Teddy Part 7

"Why, sir, it means anything that can swim," replied Jupp, quite in his element when talking of the sea, and always ready to spin a yarn or tell what he knew. "It might be made of spare spars, or boards, or anything that can float. When I was in the _Neptune_ off Terra del Faygo I've seed the natives there coming off to us seated on a couple of branches of a tree lashed together, leaves and all."

"Oh, thank you," said Teddy, rejoiced to hear this, the very hint he wanted; "but what did they do for oars?"

"They used sticks, in course, sir," answered the other, quite unconscious of what the result of his information would be, and that he was sowing the seeds of a wonderful project; and Teddy presently leading on the conversation in a highly diplomatic way to other themes, Jupp forgot bye and bye what he had been talking about.

Not so, however, Master Teddy.

The very next day, taking up Puck in his arms, and getting away unperceived from home soon after the early dinner, which the children always partook of at noon, he stole down to the pond, where, collecting some of the little villagers to a.s.sist him, a grand foray was made on the fencing of the fields and a ma.s.s of material brought to the water's edge.

Teddy had noted what Jupp had said about the Tierra del Fuegans lashing their rude rafts together, so he took down with him from the house a quant.i.ty of old clothes-lines which he had discovered in the back garden. These he now utilised in tying the pieces of paling from the fences together with, after which a number of small boughs and branches from the hedges were laid on top of the structure, which was then pushed off gently from the bank on to the surface of the pond.

Hurrah, it floated all right!

Teddy therefore had it drawn in again, and stepped upon the raft, which, although it sank down lower in the water and was all awash, still seemed buoyant. He also took Puck with him, and tried to incite some others of the boys to venture out in company with him.

The little villagers, however, were wiser in their generation, and being unused to nautical enterprise were averse to courting danger.

"You're a pack of cowards!" Teddy exclaimed, indignant and angry at their drawing back thus at the last moment. "I'll go by myself."

"Go 'long, master," they cried, noways abashed by his comments on their conduct; "we'll all watch 'ee."

Naturally plucky, Teddy did not need any further spurring, so, all alone on his raft, with the exception of the struggling Puck, who did not like leaving _terra firma_, and was more of a hindrance than an aid, he pushed out into the pond, making for the islet in the centre by means of a long pole which he had thinned off from a piece of fencing, sticking it into the mud at the bottom and pushing against it with all his might.

Meanwhile, the frail structure on which he sat trembled and wobbled about in the most unseaworthy fashion, causing him almost to repent of his undertaking almost as soon as he had started, although he had the incense of popular admiration to egg him on, for the village boys were cheering and hooraying him like--"like anything," as he would himself have said!

CHAPTER SEVEN.

FATHER AND SON.

The road from the vicarage to the village and station beyond pa.s.sed within a hundred yards or so of the pond; but from the latter being situated in a hollow and the meadows surrounding it inclosed within a hedge of thick brushwood, it could only be seen by those pa.s.sing to and fro from one point--where the path began to rise above the valley as it curved round the spur of the down.

It was Sat.u.r.day also, when, as Teddy well knew, his father would be engaged on the compilation of his Sunday sermon, and so not likely to be going about the parish, as was his custom of an afternoon, visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, and warning those evil-doers who preferred idleness and ale at the "Lamb" to honest toil and uprightness of living; consequently the young scapegrace was almost confident of non-interruption from any of his home folk, who, besides being too busy indoors to think of him, were ignorant of his whereabouts. It was also Jupp's heaviest day at the station, so _he_ couldn't come after him he thought; and he was enjoying himself to his heart's content, when as the Fates frequently rule it, the unexpected happened.

Miss Conny, now a tall slim girl of thirteen, but more sedate and womanly even than she had been at ten, if that were possible, was occupied in the parlour "mending the children's clothes," as she expressed it in her matronly way, when she suddenly missed a large reel of darning cotton. Wondering what had become of it, for, being neat and orderly in her habits, her things seldom strayed from their proper places, she began hunting about for the absent article in different directions and turning over the piles of stockings before her.

"Have you seen it?" she asked Liz, who was sitting beside her, also engaged in needlework, but of a lighter description, the young lady devoting her energies to the manufacture of a doll's mantilla.

"No," said Liz abstractedly, her mouth at the time being full of pins for their more handy use when wanted, a bad habit she had acquired from a seamstress occasionally employed at the vicarage.

"Dear me, I wonder if I left the reel upstairs," said Conny, much concerned at the loss; and she was just about prosecuting the search thither when Cissy threw a little light on the subject, explaining at once the cause of the cotton's disappearance.

"Don't you recollect, Con," she observed, "you lent it to Teddy the other day? I don't s'pose he ever returned it to you, for I'm sure I saw it this morning with his things in the nursery."

