The Adventures of Bobby Orde Part 8

Bobby attacked the board fence behind the hotel. Two packing-boxes of different heights made the problem of ascent easy. But the other side was a sheer drop; and Celia was afraid.

"I can't!" she cried. "It's too far!"

"Just drop," advised Bobby desperately. "Hurry up! He'll be around the corner!"

"I daren't!" cried poor Celia. "You go first."

Promptly Bobby dangled; and dropped.

"See; it's easy. Come on, I'll catch you!"

Finally Celia wiggled over the edge, shut her eyes, and let go. She landed directly on Bobby, and the two went down in a heap.

"Come on!" whispered Bobby. "Scoot!"

Before them rose a whitewashed barn. Celia's hand in his, Bobby darted in at the open doorway, and more by instinct than by sight, found a rickety steep flight of stairs and ascended to the hay-mow.

"There, isn't that great?" he whispered.

They sank back on the soft fragrant hay, and breathed luxuriously after the haste of the last few moments. A score of mice had scurried away at their abrupt entrance; and the fairy-like echoes of these animals' tiny feet seemed to linger in the twilight. Through cracks long pencils of sunlight lay across the hay and the dim criss-cross of the rafters above. Dust motes crossed them in lazy eddies, each visible for a golden moment as it entered the glow of its brief importance, only to be blotted into invisibility as it pa.s.sed.

"Is this a fair hide?" whispered Celia. "This is outside the grounds."

"It's the hotel barn," replied Bobby. "I bet he doesn't find us here."

They fell silent, because they were hiding, and in that silence they unconsciously drew nearer to each other. The delicious aroma of the hay overcame their spirits with a drowsiness. New sensations thronged on Bobby's spirit, made receptive by the narcotic influences of the tepid air, the mysterious dimness, the wands of gold, the floating brief dust-motes. He wanted to touch Celia; and he found himself diffident. He wanted to hear her voice; and he suddenly discovered in himself an embarra.s.sment in addressing her which was causeless and foolish. He wanted to look at her; and he did so; but it was not frankly and openly, as he had always looked at people before. His shy side-glances delighted in the clear curve of her cheeks; the soft wheat-colour of her curls; the dense black of her half-closed eyes; the brown of her complexion; the sweet cleanliness of her. A faint warm fragrance emanated from her. Bobby's heart leaped and stood still. All at once he knew what was the matter. It is a mistake to imagine that children do not recognize love when it comes to them. Love requires no announcement, no definition, no description. Only in later years when the first fresh purity of the heart has gone, we may perhaps require of him an introduction.

At once Bobby felt swelling within his breast a great longing, a hunger which filled his throat, a yearning that made him faint. For what? Who can tell. The idea of possession was still years distant; the thought of a caress had not yet come to him; the bare notion that Celia could care for him had not as yet unfolded its dazzling wings; even the desire to tell her was not yet born. Probably at no other period of a human being's life is the pa.s.sion of love so pure, so divorced from all considerations of the material, or of self, so shiningly its ethereal spiritual soul. Yet love it is; such love as the grown man feels for his mate; with all the great inner breathless longings of the highest pa.s.sion.

The two lay curled side by side in their nests of hay. Time pa.s.sed, but they did not know of it. The little boy was drowned in the depths of this new thing that had come to him. Celia filled the world to him. His reverie brimmed with her. Yet somehow also there came to him other things, unsought, and floated about him, and became more fully part of him than they had ever been before. It was an incongruous a.s.sortment; some of the knights of Sir Malory; the River above the booms, with the brown logs; a plume of white steam against the dazzling blue sky; the mellow six-o'clock church bell to which he arose every morning; the snake-fence by the sandhill as it was in winter, with the wreaths of snow; and all through everything the feel of the woods he had seen at the picnic, their canopy of green so far above, their splashes of sunlight through the rifts, the friendly summer warmth of their air, their hot, spicy wood-smells wandering to and fro; their tall trunks, their undergrowth, with the green tunnels far through them, the flashes of their birds' wings, their green transparent shadows. These came to him, vaguely, and their existence seemed explained. They were because Celia was. And so, in the musty loft of an ill-kept stable, Bobby entered another portion of the beautiful heritage that was some day to be his.

IV

THE PRINTING PRESS

Next week was Bobby's birthday. He received many gifts, but as usual, saved the biggest package until the last. It had come wrapped in stout manila paper, tied with a heavy cord, and ornamented with the red sticker and seals of the Express Company. With some importance Bobby opened his new knife and cut the string. The removal of the wrapper disclosed a light wooden box. This was filled with excelsior, which in turn enclosed a paper parcel. A card read:

"For Bobby on his eleventh birthday, from Grandpa and Grandma."

