Читать книгу: «The Old Tobacco Shop», страница 2

"If you're considerin' making a bid for the property, young man, I'll see what the senior Churchwarden has to say about it. How much do you offer?"

"No, sir," said Freddie, blushing in confusion, and went on up the street. He understood nothing of what the fat man had said, but he caught the word "churchwarden," and remembered it.

He did not walk very fast, for he had a good deal to think about; so many things had never happened to him in one day before. He dwelt especially, in his mind, on the two old codgers who were friends of Mr. Toby, and he supposed that his own father never saved up his pennies, otherwise his old tobacco box would not be empty every now and then. However, he was glad that his father was a spendthrift, because it would give him a chance to go to the Old Tobacco Shop sometimes for more tobacco for the box; and apart from Aunt Amanda and her gingerbread, he was very anxious to look again at the Chinaman's head in which lay the magic tobacco which he must not touch. One thing was sure; he would never go without looking carefully first at the hands of the clock. He wished he knew how to smoke; only not cigarettes; he shivered when he thought of the terrible consequences.

When he came to the street-car track, the horse-car was going past; at least, it was coming down the street, and he did not want to be run over by that horse; he had better wait, for the horse was trotting; his mother had warned him about it; he sat down on the curb. He had quite a moment or two to wait, and there would be time to give a hasty glance at the gingerbread. He laid the tobacco-sack beside him on the curb, and opened the other package; the car-horse had dropped into a walk and his bell was hardly jingling; there was no hurry after all; it would never do to cross in front of that horse even though he was walking. He looked at the gingerbread; it was fresh and soft, and its smell, when held close to the nose, was nothing less than heavenly; it was a pity it had to be hidden away again in the sack, but the horse was going by and the danger would soon be past. He held the gingerbread under his nose, merely to smell it; the edge of it touched his upper lip by chance, and there was something peculiar about the feel of it, he couldn't tell exactly what; it was very interesting; he touched it with the tip of his tongue, to see if it felt the same to his tongue as to his lip; it was just the same; perhaps teeth would be different; his teeth sank into it, just for a trial. The horse was going by now, and the driver was looking at him. He forgot what he was about, in watching the horse and his driver, as they went on past him; the gingerbread completely slipped his mind, and when he turned his head back from the horse-car and came to himself he found, to his amazement, that his mouth was full of gingerbread. He wondered at first how it got there, but there was no use in wondering; there it was, and it had to be swallowed; his mother would never approve of his spitting it out; and so, to please his mother, he swallowed it. The horse-car was nearly a square away; he could cross the track at any time now; there was no hurry.

When he came into the fine two-story brick house where he lived, with only one package in his hand, his mother threw up her hands and said:

"Why, Freddie! Where on earth have you been? Did you get lost? Are you hungry?"

"No'm. Yes'm," said Freddie.

"Frederick," said his father, looking at him with that look, "where have you been? Didn't I tell you to hurry?"

"Yes, sir, to Mr. Punch's, and I didn't see his farver at all, but the hands come'd right over on top of each other and he didn't get down off of his perch, he didn't, so Mr. Toby took me in to see Aunt Namanda and she eats pins, and it's cigarettes that gives you that hump on the back, only tobacco's all right 'cause you smoke it in a pipe and it doesn't do you any harm at all, and that's what Mr. Toby says and he ought to know 'cause he's got one on his back his own self, but you mustn't touch that tobacco in the head 'cause it's magic and the sailor said so, and here's the Cage-Roach Mitchner, and that's all."

You will notice that he said nothing about the gingerbread.

CHAPTER III
INTRODUCING THE CHURCHWARDEN

Every time Freddie visited the Old Tobacco Shop after that – and it was pretty often, whether the tobacco box at home needed tobacco or not, for there were a good many things that drew him there, and he hardly knew which was the most fascinating: there was always a chance of gingerbread, and you could usually depend on seeing Aunt Amanda eat pins, and you could look through the two pieces of glass at the double picture and make it all one picture with the people in it standing out as if they were real, and Mr. Toby would often sing about his friends the two old Codgers and talk about their mean ways, and Mr. Punch was always waiting for his father outside the door, so that you had to keep your eyes on the time, or at least the clock (which is different), and sometimes Mr. Toby would let you in behind the counter and let you scoop tobacco into a paper sack, and when his back was turned you could stand under the Chinaman's head with the magic tobacco in it, and look up at it and wonder what would happen if you took just one or two little teeny whiffs – But I forget what I started to tell you. Oh, yes. Every time Freddie visited the Old Tobacco Shop, Mr. Toby would ask him his name, in order to see if he was grown up yet.

