Kitabı oku: «David Blaize and the Blue Door», sayfa 2
The other trouser-pocket was also quite full of something, and he drew out of it hundreds of other calling-cards. On one was printed ‘The Elegant Elephant, R.S.V.P.,’ on another ‘Master Ham, P.P.C.,’ on another ‘The Duke of Wellington, W.P.,’ on another ‘The Engine Driver, R.A.M.C.,’ on another ‘Miss Battledore, W.A.A.C.’ Everybody had been calling on him.
‘Whatever am I to do?’ thought David. ‘Shall I have to return all these calls? It will take me all my time, and I shall see nothing. Besides’ – and he looked round and saw that the passage was completely empty, and had shrunk to its usual size again – ‘Besides, I don’t know where they’ve all gone.’
He looked at the cupboard doors again, and found that they had changed while he had been looking at the cards. They were now exactly like the big front door at home, which opened in the middle, and had a hinge at each side. In front of it was a doormat, in the bristles of which was written
GO AWAY
Now David was the sort of boy who often wanted to do something, chiefly because he was told not to, in order to see what happened, and this doormat made him quite determined to go in. It was no use trying the left-hand side of the door, partly because neither bottles nor followers nor anything was admitted, and partly because you had to ring also, and there wasn’t any bell. But there seemed just a chance of getting in by the right-hand part of the door, and he went up to it and knocked. To his great surprise he heard a bell ring inside as soon as he had knocked, which seemed to explain ‘ring also.’ The bell did not sound like an electric bell, but was like the servants’ dinner bell. As soon as it had stopped, he heard a voice inside the door say very angrily:
‘Give me my tuffet at once.’
There was a pause, and David heard the noise of some furniture being moved, and the door flew open.
‘What’s your name?’ said the butler. ‘And have you got a calling-card?’
David gave him one of his cards, and he looked at it and turned it upside down.
‘It’s one of them dratted upside-downers,’ he said, ‘and it sends the blood to the head something awful.’
He gave a heavy sigh, and bent down and stood on his head.
‘Now I can read it,’ he said. ‘Are you David or Blaize? If David, where’s Blaize, and if Blaize, where’s David?’
‘I’m both,’ said David.
‘You can’t be both of them,’ said the butler. ‘And I expect you’re neither of them. And why didn’t you go away?’
‘You’ve given me too much curds,’ said a voice behind the door. ‘I’ve told you before to find some way to weigh the whey. It’s a curd before. Take it away!’
‘That must be Miss Muffet,’ thought David. ‘There’s a girl creeping into it after all. I wonder if she makes puns all the time. I wish I hadn’t knocked.’
‘No, I’m rationed about puns,’ said Miss Muffet, as if he had spoken aloud, ‘and I’ve had my week’s allowance now. But a margin’s allowed for margarine. Butter – margarine,’ she said in explanation.
‘I saw that, said David.
‘No, you didn’t: you heard it. Now, come in and shut the door, because the tuffet’s blowing about. And the moment you’ve shut the door, shut your eyes too, because I’m not quite ready. I’ll sing to you my last ballad while you’re waiting. I shall make it up as I go along.’
Accordingly David shut the door, and then his eyes, and Miss Muffet began to sing in a thin cracked voice:
‘As it fell out upon a day
When margarine was cheap,
It filled up all the grocers’ shops
In buckets wide and deep.
Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!
Matilda bought a heap.
And it fell out upon a day
When margarine was dear,
Matilda bought a little more
And made it into beer.
Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!
It tasted rather queer.
As it fell out upon a day
There wasn’t any more;
Matilda took her bottled beer
And poured it on the floor.
Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!
And that was all I saw.’
‘Poor thing!’ said Miss Muffet. ‘Such a brief and mysterious career. Now you may open your eyes.’
