The Happy Warrior Part 18

"Yes, do! Yes, please do!" Rollo whispered, and his mother patted his hand, pleased at the animation of the thin little face.

Lord Burdon hesitated: "Take him to the Manor? Why, that may be miles from his home, you know."

"I suppose we can send him back in the trap, can't we?" Lady Burdon said, a trifle disagreeably. "You're a regular old woman, Maurice.

Lift him in next to Rollo. You can see how Rollo takes to him, I should have thought."

"Didn't want to be had up for kidnapping, you know," Lord Burdon responded cheerfully. "Would be a bad start in the local opinion--eh?"

And he laughed with the appeal and the apology with which he always met his wife's waves of impatience. "Shove up, Rollo! In you get, frog-hunter! Heavens! What a lump. All right. Drive on!"

"Gee up!" cried Percival, highly entertained, and chatted frankly with Lady Burdon as the wagonette bowled along. To her questions he was nearly eight, he told her; he would have another birthday in a short time; Honor gave him a sword at his last birthday and his Aunt Maggie gave him a trumpet. "You may blow my trumpet, if you like," turning to Rollo. "Honor says it is poison to blow it because I've broken the little white thing what you blow through. But I blow it all right."

Rollo flushed and smiled and put a thin little hand from beneath the rug and took Percival's muddy fist and held it for the remainder of the journey. Boy friends who did not laugh at him were new to him.

"Miss Oxford's little boy," Percival explained to further questions.

"I live at the post-office, and we've got a drawer _full_ of stamps with funny little holes what you tear off."

Lady Burdon turned to her husband: "Ah, I know now. You remember? You remember the vicar telling us about Miss Oxford when we first came down here? Well, she's to be congratulated on her nephew. I'm glad. He'll be the jolliest little companion for Rollo."

Lord Burdon remembered. "Yes--this will be her sister's child.

Orphan, poor little beggar."

And Lady Burdon: "We'll be able to have him up with Rollo as much as we like, I've no doubt. Look how happy they are together," and she smiled at them, chatting eagerly.

Percival was twisting and bending the better to see the occupants of the box-seat. A form that seemed familiar sat beside the driver.

"Why, that's Mr. Unt!" Percival cried brightly, and as the familiar form turned at the sound of its name, "How's your poor headache, Mr.

Unt?" he asked. "Much better now, isn't it?"

Mr. Unt's pallid face became slightly tinged with embarra.s.sment. "The young gentleman spoke to me at the Manor Wednesday, me lady," he apologised. "Had come up to take tea with Mr. Hamber." He profited by the touch of his hat with which he spoke to draw his hand across his forehead; a sick yedache clearly was still torturing there.

"His headaches are terrible," Percival explained. "I thought he was a clown, you know. I saw him driving in this carriage with tyrangs."

Egbert's back shivered. "Parding, me lady," said he, turning again.

Lady Burdon laughed. "Hunt," she told Percival. "Not Unt. He speaks badly."

"You know, his headaches--" Percival began; and she added more severely: "He is a servant."

"He's my servant," Rollo said. "Hunt looks after me when I go out. I hate nurses, so I have him. He'll be yours too, if you'll come and play with me. Both of ours. May he, mother?"

"You can tell Miss Oxford that some one will always be there to keep an eye on you if she will let you come and play," Lady Burdon replied to Percival.

"So now he is yours and mine," cried Rollo, squeezing the hand he held.

"Thank you very much," Percival said. "Of course, if his headache is very bad we won't have him, because he will like to lie down."

He spoke clearly; and a tiny little tremble of Egbert's back seemed to advertise again the grat.i.tude that sympathy aroused in him.

"Oh, that's nothing," Rollo declared. "He pretends."

The poor back drooped. "Tyrangs," Egbert murmured and furtively edged a vegule to his mouth.

II

In the dusk of that evening Percival went bounding home, immensely pleased with his new friends and with the new delights in life they had discovered for him. He had nice clean knees and a bandage on each--a matter that caused him considerable pride. He had gladly promised to come to see Rollo again on the morrow, and he would have stayed much longer into the evening had not Lord Burdon (as Lady Burdon said) "begun to fidget" and to persist that Miss Oxford must be getting nervous at this long absence.

"His aunt will naturally be glad when she knows where he has been,"

Lady Burdon had exclaimed.

Lord Burdon gave the smile that she knew came before one of his annoying rejoinders. "That won't make her wild with joy while she doesn't know where he is, old girl."

She was irritable. The vexation of having to leave London, which she enjoyed, for Burdon which she felt she would hate, was settling upon her. She looked at him resentfully. "That is funny, I suppose?" she inquired. "You are always very funny, aren't you?" and she gave orders for Hunt to take Percival home.

Down the road Percival chattered brightly to Egbert, holding his hand.

"I jump like this," he explained, capering along, "because I pretend I'm a horse. Then if you want me to walk quietly you only have to say 'whoa!' you see."

"Whoa!" said Egbert very promptly.

Percival's legs itched to jump out the animation that events had bottled into him. "Did you say 'gee up'?" he presently inquired.

"No," said Egbert.

"Oh," said Percival, and with a little sigh repeated "oh!"

Egbert felt the appeal. "Fac' of it is, that jumping jerks me up."

"Got another sick headache, have you?"

"Crool," said the living martyr to 'em.

Percival took another phrase of Aunt Maggie: "You must be thor'ly out of sorts, I think."

"Got one foot in the grave, that's what I've got," Egbert agreed.

"Fac'."

Percival peered down at Egbert's legs. "Which one, please?" he inquired.

"Figger o' speech," Egbert told him, and explained: "Way of saying things." He added: "Go off in the night one of these days, I shall;"

and commented with gloomy satisfaction: "Then they'll be sorry."

Percival asked: "Who will?" He visioned Egbert running by night with one foot embedded in a tombstone, and he was considerably attracted by the picture. "Who will?" he repeated.

"Tyrangs!" said Egbert. "Too late to be sorry then. Fac'."

"Well, I should be dreffly sorry," Percival a.s.sured him.

"Believe you," said Egbert, "and many thanks for the same. First that's ever said a kine word to me, you are; and I'll be grateful--if I'm spared."

He looked at his watch and then down the lane. "Think you could get home safe from here? Fac' is I'm behind with my vegules and left them in my other coat."