Wrought to trembling eagerness by the continued delays, Bobby tore off the paper. Within was a small toy cast-iron printing press. Its ink-plate was flat and stationary. Its chase held two wooden grooves into which the type could be clamped by means of end screws. The mechanism was worked by a small square lever at the back. Bobby opened a red pasteboard box to discover a miniature font of Old English type; a round tin box to uncover sticky but delicious-smelling printer's ink; a package to reveal the ink-roller and a parcel to complete the outfit with a pack of cheap pasteboard cards.

"What do you think of that?" cried Mrs. Orde.

"Now you'll be able to go into business, won't you?" said his father.

"You might make me twenty-five calling cards for a starter."

Immediately breakfast was finished, then Bobby took his printing press upstairs and installed it on his little table. He would have liked very much to show Celia his gifts, but this Mrs. Orde peremptorily forbade.

After some manipulation he loosened the chase and laid it on the table.

Then he began to pick out the necessary type and arrange it in the upper grove to spell his father's name. The replacement of the chase was easy after his experience in taking it out. Ink he smeared on the top plate, according to directions, rolling it back and forth with the composition roller until it was evenly distributed. Nothing remained now but to adjust the guides which would hold the cards on the tympan. Bobby pa.s.sed the inked roller evenly back and forth across the face of the type, inserted a card and bore down confidently on the lever. He contemplated this result:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Besides the transpositions and inversions, the impression itself was blurred and imperfect and smeared with ink.

After the first gasp of dismay, Bobby set to work in the dogged a.n.a.lytical mood which difficulties already aroused in him. The remedy for the inversion was plain enough. Bobby changed the type end for end and turned the R and the E right side up, but he worked slower and slower and his brow was wrinkled. Suddenly it cleared.

"Oh, I know!" said he aloud. "It's just like the looking-gla.s.s!"

Satisfied on this point, he finished the resetting quickly and tried again. This time the name read correctly but it slanted down the card and was blurred and inky. Bobby fussed for a long time to get the line straight. Experiment seemed only to approximate. One end persisted in rising too high or sinking too low. The problem was absorbing and all the time Bobby was thinking busily along, to him, original lines. At last, by means of a strip of paper and a pencil he measured equidistants from top and bottom of the platen, adjusted the guides in accordance and so that problem was solved. Bobby, flushed and triumphant, addressed himself to remedying the blurring.

"Too much ink," said he.

Obviously the way to remedy too much ink was to rub some of it off and the directest means to that end was the ever-useful pocket handkerchief.

The paste proved very sticky and the handkerchief was effective only at the expense of great labour. Bobby ruined three more cards before he established the principle that superfluous ink must be removed not only from the plate but from the roller and type as well.

But now further difficulties intervened before perfection. Some of the letters printed heavily and some scarcely showed at all. Here Bobby entered the realm of experiments which could not be lightly solved in the course of a half hour. He tried raising the type to a common level and locking them as tightly as possible, but always they slipped. He attempted to insert bits of paper under what proved to be the shorter types. This improved the results somewhat, but was nevertheless far from satisfactory. By now he had learned not to use a fresh card every time.

The first half-dozen were printed back and forth, front and behind.

Bobby was smeared with more ink than the printing press. Scissors, pencils, paper, used cards and type were scattered everywhere. All the time his fingers were working his brain, too, was busy, searching back from the result to the cause, seeking the requisite modification. Mr.

Orde, returning at noon, burst out laughing at the sight.

"Well, youngster," said he, "how do you like being a printer?"

"Oh Bobby!" cried Mrs. Orde behind him. "You are a _sight_! Don't you know it's time to get ready for lunch?"

Bobby looked up in bewildered surprise. Lunch! Why he had hardly begun!

His father was chuckling at him.

"Benzine will take it off," said Mr. Orde to his wife.

Bobby caught at the hint.

"Will benzine take off the ink?" he cried eagerly.

"It's supposed to," replied his father; "but in your case----"

"Can I have a little, in a bottle, and a toothbrush?" begged Bobby. He saw in a flash the solution of the ink problem.

"We'll see," said Mrs. Orde. "Come with me, now."

They disappeared in the direction of the bathroom. Mr. Orde examined the cards with some amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Well, sonny," said he to Bobby at lunch. "The printing doesn't seem to be a howling success. What are you going to do about it?"