Part 9 (2/2)
”First he makes me promise to see him home, and then he says I'd better do it, and goes to sleep! Might as well try to see a _haystack_ home!
And I'm so tired, and mother's--” here he broke down again.
”Now don't take on,” said St. George. ”I'll stand by you, and we'll _both_ see him home. Wake up, dragon!” he said sharply, shaking the beast by the elbow.
The dragon looked up sleepily. ”What a night, George!” he murmured; ”what a--”
”Now look here, dragon,” said the Saint, firmly. ”Here's this little fellow waiting to see you home, and you _know_ he ought to have been in bed these two hours, and what his mother'll say _I_ don't know, and anybody but a selfish pig would have _made_ him go to bed long ago--”
”And he _shall_ go to bed!” cried the dragon, starting up. ”Poor little chap, only fancy his being up at this hour! It's a shame, that's what it is, and I don't think, St. George, you've been very considerate--but come along at once, and don't let us have any more arguing or s.h.i.+lly-shallying. You give me hold of your hand, Boy--thank you, George, an arm up the hill is just what I wanted!”
So they set off up the hill arm-in-arm, the Saint, the Dragon, and the Boy. The lights in the little village began to go out; but there were stars, and a late moon, as they climbed to the Downs together. And, as they turned the last corner and disappeared from view, s.n.a.t.c.hes of an old song were borne back on the night-breeze. I can't be certain which of them was singing, but I _think_ it was the Dragon!
”Here we are at your gate,” said the man, abruptly, laying his hand on it. ”Good-night. Cut along in sharp, or you'll catch it!”
Could it really be our own gate? Yes, there it was, sure enough, with the familiar marks on its bottom bar made by our feet when we swung on it.
”Oh, but wait a minute!” cried Charlotte. ”I want to know a heap of things. Did the dragon really settle down? And did--”
”There isn't any more of that story,” said the man, kindly but firmly.
”At least, not tonight. Now be off! Good-bye!”
”Wonder if it's all true?” said Charlotte, as we hurried up the path.
”Sounded dreadfully like nonsense, in parts!”
”P'raps it's true for all that,” I replied encouragingly.
Charlotte bolted in like a rabbit, out of the cold and the dark; but I lingered a moment in the still, frosty air, for a backward glance at the silent white world without, ere I changed it for the land of firelight and cus.h.i.+ons and laughter. It was the day for choir-practice, and caroltime was at hand, and a belated member was pa.s.sing homewards down the road, singing as he went:--
”Then St. George: ee made rev'rence: in the stable so dim, Oo vanquished the dragon: so fearful and grim.
So-o grim: and so-o fierce: that now may we say All peaceful is our wakin': on Chri-istmas Day!”
The singer receded, the carol died away. But I wondered, with my hand on the door-latch, whether that was the song, or something like it, that the dragon sang as he toddled contentedly up the hill.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
A DEPARTURE
IT is a very fine thing to be a real Prince. There are points about a Pirate Chief, and to succeed to the Captaincy of a Robber Band is a truly magnificent thing. But to be an Heir has also about it something extremely captivating. Not only a long-lost heir--an heir of the melodrama, strutting into your hitherto unsuspected kingdom at just the right moment, loaded up with the consciousness of unguessed merit and of rights so long feloniously withheld--but even to be a common humdrum domestic heir is a profession to which few would refuse to be apprenticed. To step from leading-strings and restrictions and one gla.s.s of port after dinner, into property and liberty and due appreciation, saved up, polished and varnished, dusted and laid in lavender, all expressly for you--why, even the Princedom and the Robber Captaincy, when their anxieties and responsibilities are considered, have hardly more to offer. And so it will continue to be a problem, to the youth in whom ambition struggles with a certain sensuous appreciation of life's side-dishes, whether the career he is called upon to select out of the glittering knick-knacks that strew the counter had better be that of an heir or an engine-driver.
In the case of eldest sons, this problem has a way of solving itself. In childhood, however, the actual heirs.h.i.+p is apt to work on the principle of the ”Borough-English” of our happier ancestors, and in most cases of inheritance it is the youngest that succeeds. Where the ”res” is ”angusta,” and the weekly books are simply a series of stiff hurdles at each of which in succession the paternal legs falter with growing suspicion of their powers to clear the flight, it is in the affair of clothes that the right of succession tells, and ”the hard heir strides about the land” in trousers long ago framed for fraternal limbs--_frondes novas et non sua poma_. A bitter thing indeed! Of those pretty silken threads that knit humanity together, high and low, past and present, none is tougher, more pervading, or more iridescent, than the honest, simple pleasure of new clothes. It tugs at the man as it tugs at the woman; the smirk of the well-fitted prince is no different from the smirk of the Sunday-clad peasant; and the veins of the elders tingle with the same thrill that sets their fresh-frocked grandchildren skipping. Never trust people who pretend that they have no joy in their new clothes.
Let not our souls be wrung, however, at contemplation of the luckless urchin cut off by parental penury from the rapture of new clothes. Just as the heroes of his dreams are his immediate seniors, so his heroes'
clothes share the glamour, and the reversion of them carries a high privilege--a special thing not sold by Swears and Wells. The sword of Galahad--and of many another hero--arrived on the scene already h.o.a.ry with history, and the boy rather prefers his trousers to be legendary, famous, haloed by his hero's renown--even though the nap may have altogether vanished in the process.
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