"What's your name today?" Mr. Toby would say.

"Fweddie," would be the Little Boy's answer.

"Not yet," Mr. Toby would say, shaking his head sadly. "You ain't grown up yet. I'm very sorry to have to tell you, son, but you've got to wait a while before you're grown up. I'll tell you what; I'll give you six months more," said Mr. Toby on one occasion. "If you ain't grown up by that time, there's no hope for you; I hate to have to say it, but you might as well know it one time as another." And the very next time the Little Boy came he said his name was "Fweddie," and Mr. Toby said, "Well, never mind, you've got five months and twenty-eight days left, and there's hope yet. I suppose you wouldn't want to be a Little Boy all the time, and never grow up at all, would you?" Freddie looked up at him in alarm and said, "No, sir." "Then," said Mr. Toby, "you'd better mind your P's and Q's."

Freddie wanted to ask about these P's and Q's, but you may have noticed that he was shy, and he could not make up his mind to do so. He knew all about P's and Q's in the Alphabet Book at home, but he did not know how to mind them; he knew how to mind his mother, – sometimes, but how could you mind letters in a book, that couldn't ever say "Don't do that," like mother? He was very anxious on this point, for he knew that his time was growing short, and the idea of never growing up was simply terrifying; he might as well smoke cigarettes and be done with it. In point of fact, he now had only about a week left, and he wasn't grown up yet.

But one morning, when the hands of the church clock were wide apart, and all was safe, he passed by Mr. Punch and opened the shop door. Mr. Toby was standing behind the counter, tying up a parcel. He went on tying it up, and said:

"All right, young feller, it's your turn next. This here package is for the Sly Old Codger, and he'll be back for it pretty soon, and if it ain't ready, – whew! won't we get blown up, though? Now then, what'll you have? Pound o' Maiden's Prayer?"

"No, sir," said the Little Boy. "I don't want anything. I just came."

"Oh; you just came. By the way, young man, what is your name today?"

"Freddie!" said the Little Boy.

Mr. Toby dropped his package and leaned across the counter in amazement.

"What's that you say?"

"Freddie!" cried the Little Boy, bursting with pride.

"Well! Bless my soul! If I ever in my life! As sure as the world! Strike me dead if he didn't say it as plain as – ! Young man," said Mr. Toby, solemnly, and he walked to the end of the counter, opened the swinging gate, came through, stood in front of Freddie, and shook him by the hand. "Young man, I congratulate you. It's all right now. But you had an almighty close shave, I can tell you that. Allow me to congratulate you, and accept the best wishes of your kind friend, Toby Littleback."

"Please, sir," said Freddie, opening his eyes wide, "am I grown up now?"

Mr. Toby stared without speaking, and then threw out both his arms, and for a moment it looked as if he were going to hug the Little Boy, but he evidently thought better of it.

"Are you – ? Why, of course you are! Ain't I been telling you? But don't you go and presume on it too much, young feller! You don't think you can go and smoke cigarettes now, just because you're grown up, do you?"

"Oh no, sir," said Freddie, earnestly.

"I should hope not. And that there Chinaman's head up there – you don't think you can go and smoke that magic tobacco now, do you? Because if you do!"

"No, sir," said Freddie; but he said this a little doubtfully, and he looked at the Chinaman's head with more interest than ever. What was the use of being grown up if you couldn't take a little risk now and then?

"All right, then!" cried Mr. Toby. "We've got to have a little celebration over this here event, and we'd better go in and see Aunt Amanda about it, right now!"

He grasped Freddie's hand again, and pulled him to the back door, and through into the back room where Aunt Amanda was sitting by the table with the wax flowers, sewing.

"Quick! quick! Tell Aunt Amanda your name now, quick! What's your name?" cried Mr. Toby.

"Freddie!" said the Little Boy, very distinctly, but looking down at the carpet, for fear he should seem proud.

"We're grown up today," cried Mr. Toby, "and we've got to celebrate!"

Aunt Amanda raised her eyebrows in astonishment, and said:

"Esheeraybysart!"

She put her hand to her mouth and somehow got out into her hand a good mouthful of pins. She laid them down on the table at her elbow, and said:

"Bless the dear baby's heart! And are you grown up now?"

"Yes'm," said Freddie, looking up and then down again, for he did not wish to seem too proud.

Aunt Amanda looked at him for a moment, and took out her handkerchief and blew her nose very loud.