David did so, and found himself in a large room, with all the furniture covered up as if the family was away. The butler was still standing on his head, squinting horribly at David’s card, and muttering to himself, ‘He can’t be both, and he may be neither. He may be either, but he can’t be both.’ In the middle of the room was a big round seat, covered with ribands which were still blowing about in the wind, and on it was seated a little old lady with horn spectacles, eating curds and whey out of a bowl that she held on her knees.
‘Come and sit on the tuffet at once,’ she said, ‘and then we’ll pretend that there isn’t room for the spider. Won’t that be a good joke? I like a bit of chaff with my spider. I expect the tuffet will bear, won’t it? But I can’t promise you any curds.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said David politely, ‘but I don’t like curds.’
‘No more do I,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘I knew we should agree.’
‘Then why do you eat them?’ asked David.
‘For fear the spider should get them. Don’t you adore my tuffet? It’s the only indoor tuffet in the world. All others are out-door tuffets. But they gave me this one because most spiders are out-of-door spiders. By the way, we haven’t been introduced yet. Where’s that silly butler?’
‘Here,’ said the butler. He was lying down on the floor now, and staring at the ceiling.
‘Introduce us,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘Say Miss Muffet, David Blaize – David Blaize, Miss Muffet. Then whichever way about it happens, you’re as comfortable as it is possible to be under the circumstances, or even above them, where it would naturally be colder.’
‘I don’t quite see,’ said David.
‘Poor Mr. Blaize. Put a little curds and whey in your eyes. That’s the way. Dear me, there’s another pun.’
‘You made it before,’ said David.
‘I know. It counts double this time. But as I was saying, a little curds and whey – oh! it’s tipped up again. What restless things curds are!’
She had not been looking at her bowl, and for several minutes now a perfect stream of curds and whey had been pouring from it over her knees and along the floor, to where the butler lay. He was still repeating, ‘Miss Muffet, David Blaize – David Blaize, Miss Muffet.’ Sometimes, by way of variety, he said, ‘Miss Blaize – David Muffet,’ but as nobody attended, it made no difference what he said.
‘It always happens when I get talking,’ she said. ‘And now we know each other, I may be permitted to express a hope that you didn’t expect to find me a little girl?’
‘No, I like you best as you are,’ said David quickly.
‘It isn’t for want of being asked that I’ve remained Miss Muffet,’ said she. ‘And it isn’t from want of being answered. But give me a little pleasant conversation now and then, and one good frightening away every night, and I’m sure I’ll have no quarrel with anybody; and I hope nobody hasn’t got none with me. How interesting it must be for you to meet me, when you’ve read about me so often. It’s not nearly so interesting for me, of course, because you’re not a public character.’
‘Does the spider come every night, or every day, whatever it is down here?’ asked David.
‘Yes, sooner or later,’ said Miss Muffet cheerfully, ‘but the sooner he comes, the sooner I get back again, and the later he comes the longer I have before he comes. So there we are.’
She stopped suddenly, and looked at the ceiling.
‘Do my eyes deceive me?’ she whispered, ‘or is that the s – ? No; my eyes deceive me, and I thought they would scorn the action, the naughty things. Perhaps you would like to peep at my furniture underneath the sheets. It will pass the time for you, but be ready to run back to the tuffet, when you hear the spider coming. Really, it’s very tiresome of him to be so late.’
David thought he had never seen such an odd lot of furniture. Covered up in one sheet was a stuffed horse, in another a beehive, in another a mowing-machine. They were all priced in plain figures, and the prices seemed to him equally extraordinary, for while the horse was labelled ‘Two shillings a dozen,’ and the mowing-machine ‘Half a crown a pair,’ the beehive cost ninety-four pounds empty, and eleven and sixpence full. David supposed the reason for this was that if the beehive was full, there would be bees buzzing about everywhere, which would be a disadvantage.
‘When I give a party,’ said Miss Muffet, ‘as I shall do pretty soon if the spider doesn’t come, and take all the coverings off my furniture, the effect is quite stupendous. Dazzling in fact, my dear. You must remember to put on your smoked spectacles.’
