Part 101 (2/2)
Nothing then pleased Bevis so much as moving furniture, the noise and disturbance so distasteful to us was a treat to him. It was ”thunder-boy” and ”cuckoo-boy,” as the thunder rolled or the cuckoo called; he could not conceive anything being caused unseen without human agency.
The Deity was human.
”Ah!” said he thoughtfully, ”He got a high ladder and climbed up over the hedges to make the thunder.”
”Has He got any little Bobbies?”
”No.”
”I suppose He had when He was down here?”
”No.”
”No,” (with pity) ”He didn't have no peoples.” The pleasure of refusal was not to be resisted.
”Now do, Bobby, dear?”
”I san't: say it again.”
”O! _do_ do it.”
”I san't: say it again.”
”Now, _do_.”
”I san't,” shaking his head, as much as to say it's very dreadful of me, but I shan't. They could not explain to him that the glowing sunset was really so far away, he wanted to go to it. ”It's only just over the blackberry hedge.” Some one was teaching him that G.o.d loved little boys; ”But does he love ladies too?”
As for papa he had to tell stories by the hour, day after day, and when he ceased and said he could not remember any more, Bevis frowned. ”Rack your brains! rack your brains!” said he. A nightingale built in the hedge near the house, and all night long her voice echoed in the bed room. Listening one night as he was in bed he remarked, ”The nightingale has two songs: first he sings 'Sir-rup--sir-rup,' and then he sings 'Tweet.'”
For his impudence he had a box on the ear: ”Pooh! It went pop like a foxglove,” he laughed.
At Brighton he was taken over the Pavilion, and it was some trouble to explain to him that this fine house had been built for a gentleman called a king. By-and-by, in the top stories, rather musty from old carpets and hangings: ”Hum!” said he; ”seems stuffy. I can smell that gentleman's dinner,” i.e. George the Fourth's.
Visiting a trim suburban villa, while the ladies talked they sent him out on the close-mown lawn to play. When he came in, ”Well, dear, did you enjoy yourself?”
”Don't think much of _your_ garden,” said Bevis; ”no b.u.t.tercups.”
At prayers: ”Make Bobby a good boy, and see that you do everything I tell you.”
”You longered your promise,” did not fulfil it for a long time.
”Straight yourselves,” when out walking he wished them to go straight on and not turn. ”Round yourselves, round yourselves,” when he wanted them to take a turning. When he grew up to be a big man he expressed his determination to ”knock down the policeman and kill the hanging-man,”
then he could do as he liked. ”Tiff.e.c.k” was the cat's cough.
Driving over Westminster Bridge the first time, and seeing the Houses of Parliament, which reminded him of his toy bricks, he inquired ”If there was anything inside?” Older people have asked that of late years. As he did not get his wishes quickly, it appeared to him there were ”too many perhapses in this place:” he wanted things done ”punctually at now.” A waterfall was the ”tumbling water.”
They told him there was one part of us that did not die. ”Then,” he said directly, ”I suppose that is the thinking part.” What more, O!
Descartes, Plato, philosophers, is there in your tomes? The crucifixion hurt his feelings very much, the cruel nails, the unfeeling spear: he looked at the picture a long time, and then turned over the page, saying, ”If G.o.d had been there He would not have let them do it.”
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