"Toby," she said, "what did you mean by a celebration?"

"Tomorrow's Saturday," said he.

"Well, what of it?"

Freddie could not understand very well what they were saying after that, except that he was concerned in it somehow, until he heard Aunt Amanda say:

"You'd better ask his mother, then."

"Young man," said Mr. Toby, "if I write a letter to your ma, will you give it to her?"

"Yes, sir," said Freddie, whereupon Mr. Toby sat down at the other side of the table, with pen and paper and ink, and commenced to write.

"First," said Aunt Amanda, "there's some of that fruit-cake from last Christmas still in the – "

"Right you are!" cried Toby, jumping up and going out into the kitchen.

Freddie ate the fruit-cake, sitting on a hassock at Aunt Amanda's feet, while Toby went on with his letter, but in the midst of it Toby went out again, and finally came back with a tall glass of ice-cold lemonade.

"Don't you go and spill it on the carpet," said he, as he sat down to his writing.

"No, sir," said Freddie.

Aunt Amanda looked at him, as he sat so seriously on his hassock at her feet, munching his fruit-cake and sipping his lemonade; and she pulled out her pocket-handkerchief and blew her nose again, very loud. She appeared to have a cold. Toby paid no attention to her; his head was lying sidewise on his left arm on the table, and he was squinting at the sheet of paper, and every time his pen came down he closed his mouth tight, and every time his pen went up he opened his mouth wide. Freddie and Aunt Amanda had plenty of time to talk. Under the softening influence of fruit-cake and lemonade Freddie found his tongue.

"What's a Churchwarden?" he said suddenly into the lemonade-glass, which was just under his nose.

"Bless the baby!" said Aunt Amanda.

"It's a long clay pipe, young man," said Toby, chewing the end of his pen-holder, "like you've seen in the case out there in the shop."

"That ain't what he means," said Aunt Amanda. "You mean a man, don't you, Freddie?"

"Yes'm," said Freddie, looking at the cake just going into his mouth.

"It's a man," said Aunt Amanda, "it's a man that belongs to a church, and he stands guard over the church property, and sees to the repairs, and beats little boys with a cane when they make a noise during service, and takes care nobody don't run away with the collection money, and – "

"How do you spell 'respectfully'?" said Toby, scratching his head with the pen. "Yours respectfully."

"R-e – " began Aunt Amanda, "s-p-e-c-k – no, that ain't right, – r-e-s – "

"There's one over at that church," said Freddie, pointing towards the window, "and he smokes one, too."

"One what, Freddie?" said Aunt Amanda.

"A Churchwarden. There's a Churchwarden sits out on the pavement and he smokes a Churchwarden, he does." Freddie was rather proud that he had mastered that difficult word, and he liked to hear himself say it.

"Oh," said Toby, "I reckon he means the sextant over there. Well, 'Yours respectfully.' I don't give a – hum! – how you spell it. There she goes. Done. 'Yours respectfully, Toby Littleback.' It's blotted up some, by crackey, that's a fact; but I ain't a-goin' to write all that over again, not by a jugful." And he took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"He's a Churchwarden," insisted Freddie, swallowing the last of the lemonade after the last of the cake.

"All right," said Toby, "have it your own way. But a sextant's as good as a Churchwarden, in my opinion, any day of the week, – except Sunday, of course."

Aunt Amanda inspected the letter, and declared herself horrified by the blots; but Toby positively refused to go through that exhausting labor again, so she passed it grudgingly, and handed it to Freddie in an envelope, and told him to give it to his mother as soon as he got home.

"Do you want some more cake and lemonade?" said she.

"Yes'm," said he.

"Well, you won't get it, so trot along home."

In the shop Mr. Toby showed him the churchwarden pipes in the show-case. Freddie wondered how it would taste to smoke some of that magic tobacco in the Chinaman's head in a churchwarden pipe.

As he passed the church on his way home, he looked for the fat old man who usually sat in his chair tilted back against the wall, but he was not there. Freddie wished to ask him about those noises up in the tower when Mr. Punch and his father were having their high jinks; he had never been able to screw up his courage to the point of asking about this, but now that he was grown up he thought he might be able.

He gave the letter to his mother, and she read it; but she said nothing to him about it. When his father came home in the evening, she showed the letter to him, and they talked about it, and Freddie could not understand very well what they were saying. Finally his father said:

"Well, I don't think there would be any harm in it."

"I suppose not," said his mother. "I'll see them in the morning. He had better wear his Sunday suit and his new shoes."