David was peering into the sheet that covered the biggest piece of furniture of all. He could only make out that it was like an enormous box on wheels, and cost ninepence. Then the door in it swung open, and he saw that it was a bathing-machine. On the floor of it was sitting an enormous spider.
‘Does she expect me?’ said the spider hoarsely. ‘I’m not feeling very well.’
David remembered that he had to run back to the tuffet, but it seemed impolite not to ask the spider what was the matter with it. It had a smooth kind face, and was rather bald.
‘My web caught cold,’ said the spider. ‘But I’ll come if she expects me.’
David ran back to the tuffet.
‘He’s not very well,’ he said, ‘but he’ll come if you expect him.’
‘The kind good thing!’ said Miss Muffet. ‘Now I must begin to get frightened. Will you help me? Say “Bo!” and make faces with me in the looking-glass, and tell me a ghost story. Bring me the looking-glass, silly,’ she shouted to the butler.
He took one down from over the chimney-piece, and held it in front of them, while David and Miss Muffet made the most awful faces into it.
‘That’s a beauty,’ said Miss Muffet, as David squinted, screwed up his nose, and put his tongue out. ‘Thank you for that one, my dear. It gave me quite a start. You are really remarkably ugly. Will you feel my pulse, and see how I am getting on. Make another face: I’m used to that one. Oh, I got a beauty then: it terrified me. And begin your ghost story quickly.’
David had no idea where anybody’s pulse was, so he began his ghost story.
‘Once upon a time,’ he said, ‘there was a ghost that lived in the hot-water tap.’
‘Gracious, how dreadful!’ said Miss Muffet. ‘What was it the ghost of?’
‘It wasn’t the ghost of anything,’ said David. ‘It was just a ghost.’
‘But it must have been “of” something,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘The King is the King of England, and I’m Miss Muffet of nothing at all. But you must have an “of.” ’
‘This one hadn’t,’ said David firmly. ‘It was just a ghost. It groaned when you turned the hot water on, and it squealed when you turned it off.’
‘This will never do,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘I’m getting quite calm again, like a kettle going off the boil. Make another face. Oh, now it’s too late!’
There came a tremendous cantering sound behind them, and Miss Muffet opened her mouth and screamed so loud that her horn spectacles broke into fragments.
‘Here he comes!’ she said. ‘O-oh, how frightened I am!’
She gave one more wild shriek as the spider leaped on to the tuffet, and began running about the room with the most amazing speed, the spider cantering after her. They upset the bathing-machine, and knocked the stuffed horse down, they dodged behind the butler, and sent the beehive spinning, and splashed through the curds and whey, which formed a puddle on the floor. Then the door through which David had entered flew open, and out darted Miss Muffet with the spider in hot pursuit. Her screaming, which never stopped for a moment, grew fainter and fainter.
The butler gave an enormous yawn.
‘Cleaning up time,’ he said, and took a mop from behind the door, and dipped it into the pool of curds and whey. When it was quite soaked, he twisted it rapidly round and round, and a shower of curds and whey deluged David. As it fell on him, it seemed to turn to snow. It was snowing heavily from the roof too, and snow was blowing in through the door. Then he saw that it wasn’t a door at all, but the opening of a street, and that the walls were the walls of houses. It was difficult to see distinctly through the snowstorm, but he felt as if he knew where he was.
CHAPTER III
The snow cleared as swiftly as it had begun, and David saw that he was standing in the High Street of the village near which he lived. It was all quite ordinary, and he was afraid that he had somehow been popped back through the blue door during the snowstorm, and was again in the stupid dull world. Just opposite him was the post and telegraph office, and next to that the bank, and beyond that the girls’ school. There were the same old shops too, Mr. Winfall the tailor’s, and the confectioner’s and the bootmaker’s, and at the bottom of the street was the bridge over the river.