"No more he did," replied Conny. "Please go and tell him to bring it back. I know where you'll find him. Mary is helping Molly making a pie, and he's certain to be in the kitchen dabbling in the paste."

"All right!" said Cissy; and presently her little musical voice could be heard calling through the house, "Teddy! Teddy!" as she ran along the pa.s.sage towards the back.

Bye and bye, however, she returned to the parlour unsuccessful.

"I can't see him anywhere," she said. "He's not with Mary, or in the garden, or anywhere!"

"Oh, that boy!" exclaimed Conny. "He's up to some mischief again, and must have gone down to the village or somewhere against papa's orders.

Do you know where he is, Liz?"

"No," replied the young sempstress, taking the pins out of her mouth furtively, seeing that Conny was looking at her. "He ran out of the house before we had finished dinner, and took Puck with him."

"Then he has gone off on one of his wild pranks," said her elder sister, rising up and putting all the stockings into her work-basket. "I will go and speak to papa."

The vicar had just finished the "thirdly, brethren," of his sermon; and he was just cogitating how to bring in his "lastly," and that favourite "word more in conclusion" with which he generally wound up the weekly discourse he gave his congregation, when Conny tapped at the study door timidly awaiting permission to enter.

"What's the matter?" called out Mr Vernon rather testily, not liking to be disturbed in his peroration.

"I want to speak to you, papa," said Conny, still from without.

"Then come in," he answered in a sort of resigned tone of voice, it appearing to him as one of the necessary ills of life to be interrupted, and he as a minister bound to put up with it; but this feeling of annoyance pa.s.sed off in a moment, and he spoke gently and kindly enough when Conny came into the room.

"What is it, my dear?" he asked, smiling at his little housekeeper, as he called her, noticing her anxious air; "any trouble about to-morrow's dinner, or something equally serious?"

"No, papa," she replied, taking his quizzing in earnest. "The dinner is ordered, and nothing the matter with it that I know of. I want to speak to you about Teddy."

"There's nothing wrong with him, I hope?" said he, jumping up from his chair and wafting some of the sheets of his sermon from the table with his flying coat-tails in his excitement and haste. "Nothing wrong, I hope?"

Although a quiet easy-going man generally, the vicar was wrapt up in all his children, trying to be father and mother in one to them and making up as much as in him lay for the loss of that maternal love and guidance of which they were deprived at an age when they wanted it most; but of Teddy he was especially fond, his wife having died soon after giving him birth, and, truth to say, he spoiled him almost as much as that grandmother whose visitations were such a vexed question with Mary, causing her great additional trouble with her charge after the old lady left.

"Nothing wrong, papa dear, that I know of," replied Conny in her formal deliberative sort of way; "but, I'm afraid he has gone off with those village boys again, for he's nowhere about the place."

"Dear me!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the vicar, shoving up his spectacles over his forehead and poking his hair into an erect position like a c.o.c.katoo's crest, as he always did when fidgety. "Can't you send somebody after him?"

"Mary is busy, and Teddy doesn't mind Joe, so there's no use in sending him."

"Dear me!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed her father again. "I'm afraid he's getting very headstrong--Teddy, I mean, not poor Joe! I must really get him under better control; but, I--I don't like to be harsh with him, Conny, you know, little woman," added the vicar dropping his voice. "He's a brave, truthful little fellow with all his flow of animal spirits, and his eyes remind me always of your poor mother when I speak sternly to him and he looks at me in that straightforward way of his."

"Shall I go after him, papa?" interposed Conny at this juncture, seeing that a wave of memory had carried back her father into the past, making him already forget the point at issue.

"What? Oh, dear me, no!" said the vicar, recalled to the present.

"I'll go myself."

"But your sermon, papa?"

"It's just finished, and I can complete what has to be added when I come back. No--yes, I'll go; besides, now, I recollect, I have to call at Job Trotter's to try and get him to come to church to-morrow. Yes, I'll go myself."

So saying, the vicar put on the hat Conny handed to him, for she had to look after him very carefully in this respect, as he would sometimes, when in a thinking fit, go out without any covering on his head at all!

Then, taking his stick, which the thoughtful Conny likewise got out of the rack in the hall, he went out of the front door and over the lawn, through the little gate beyond. He then turned into the lane that led across the downs to the village, Miss Conny having suggested this as the wisest direction in which to look for Teddy, from the remembrance of something the young scapegrace had casually dropped in conversation when at dinner.

As he walked along the curving lane, the air was sweet with the scent of dry clover and the numerous wild flowers that twined amongst the blackberry bushes of the hedgerows. Insects also buzzed about, creating a humming music of their own, while flocks of starlings startled by his approach flew over the field next him to the one further on, exhibiting their speckled plumage as they fluttered overhead, and the whistle of the blackbird and coo of the ring-dove could be heard in the distance.

But the vicar was thinking of none of these things.