Pa is very pleased about it, and has now told everybody in the place that he has decided to send his son to Oxford. He would prefer Oxford, if possible, because he has found on inquiry that there is a better social tone there. It was an old Oxford man who told him.

The headmaster seemed pleased, too, though in a more solemn way. I shall get some special coaching, as all the boys do who are in for anything competitive. He said that he hoped that at the last I should come to love learning for its own sake, quite apart from any emoluments that it may bring. (I think this improbable, but I said a that I hoped so too.) For this reason he says it would be better on the whole if I went to Cambridge, where the scholarship is perhaps a little sounder. He happens to be a Cambridge man himself.

Uncle Bags seemed almost savage about it, but this may be merely his manner. I mentioned what my own ideas had been. “Stuff and nonsense!” he said. “When you’re eighteen you’ll be a greenhorn and a nincompoop, just as you are now. Three years at a university may knock it out of you. I’ve got no use for your sort in this office in the green state. You’ve got to mix with men to know them. It business were only a matter of sums, which is what you seem to think, any fool could be a successful man of business.”

Well, there are some years yet before I shall be leaving school, and when the time comes the decision will, as a matter of fact, rest with me. I am to be sent to a university only if I can get a scholarship. If I choose I can always fail to get a scholarship. So the thing does not worry me.

But I expect I shall go. There are plenty of university men in the City, and the only way they are handicapped by it is that they seem unable to resist a taxi to Lord’s on fine summer days. The temptation to watch cricket during business hours would not, however, affect me. The other day I came across this sentence in an obituary notice in a newspaper: “He was not only a successful man of business, he was also a man of considerable academic distinction.” I should be quite willing, when the time comes, for my obituary notice to begin in the same way. It sounds well. I would always sacrifice swank to money, but why not try to have both? It is just as well to aim high. Every boy ought to start from the point where his pa has stopped. It took pa twenty years or so (and a bit of luck) to get into a partnership. With my superior abilities, in twenty years I might be almost anything.

As for the choice of a university, I shall leave that till the very last. I shall go in for scholarships at both universities, and select the one which is willing to pay me most. That is the sound way to look at it. A scholarship is really a cash discount offered by a college to its best customer, as far as I can see.

Pa and ma will be proud of me one of these days. At present I do think they might be a bit prouder than they are. They ought not to discuss what they (wrongly) suppose to be my faults in the way they do. One day they will be sorry for it.