‘Well, if I am back in the world again,’ said David, ‘it would be a pity to let all this good snow go to waste without its being tobogganed on. I’ll go home, I think, and get my toboggan. I wonder how they did it.’
He started to go down the street to the bridge across which was the lane which presently passed by the bottom of the field beyond the lake, on the other side of which was the garden, where was the summer-house in which he had left his toboggan yesterday. But he happened to look a little more closely at the bootmaker’s shop, and instead of the card in the window which said, ‘Boots and shoes neatly repaired,’ there was another one on which was written ‘Uncles and Aunts recovered and repaired.’
‘I suppose they recover them when they’re lost, and repair them when they’re found,’ thought David. ‘But it’s not a bit usual.’
He found it no more usual when he looked at the girls’ school, for instead of the brass plate on which was written ‘Miss Milligan’s school for Young Ladies,’ he saw written there ‘Happy Families’ Institute,’ and in the window of the bank a notice ‘Sovereigns are cheap to-day.’
‘I’ll go in there at once,’ thought David, ‘and buy some. I wonder how much money I’ve got.’
He found four pennies in his pocket, and went in with them to the bank. The manager was there talking in a low voice to a very stout gentleman with a meat-chopper in his hand, whom David knew to be the Mint-man from London, just as certainly as if he had had it written all over him. What made it absolutely sure was the fact that sovereigns kept oozing out of his clothes and dropping on the floor. There was quite a pile of them round his feet, which the porter who opened the door to David kept sweeping up, and putting down his neck again.
‘So it’s only the same sovereigns all over again,’ thought David, ‘but there must be a lot of them. No wonder they’re cheap.’
He walked up to where they were standing.
‘Please, can you let me have four penny-worth of sovereigns,’ he said.
The Mint-man blew his nose before he answered, and some thirty or forty sovereigns rattled out of his handkerchief. ‘Do you want them new-laid or only for cooking?’ he asked.
David had no intention of cooking them, so he said:
‘New-laid, please.’
The Mint-man picked off one that was coming out of his right elbow, another from his tie, another from his bottom waistcoat button, and the fourth from his knee, and gave them to David.
‘It’ll never do if other people get to know about it,’ he said. ‘We shall be having all the happy families in, though I don’t suppose they’ve got much money. Have another notice put up at once.’
The manager took an enormous quill pen from behind the counter. It reached right up to the ceiling of the room, and he had to hold it in both hands. Up the side of it was printed, ‘Rod, pole or perch.’
‘What shall I say?’ he asked.
‘You may say whatever you like,’ said the Mint-man, ‘but you must write whatever I like. Now begin’ —
‘Sovereigns are five pounds two ounces each to-day, but they’ll be dearer to-morrow.’
‘Then will you please give me five pounds for each of my sovereigns?’ asked the greedy David. ‘Never mind about the ounces.’
The Mint-man and manager whispered together for a little while, and David could hear fragments of their talk like ‘financial stringency,’ ‘tight tendency,’ ‘collapse of credit,’ which meant nothing to him. All the time the porter was shovelling sovereigns down the back of the Mint-man’s neck.
‘The only thing to be done,’ he said, ‘is to write another notice. Write “The Bank has suspended payment altogether. The deposits are therefore forfeited by square root, rule of three, and compound interest.” What do you make of that?’ he asked David triumphantly.
David knew that compound interest and square root came a long way on in the arithmetic book, and that he couldn’t be properly expected to make anything of it. Evidently they were not going to pay him five sovereigns for each of his, but he had done pretty well already, with his four sovereigns instead of four pence.
‘I don’t make anything of it yet,’ he said, ‘because I haven’t got as far.’
‘When I was your age,’ said the manager severely, ‘I’d got so far past it that it was quite out of sight.’
The Mint-man nudged him, and said behind his hand:
‘Never irritate the young. Keep them pleased and simmering.’