This was bad, because it sounded like Sunday-school, and the shoes squeaked. Freddie thought he had better change the subject, so he said:

"I'm grown up. I can say Freddie. Mr. Toby says so."

His father laughed, but his mother took him up in her arms and hugged him close to her breast.

The next day was in fact Saturday, and after lunch Freddie's mother helped him, or rather forced him, into his Sunday suit and his new shoes, after a really outrageous piece of washing, which went not only behind the ears but actually into them. She put his cap on his head – he always had to move it a trifle afterwards, – looked at his finger-nails again, pulled down his jacket in front and buttoned every button, straightened out each of the four wings of his bow tie, took off his cap to see if his hair was mussed and put it on again, pulled down his jacket in front, straightened his tie, altered the position of his cap, put both her arms around him and kissed him, and told him it was nearly two o'clock and he had better hurry. As soon as she had gone in, after watching him go off down the street, he unbuttoned every button of his jacket, put his cap on the back of his head, and in crossing the street-car track deliberately walked his shiny squeaking shoes into a pile of street-sweepings; he then felt better, and went on towards the Old Tobacco Shop.

As he came to the church, he stopped to look at the hands of the clock; he was in luck; the hands would not be together for ever so long, for it was ten minutes to two. The Churchwarden was sitting in his chair tilted back against the wall, keeping guard over his church; and he was smoking his churchwarden pipe. Freddie walked by very slowly, and his shoes squeaked aloud on the brick pavement. The fat old man gazed at him solemnly, and Freddie looked at the fat old man. The Churchwarden's chair came down on the pavement with a thump.

"Look here!" he said. "This ain't Sunday! What's the meaning of all this? It's against the rules to wear them squeaking shoes of a Saturday! The Dean and Chapter has made that rule, by and with the advice and consent of the City Council, don't you know that? And all that big red necktie, too! Did you think it was Sunday?"

"No, sir," said Freddie, for he was always honest, even in the face of danger. "I couldn't help it. I didn't want to, but mother made me – "

"Ah! that's it. I thought maybe you'd made a mistake in the day; then it wouldn't 'a' been so bad. Look here; it's my duty to report this here violation of the Sunday law, but as long as – you're sure you ain't particeps criminis?"

"No, sir," said the Little Boy earnestly. "My name's Freddie."

"Well, that makes it different. I though you was another party; young party-ceps; but if you ain't, why – Here; you'll need something to show, in case you should meet the Archdeacon, and he'd want to know why I hadn't reported you – Show him this, and he'll know it's all right."

The fat Churchwarden fished in his vest pocket and drew out, between a fat thumb and a fat forefinger, a round shining piece of metal, and put it in Freddie's hand. Freddie saw that it was a bright new five-cent piece, commonly called a nickel. He felt better.

"If you don't meet the Archdeacon between here and Littleback's Tobacco Shop," went on the Churchwarden, "you don't need to keep it any longer; I don't care what you do with it then; only not pickles, mind you!"

"No sir," said Freddie.

This was his chance to inquire about Mr. Punch's father and the noises in the tower, but it was out of his power to stay longer; he was too glad to escape without being reported; and he accordingly went off down the street, squeaking worse than ever, and positively hurrying.

CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH MR. HANLON MAKES A GREAT IMPRESSION

Freddie found no one in the Tobacco Shop, so he knocked on the door of the back room, and it was instantly opened by Mr. Littleback himself; but a Mr. Littleback so resplendent that Freddie hardly knew him.

The suit of clothes which Mr. Littleback wore was beyond any doubt a brand new suit. The ground color of it was a rich mauve, if you know what that is; not exactly purple, nor violet, but somewhere in between; and up and down and across were stripes of brown, making good-sized squares all over him; it was extremely beautiful. His collar was a high white collar, very stiff, and it held up his chin in front like a whitewashed fence. His necktie was of a pale-blue satin, with little pink roses painted on it, yes sir, painted! mind you, by hand! It was not one of those troublesome things that come in a single long piece and take you hours before the glass to twist and turn over and under before you can get them to look like a necktie; no indeed; it was far better than that; it was tied already, by somebody who could do it better than you ever could, and when you bought it, all you had to do was to put it on; fasten those two rubber bands behind with a hook, and there you were; perfect. As to hair, the hand of the barber was yet upon him; his hair, parted on one side, was of a slickness which his own soap never could have accomplished; on the wide side, it lay flat down over his forehead, and there gave a sudden curl backward, like the curve of a hairpin, but much more graceful; it is only the most studious barbers who ever learn to do it just right. There were creases down the arms of Mr. Toby's coat and down the front of his trouser-legs. A yellow silk handkerchief showed itself, not boldly, but quietly, from his breast pocket.

