Part 14 (1/2)

”Oh, yes, sir. Of course, sir,” said the cook.

”Do you know any one else who'd buy pheasants?” he said.

”Well, there's Mr. Carrington's cook,” said the cook slowly. ”She has the management of the housekeeping money like I do. I think she might buy pheasants from you. Mr. Carrington's very partial to game.”

”Right,” said the Terror. ”And thank you for telling me.”

He rode straight to the house of Mr. Carrington, and broached the matter to his cook, to whom he had already sold rabbits. He made a direct offer to her of two pheasants a week at two and threepence each.

After a vain attempt to beat him down to two s.h.i.+llings, she accepted it.

He rode home in a pleasant glow of triumph: the snares which caught rabbits would catch pheasants. At first he was for catching those pheasants by himself. Snaring rabbits was a harmless enterprise; snaring pheasants was poaching; and poaching was not a girl's work.

Then he came to the conclusion that he would need the help of Erebus and must tell her.

When he revealed to her this vision of a new Eldorado, she said: ”But where are you going to get pheasants from?”

”Woods,” said the Terror, embracing the horizon in a sweeping gesture.

Erebus looked round the horizon with greedy eyes; they sparkled fiercely.

”The only thing is, we don't know nearly enough about snaring pheasants. And I don't like to ask Tom Cobb: he might talk about it; and that wouldn't do at all,” said the Terror.

”But there's n.o.body else to ask.”

”I don't know about that. There's Wiggins' father. He knows a lot of useful things besides higher mathematics. The only thing is, we must do it in such a way that he doesn't see we're trying to get anything out of him.”

”Well, I should think we could do that. He's really quite simple,”

said Erebus.

”As long as _you_ understand what I'm driving at,” said the Terror.

That evening they prepared eight more kittens for sale at Rowington market, and carried them into Rowington directly after breakfast next morning. Ellen told them, with some indignation, that two rival poultry-sellers had both brought three kittens to sell. The Twins at once went to inspect them, and came back with the cheering a.s.surance that those kittens were not a patch on those she was selling. They were right, for Ellen sold all the eight before a rival sold one; and the joyful Twins carried home eight more s.h.i.+llings toward the stole.

On the next three afternoons they rode forth with the intention of coming upon Mr. Carrington by seeming accident; but it was not till the third afternoon that they came upon him and Wiggins, walking briskly, about three miles from Little Deeping.

The Twins, as a rule, were wont to shun Mr. Carrington. They had a great respect for his attainments, but a much greater for his humor.

In Erebus, this respect often took the form of wriggling in his presence. She did not know what he might say about her next. He was, therefore, somewhat surprised when they slipped off their bicycles and joined him. He wondered what they wanted.

Apparently, they were merely in a gregarious mood, yearning for the society of their fellow creatures; but in about three minutes the talk was running on pheasants. Mr. Carrington did not like pheasants, except from the point of view of eating; and he dwelt at length on the devastation the sacred bird was working in the English countryside: villages were being emptied and let fall to ruin that it might live undisturbed; the song-birds were being killed off to give it the woods to itself.

It seemed but a natural step from the pheasant to the poacher; he was not aware that he took it at the prompting of the Terror; and he bewailed the degeneracy of the British rustic, his slow reversion to the type of neolithic man, owing to the fact that the towns drained the villages of all the intelligent. The skilful poacher who harried the sacred bird was fast becoming extinct.

Then, at last, he came to the important matter of the wiles of the poacher; and the thirsty ears of the Terror drank in his golden words.

He discussed the methods of the gang of poachers and the single poacher with intelligent relish and more sympathy than was perhaps wise to display in the presence of the young. The Terror came from that talk with a firm belief in the efficacy of raisins.

The next afternoon the Twins rode into Rowington and bought a pound of raisins at the leading grocer's. They might well have bought them at Little Deeping, encouraging local enterprise; but they thought Rowington safer. They always took every possible precaution at the beginning of an enterprise. They did not ride straight home. Three miles out of Rowington was a small clump of trees on a hill. At the foot of the hill, a hundred yards below the clump, lay Great Deeping wood, acre upon acre. It had lately pa.s.sed, along with the rest of the Great Deeping estate, into the hands of Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer, a pudding-faced, but stanch young Briton of the old Pomeranian strain.

He was not loved in the county, even by landed proprietors of less modern stocks, for, though he cherished the laudable ambition of having the finest pheasant shoot in England, and was on the way to realize it, he did not invite his neighbors to help shoot them. His friends came wholly from The Polite World which so adorns the ill.u.s.trated weeklies.

It was in the deep December dusk that the Twins' came to the clump on the hill. The Terror lifted their bicycles over the gate and set them behind the hedge. He removed the pound of raisins from his bicycle basket to his pocket, and leaving Erebus to keep watch, he stole down the hedge to the clump, crawled through a gap into it, and walked through it. One pheasant scuttled out of it, down the hedgerow to the wood below. The occurrence pleased him. He crawled out of the clump on the farther side, and proceeded to lay a train of raisins down the ditch of the hedge to the wood. He did not lay it right down to the wood lest some inquisitive gamekeeper might espy it. Then he returned with fine, red Indian caution to Erebus. They rode home well content.

Next evening, with another bag of raisins, they sought the clump again.