He turned to David with a smile, and patted him on the head. Two cold sovereigns went down the front of David’s jersey.
‘We have read your references,’ he said, ‘and find them quite satisfactory. You are therefore appointed honorary errand-boy, and your duties begin immediately. So go straight across to the shop where they repair uncles and aunts, and see if there’s a golden uncle being repaired. If there is, tell him that his nephew – that’s you – wants him to come out to tea – that’s here – and that the motor will be round immediately – and that’s where.’
David felt that he didn’t want to be errand-boy to the bank at all, but somehow he seemed to remember having sent in references. What was even more convincing was that he found his sailor clothes had disappeared, and that he was dressed in a jacket that came close up to his neck, and was covered with brass buttons. He had black trousers, rather tight, and a peaked cap, round the rim of which was written: ‘David Blaize, Esquire. To be returned to the bank immediately. This side up.’
But after he had received his appointment as honorary errand-boy, nobody attended to David any more, for they were all most busily engaged. The manager wheeled in a tea-table, and began arranging tea-things and muffin-dishes on it, then when he had done that, brought in easy chairs, and a piano and all the things that you usually find in drawing-rooms, while the Mint-man made up a huge fire in the fire-place, and put a large saucepan as big as a bath upon it, into which he dropped the sovereigns that oozed out of him. Meantime, the porter had gone out carrying a ladder and a pot of paint, and when David went out too on his errand, he had already painted over the signboard outside the house, which said it was the bank, and had written on it:
‘This is the house of David Blaize, the nephew of Uncle Popacatapetl.’
‘So that’s the uncle who’s coming to tea with me,’ thought David. ‘I wonder if he knows who he is yet.’
The snow had already melted, so that he did not again consider whether he should go tobogganing. It had gone very quickly, but everything seemed to happen quickly here. It could hardly have been five minutes since he had gone into the bank with fourpence in his pocket, and here he was with four sovereigns instead, a complete suit of new clothes, an uncle, and a position as honorary errand-boy. He crossed the street, and entered the shop where boots and shoes used to be repaired, but where now they repaired uncles and aunts.
On the counter there lay a very odd-looking old gentleman, dressed in rags and tatters in about equal proportions. His hands and face were quite yellow, and wherever there was a tatter, or there wasn’t a rag, and he showed through, he was yellow there too. His boots were in very bad repair, and a great golden toe stuck out of one, and a golden heel out of the other: in fact, there could be no doubt at all that he was made of pure gold, and as he was being repaired, he was also either an aunt or an uncle. But though one of David’s aunts had a slight moustache, he had never yet seen an aunt with a long beard and whiskers, and so without doubt there was Uncle Popacatapetl.
The bootmaker and his wife were repairing him, which they did by driving nails into him, so as to tack down the rags over the tatters. If there was a very big tatter, which they could not cover with the rag, they nailed on anything else that was handy. In some places they had filled up the gaps with pieces of newspaper, match-boxes, and bits of leather and sealing-wax, and balls of wool, and apples and photographs. While this was going on, Uncle Popacatapetl kept up a stream of conversation, interspersed with laughing.
‘Anyhow it can’t hurt him much,’ said David to himself.
‘Delicious, delicious!’ said Uncle Popacatapetl. ‘Nail the toe of my boot a little more firmly on to the toe of me. Put a paper-knife there if you can’t cover up the hole. Now my gloves.’
He put on a pair of thick white woollen gloves that came up to his elbow.
‘Would you like them nailed on too, sir?’ asked the shoemaker.
‘By all means. Put a nail in each finger, and three on the wrist, and ninety-eight round my elbows. Did you gum the gloves inside, before I put them on?’
‘I glued them well,’ said the shoemaker’s wife.
‘That’ll glue then,’ said Uncle Popacatapetl. ‘I think when I’ve put my mask on the disguise will be complete. What fun it all is! To think of the Mint-man having traced me all the way here, only to find I’m not in the least like me any more. Or is it ever more?’