As he let Freddie in, and in doing so turned his back to Aunt Amanda, she screamed and cried out:

"Toby! Look behind you! Merciful heavens!"

Freddie, in the midst of his admiration of the magnificent creature, saw him whirl about and look behind himself in alarm. His aunt pointed at his coat and said sternly, "Come here."

Freddie saw on the back of Mr. Toby's coat, near the bottom, as he whirled about, a little square white tag.

Mr. Toby backed up to his aunt, and stood before her, trying to look at his back over his shoulder, while she took her scissors and clipped the threads by which the white tag was sewed to the back of his coat. She held up the tag; it had numbers printed and written on it.

"Now ain't that just like you, Toby Littleback," she said, "going out with your tag on your back, with your size on it and your height and age, too, for all I know, for anybody to see that you've got on a splittin' brand new suit right out o' the shop. If you'd 'a' gone out with that on your back, I'd 'a' died with shame right here in this chair. Ain't you even able to dress yourself?"

"By crickets, that would 'a' been bad," said Toby, considerably upset. "However, you caught it in time, so there ain't no use cryin' over it. Good-bye, Aunt; come along, Freddie, or we'll be late."

"Ain't you goin' to wear a hat?" said Aunt Amanda. "I declare the man's so excited he don't know what he's doing."

"Blamed if I didn't come near going without a hat," said Toby. "Here she is."

He produced his hat from a cupboard in the room, and put it on. It would have been a pity indeed for him to have gone without it. It was a white derby; yes, a white derby. It was the kind of a hat which was known in that city as a "pinochle"; pronounced "pea-knuckle" by all well-informed boys. With the mauve suit and the hand-painted necktie and the whitewashed fence, the white derby set him off to perfection, especially as he wore it a little towards the back of his head, so as to show the loveliest part of the plastered curl of his hair on the forehead. Aunt Amanda could not restrain her admiration.

"You'll do now," she said. "I don't know that I ever seen you look so genteel before."

Toby, in the embarrassment of being considered genteel, put his hands in his trousers pockets.

"Take them hands out of your pockets," said Aunt Amanda sharply, and he took them out in a hurry.

"Now, Freddie," she said, "come here a minute, and I'll set you to rights."

Freddie stood before her knee, not very willingly, and she buttoned his jacket from top to bottom, and put his cap squarely on his head.

"Now you'd better be off," she said.

"Good-bye, Aunt, and I wish you were going too," said Toby, his hand on the door-knob.

"Good-bye, Freddie," said she.

"Good-bye," said Freddie.

"Good-bye what?" said she.

"Aunt Amanda," said he.

When they were out in the street, and she heard Toby lock the shop door behind him, she took out her handkerchief and blew her nose; her cold was evidently worse, because she blew her nose several times; and then, tucking her handkerchief away in her dress, she put her head down on her arm on the table, and cried.

The first thing Freddie did, as they went up the street, was to put his cap back again on the back of his head, and the next thing he did was to unbutton every button of his jacket, from top to bottom.

The little hunchback was in a great hurry, and he dragged the Little Boy along by the hand so fast that he could hardly keep up. As they hurried along, several naughty boys, observing Mr. Toby's white derby hat, called after him, very rudely, "Pea-knuckle! pea-knuckle!" But Mr. Toby paid no attention, and dragged Freddie along faster than ever.

"We don't want to miss any of it," said Mr. Toby. "Hurry up, boy."

They did not have far to go; only four or five "squares." They stopped before a great grimy brick building with a great wide entrance-way.

"Here we are," said Toby.

"What does that say up there?" said Freddie.

"Gaunt Street Theatre," said Toby. "Hurry up."

Freddie hung back before a signboard on which was a picture of a slender man dressed up in white clothing, very tight, with red and black squares on it; he was leaning against a table; his head and face were a dead white, except for red eyebrows, and a red spot in each cheek, and he had no hair, but a smooth dead-white skin from his forehead to the back of his neck. The peculiar thing was, that his head was on the table beside him, and not on his neck. Freddie pointed to the writing underneath the picture, and said:

"What does that say?"

"Hanlon's Superba," said Toby, pulling him along. "Hurry up! We'll be late."

