Part 32

"We've forgotten it," said Biddlecomb: "tell it us again."

As a matter of fact this joke, in all its lights, was tolerably familiar to most of them by this time, but, either on its individual merits, or perhaps because it compared favourably with the sterner alternative of translating, it was periodically in request, and always met with evergreen appreciation.

Herr Stohwasser beamed with the pride of authorship. Like the celebrated Scotchman, he "jocked wi' deeficulty," and the outcome of so much labour was dear to him.

"I zent him into ze Charman Kladderadatch (it is a paper like your Ponch). It--mein choke--was upon ze Schleswig-Holstein gomplication; ze beginning was in this way----"

And he proceeded to set out in great length all the circumstances which had given materials for his "choke," with the successive processes by which he had shaped and perfected it, passing on to a recital of the masterpiece itself, and ending up by a philosophical analysis of the same, which must have placed his pupils in full possession of the point, for they laughed consumedly.

"I dell you zis," he said, "not to aggustom your minds vid frivolity and lightness, but as a lesson in ze gonstruction of ze langwitch. If you can choke in Charman, you will be able also to gonverse in Charman."

"Did the German what's-its-name print your joke?" inquired Coggs.

"It has not appeared yet," Herr Stohwasser confessed; "it takes a long time to get an imbortant choke like that out in brint. But I vait--I write to ze editor every week--and I vait."

"Why don't you put it in your Grammar?" suggested Tipping.

"I haf--ze greater part of it--(it vas a long choke, but I gompressed him). If I haf time, some day I will make anozer liddle choke to aggompany, begause I vant my Crammar to be a goot Crammar, you understandt. And now to our Tell. Really you beople do noding but chadder!"

All this, of course, had no interest for Mr. Bultitude, but it left him free to pursue his own thoughts in peace, and indeed this lesson would never have been recorded here, but for two circumstances which will presently appear, both of which had no small effect on his fortunes.

He sat nearest the window, and looked out on the pinched and drooping laurels in the enclosure, which were damp with frost melting in the sunshine. Over the wall he could see the tops of passing vehicles, the country carrier's cart, the railway parcels van, the fly from the station. He envied even the drivers; their lot was happier than his!

His thoughts were busy with Dick. Oddly enough, it had scarcely occurred to him before to speculate on what he might be doing in his absence; he had thought chiefly about himself. But now he gave his attention to the subject, what new horrors it opened up! What might not become of his well-conducted household under the rash rule of a foolish schoolboy! The office, too--who could say what mischief Dick might not be doing there, under the cover of his own respectable form?

Then it might seem good to him any day to smash the Garudâ Stone, and after that there would be no hope of matters being ever set right again!

And yet, miserable coward and fool that he was, with everything depending upon his losing no time to escape, he could not screw up his courage, and say the words that were to set him free.

All at once--and this is one of the circumstances that make the German lesson an important stage in this story--an idea suggested itself to him quite dazzling by its daring and brilliancy.

Some may wonder, when they hear what it was, why he never thought of it before, and it is somewhat surprising, but by no means without precedent. Artemus Ward has told us somewhere of a ferocious bandit who was confined for sixteen years in solitary captivity, before the notion of escape ever occurred to him. When it did, he opened the window and got out.

Perhaps a similar passiveness on Mr. Bultitude's part was due to a very natural and proper desire to do everything without scandal, and in a legitimate manner; to march out, as it were, with the honours of war. Perhaps it was simple dullness. The fact remains that it was not till then that he saw a way of recovering his lost position, without the disagreeable necessity of disclosing his position to anyone at Crichton House.

He had still--thank Heaven--the five shillings he had given Dick. He had not thrown them away with the other articles in his mad passion. Five shillings was not much, but it was more than enough to pay for a third-class fare to town. He had only to watch his opportunity, slip away to the station, and be at home again, defying the usurper, before anyone at Crichton House had discovered his absence.

He might go that very day, and the delight of this thought--the complete reaction from blank despair to hope--was so intense that he could not help rubbing his hands stealthily under the table, and chuckling with glee at his own readiness of resource.

When we are most elated, however, there is always a counteracting agent at hand to bring us down again to our proper level, or below it. The Roman general in the triumph never really needed the slave in the chariot to dash his spirits--he had his friends there already; the guests at an Egyptian dinner must have brought their own skeletons.

There was a small flaxen-haired little boy sitting next to Mr. Bultitude, seemingly a quite inoffensive being, who at this stage served to sober him by furnishing another complication.

"Oh, I say, Bultitude," he piped shrilly in Paul's ear, "I forgot all about it. Where's my rabbit?"

The unreasonable absurdity of such a question annoyed him excessively. "Is this a time," he said reprovingly, "to talk of rabbits? Mind your book, sir."

"Oh, I daresay," grumbled little Porter, the boy in question: "it's all very well, but I want my rabbit."

"Hang it, sir," said Paul angrily, "do you suppose I'm sitting on it?"

"You promised to bring me back a rabbit," persisted Porter doggedly; "you know you did, and it's a beastly shame. I mean to have that rabbit, or know the reason why."

At the other end of the table Biddlecomb had again dexterously allured Herr Stohwasser into the meshes of conversation; this time upon the question (à propos de bottes) of street performances. "I vill tell you a gurious thing," he was saying, "vat happened to me de oder day ven I vas valking down de Strandt. I saw a leedle gommon dirty boy with a tall round hat on him, and he stand in a side street right out in de road, and he take off his tall round hat, and he put it on de ground, and he stand still and look zo at it. So I shtop too, to see vat he vould do next. And bresently he take out a large sheet of baper and tear it in four pieces very garefully, and stick zem round de tall round hat, and put it on his head again, and zen he set it down on de grount and look at it vonce more, and all de time he never speak von vort. And I look and look and vonder vat he would do next. And a great growd of beoples com, and zey look and vonder too. And zen all at once de leedle dirty boy he take out all de paper and put on de hat, and he valk avay, laughing altogetter foolishly at zomzing I did not understand at all. I haf been thinking efer since vat in the vorldt he do all zat nonsence for. And zere is von ozer gurious thing I see in your London streets zat very same day. Zere vas a poor house cat dat had been by a cab overrun as I passed by, and von man vith a kind varm heart valk up and stamp it on de head for to end its pain. And anozer man vith anozer kind heart, he gom up directly and had not seen de cat overrun, but he see de first man stamping and he knock him down for ill-treating animals; it was quite gurious to see; till de policeman arrest dem both for fighting. Goggs, degline 'Katze,' and gif me ze berfect and bast barticiple of 'kampfen,' to fight." This last relapse into duty was caused by the sudden entrance of the Doctor, who stood at the door looking on for some time with a general air of being intimately acquainted with Schiller as an author, before suggesting graciously that it was time to dismiss the class.