‘Never more, ever more, any more,’ said the shoemaker, with his mouth full of nails.
‘It’s every-more, I think,’ said Uncle Popacatapetl, ‘though it doesn’t matter. When I’m finished, and when you’re finished, they won’t think I am anything, still less an uncle. I don’t suppose they ever saw anything the least like me, so why,’ he added argumentatively, ’should they pitch upon uncle?’
They had none of them appeared to notice David at all as yet, and, as he was an errand-boy, he thought he had better proceed with his errand.
‘If you please,’ he said, ‘I think you’re my uncle, and I should like to have you come to tea with me. It’s quite a short way, in fact it’s only across the road, but the motor will be here in a minute, so that you can get in at one door and out at the other.’
Uncle Popacatapetl sat up so suddenly that David knew he must have a hinge in his back. He looked at David, but he couldn’t speak, because the last nail the shoemaker had driven into him had fixed his beard to his chest, which naturally prevented him moving his mouth. But he wrenched off the pair of scissors which had been nailed into his knee, and cut a piece of his beard off, so that he could talk again. He had turned quite pale in the face, which was the only part of him visible, just as if he had been made of silver.
‘Say it again,’ he said.
David said it again, upon which Uncle Popacatapetl jumped up and looked out of the window.
‘It’s a plot,’ he said. ‘That used to be the bank. Now it’s David Blaize. Has it been disguising itself too? Because if so, we’re as we were, and I’ve had all the trouble and hammering for nothing.’
He began to cry in a helpless golden sort of manner. The shoemaker had followed him to the window to repair an enormous tatter with very little rag on his shoulder, and was nailing bananas on to it to cover it up. But he was so much affected by Uncle Popacatapetl’s misery that he hit his fingers instead of the nail and began to cry too, sucking his injured finger and dropping nails out of his mouth. As for his wife, she gave one loud sob, and tore out of the room, leaving the door open. They heard her falling downstairs, bumpity, bumpity, bumpity, till she came BUMP against the cellar door.
‘Bumpity, crumpity, rumpity, numpity, squmpity, zumpity,’ said the shoemaker, with a sob between each word. ‘There she goes. I don’t rightly know if it’s her crying that makes her fall down, or her falling down that makes her cry, but it don’t make home happy, and it’s a great expense in sticking-plaster. The sticking-plaster that’s come into this house would be enough to paper it.’
David was determined not to cry whatever happened, for it never did any good to cry, and besides something must be done at once, only he had not the least idea what that something was. It was perfectly clear that the Mint-man wanted to get Uncle Popacatapetl into the bank, and no wonder, since he was worth his weight in gold, with all the bananas and match-boxes thrown in. And he thought with a shudder of the meat-axe and the saucepan heating over the fire. Without the least doubt Uncle Popacatapetl was going to be chopped up and melted down into sovereigns.
‘It’s all too sad,’ sobbed Uncle Popacatapetl, ‘and too true and too tiresome. I knew they had tracked me down here – wow – wow – but when I saw that there was this nice respectable shop, where uncles and aunts – wow – wow – wow – could be recovered and repaired, I thought I could have myself recovered and repaired out of all knowledge – wow – wow – wow – wow – and diddle the whole lot of them. Instead of which, they send in my beastly nephew to ask me to tea, and then they’ll chop me up, and make sovereigns of me. I’ve seen their signs and notices. They tried to put me off the scent by saying that sovereigns were cheap, and make me think they didn’t want me. And then that was changed, and they said sovereigns were dearer. And then that was changed, and they suspended payment to make me think that they weren’t collecting gold any more, never more at all. Oh, I know their cussedness. And just when everything was going so well, and I was going to walk across the street as cool as carrots or cucumbers, and I should have left by the next telegram that was sent from the office. Look at them all flying in! And there’s one going out with its mackintosh on, and I could have caught it as easy as a subtraction sum if it hadn’t been for this upset. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.’