Mr. Littleback went to a little window in the wall, inside the entrance-way, and spoke to a man in there, and evidently asked permission to go in, and evidently got it; and they did go in, up a flight of stairs, and found themselves suddenly among thousands and thousands of people, as it seemed, all sitting in chairs facing the same way, in a vast house lit up by gas light so that it was almost as bright as day; and Toby and Freddie sat down in the very front row of these people, and looked down over a railing in front of them on the heads of thousands and thousands, as it seemed, of other people, all sitting in chairs facing the same way. Everybody was facing towards a straight wall at the other side of the house, which had pictures painted on it. At the foot of this wall, in a kind of trench, there was a man at a piano, and there were other men with fiddles big and little, and still others with brass things, and they were all playing a tremendous tune together, but just after Toby and Freddie had sat down, they stopped playing and Toby nudged Freddie with his elbow, and said:

"Now, then, young feller, what do you think of this, eh? Just you wait! Keep your eye on that curtain!"

He had no sooner said this than somewhere in the house somebody gave a piercing whistle between his fingers, and in a minute there was such a racket that it was impossible to talk. There must have been people above them, and they must certainly have all been boys; for from up there Freddie heard a clapping of hands and a stamping of feet, all in a regular time, which spread to the whole house, and in the midst of it the boys up there began to shout and call and whistle, and in a few minutes there was such a hubbub as only boys could make, with whistling between the fingers leading the riot. Toby nudged Freddie again with his elbow, and to Freddie's surprise began to clap his hands and stamp his feet with the rest; and as Freddie thought he ought to be polite, he clapped his hands, too, though he did not know very well what it was all about.

Suddenly the men in the trench at the foot of the painted wall struck up again, and that quieted the other noise for a moment; but only for a moment; someone whistled through his fingers, and in an instant those fiddlers might as well have been sawing away at their fiddles out at the Park, for all you could hear them; and right in the midst of it all, while Freddie was trying to shout the word "Peanuts" into Toby's ear, suddenly the lights went out and you could have heard a pin drop.

"Now then! now then!" whispered Mr. Toby, in great excitement. "Now you'll see! Watch the curtain! It's going up!"

From down there in that dark trench came the sound of a soft twittery kind of music, and at the same time the painted wall that Freddie had been looking at was rising! going up! And it went on up and up out of sight into the ceiling, and there behind it, in a dim light, there behind it, mysterious and fearsome and delicious, – Well, there behind it was Fairyland. Just Fairyland.

I can't describe it to you. Freddie never forgot it. If you haven't seen Hanlon's Superba, in some old Gaunt Street Theatre or other, on a Saturday afternoon, with the galleries wild with boys, you have not lived. When Freddie tried to tell his mother and his father about it that night, it was such a whirling mass of wonders and glories that they could not make head nor tail of it. It is useless to speak of the Fairy Queen in her glittering white, coming to the rescue in the nick of time with her diamond sceptre, or of the horrible demons, or the trouble and excitement they made for everybody, or of the beautiful young lady who – and such leapings and twistings and climbings and tumblings as no mere human beings with bones in them could ever have performed – it is no use; it is best not to try to describe it. But there was one part which, although it may seem to you the most unlikely thing in the world, really had a good deal to do with Freddie afterwards. There was the same man whose picture he had seen outside on the signboard; and he could climb straight walls and leap through high windows and tumble across floors in a way which passed belief; but there was one thing he could not do; he could not talk; he never spoke a word from beginning to end. Once, after having escaped from a parcel of wicked red imps, he sat down, tired out and starved to death, before a table loaded with food, and he commenced to make a hearty meal; but just as he was about to sample each plate it disappeared, vanished, completely out of sight, right under his nose. His distress was pitiable, and Freddie thought it cruel of everybody to laugh, as everybody did. On his plate were sausages, and he nearly got them; but just as he thought he had them, they actually jumped off the table and ran along the floor and up the wall; and the poor man had to climb the wall after them, which he did like a cat, and even then he never came up with them; he was terribly disappointed; and to finish off his miseries, at last a wicked creature with a sword came up behind him, as he was leaning his head down on the table in despair, and cut off his head before your very eyes; really and truly cut it off; there was no doubt about it; the head was on the table and the poor man was in the chair; Freddie was terrified, and clutched Mr. Toby's arm. But when the wicked murderer had gone away, back popped the head onto the dead man's neck, his eyes opened, he grinned from ear to ear, and there he was on his feet, skipping and tumbling, as lively as ever; and at that Freddie and all the others in the house roared and shouted and clapped their hands.