David felt dreadfully sorry for him, but what he said about telegrams was quite as dreadfully interesting, and he looked out.
It was quite true: there was a whole string of telegrams rushing down the wires towards the post-office, each in a neat mackintosh. It had begun to snow again, and was getting dark.
‘But why have they got mackintoshes on?’ he asked.
‘Well, of all the silly nephews that ever I had,’ said Uncle Popacatapetl, who had stopped crying as suddenly as if a tap had been turned off, ‘this one takes the cake. Why do you wear a mackintosh?’
‘To keep me dry,’ said David.
‘Well, and mayn’t telegrams do the same?’ asked his uncle. ‘They come from America and Australia and Jerusalem, and did you ever see a wet telegram, though it had gone for hundreds and billions and millions and thousands of miles under the sea?’
‘No, they all seem dry,’ said David.
‘And there you are, sitting there,’ said the golden uncle, ‘and wanting to deprive them of their mackintoshes. Crool, I call it. They puts them on when they starts, and they takes them off when they arrives and cools themselves.’
Uncle Popacatapetl had begun to talk so like David’s father’s gardener, that again he was afraid he had got back into the stupid world.
‘I sees them coming, and I sees them going,’ said his uncle, ‘and who so free I arsk, as a little ninepenny telegram? They’re cheap at the price, they are, going where they please like that – ’
He gave a wild shriek, like Miss Muffet when the spider came, and snatched the mask that the shoemaker was holding.
‘There’s the motor come for me,’ he sobbed, ‘and what is a poor old man to do? Nail my mask on quickly. Don’t mind my eyes or my ears or anythink.’
He lay down in the window-seat, and David and the shoemaker drove nails in all over his face. Sometimes the mask, which was that of a young lady with pink cheeks, tore, and then they tacked on buttons from David’s jacket, or bits of the window-curtain.
‘Don’t mine me,’ Uncle Popacatapetl kept whimpering. ‘There goes one eye, and there goes the other, but make it safe whatever you do. Cut off my head, if that would make me look more like a young lady – but I won’t, I won’t, I won’t look like anybody’s uncle. They may take me for an aunt if they like, or a nephew, or a niece, but I won’t be a golden uncle.’
The mask was nailed on at last, and Uncle Popacatapetl sat up.
‘Now go outside, David,’ he said, ‘and find out exactly what sort of motor-car it is.’
David very obediently went out into the street. It looked quite different now, for there were flags flying from every house with the inscription, ‘David Blaize, the fireman’s son,’ which was very gratifying, and showed a pleasant interest in him on the part of the happy families. He felt that he had seen a card of himself as the fireman’s son, but he could not remember his mother as Mrs. Blaize, the fireman’s wife, or his father as Mr. Blaize, the fireman.
But that was not the immediate business in hand. As the whole street was decked out in honour of himself, he naturally bowed right and left, but since nobody was there, it did not matter much whether he bowed or not. Still it was better to be polite. Then he looked in front of him. There stood an immense motor-car, that buzzed in a most sumptuous manner. It was pointing down the street towards the bridge over the river, but it did not much matter which way it pointed, because the bank was immediately opposite. There were two cords attached to the roof of it, and attached to the cords were a couple of aeroplanes, which were pointing in the opposite direction. On the pavement were standing the chauffeur and two pilots of the flying-corps. They all saluted smartly as David came out.
‘Three cheers for David Blaize,’ said one of them. ‘Hip, hip, hip – I’m blowed if I know how it goes on.’
‘You must all say “Hurrah,” ’ said David.
They all said ‘Hurrah,’ in a very depressed sort of voice, and one of the airmen said, ‘Lor’, these civilians.’
‘Lor’, yourself,’ said David, rather rudely. ‘I want to hear about the motor-car.’
