The means of exit were simple enough. A porch of iron trellis came up to within easy reach of the window, and was habitually used by all three of us, when modestly anxious to avoid public notice. Harold climbed deftly down the porch like a white rat, and his night gown glimmered a moment on the gravel walk ere he was lost to sight in the darkness of the shrubbery. A brief interval of silence ensued, broken suddenly by a sound of scuffle, and then a shrill, long-drawn squeal, as of metallic surfaces in friction. Our scout had fallen into the hands of the enemy!
Indolence alone had made us devolve the task of investigation on our younger brother. Now that danger had declared itself, there was no hesitation. In a second we were down the side of the porch, and crawling Cherokee-wise through the laurels to the back of the garden-seat. Piteous was the sight that greeted us. Aunt Maria was on the seat, in a white evening frock, looking--for an aunt--really quite nice. On the lawn stood an incensed curate, grasping our small brother by a large ear, which--judging from the row he was making--seemed on the point of parting company with the head it adorned. The gruesome noise he was emitting did not really affect us otherwise than aesthetically. To one who has tried both, the wail of genuine physical anguish is easy distinguishable from the pumped-up ad misericordiam blubber. Harold's could clearly be recognised as belonging to the latter class. "Now, you young--" (whelp, _I_ think it was, but Edward stoutly maintains it was devil), said the curate, sternly; "tell us what you mean by it!"
"Well, leggo of my ear then!" shrilled Harold, "and I'll tell you the solemn truth!"
"Very well," agreed the curate, releasing him; "now go ahead, and don't lie more than you can help."
We abode the promised disclosure without the least misgiving; but even we had hardly given Harold due credit for his fertility of resource and powers of imagination.
"I had just finished saying my prayers," began that young gentleman, slowly, "when I happened to look out of the window, and on the lawn I saw a sight which froze the marrow in my veins!
A burglar was approaching the house with snake-like tread! He had a scowl and a dark lantern, and he was armed to the teeth!"
We listened with interest. The style, though unlike Harold's native notes, seemed strangely familiar.
"Go on," said the curate, grimly.
"Pausing in his stealthy career," continued Harold, "he gave a low whistle. Instantly the signal was responded to, and from the adjacent shadows two more figures glided forth. The miscreants were both armed to the teeth."
"Excellent," said the curate; "proceed."
"The robber chief," pursued Harold, warming to his work, "joined his nefarious comrades, and conversed with them in silent tones.
His expression was truly ferocious, and I ought to have said that he was armed to the t--"
"There, never mind his teeth," interrupted the curate, rudely;
"there's too much jaw about you altogether. Hurry up and have done."
"I was in a frightful funk," continued the narrator, warily guarding his ear with his hand, "but just then the drawing-room window opened, and you and Aunt Maria came out--I mean emerged.
The burglars vanished silently into the laurels, with horrid implications!"
The curate looked slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained, and certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might have really seen something. How was the poor man to know--though the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint--that the whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by the knife-and-boot boy?
"Why did you not alarm the house?" he asked.
"'Cos I was afraid," said Harold, sweetly, "that p'raps they mightn't believe me!"
"But how did you get down here, you naughty little boy?" put in Aunt Maria.
Harold was hard pressed--by his own flesh and blood, too!
At that moment Edward touched me on the shoulder and glided off through the laurels. When some ten yards away he gave a low whistle. I replied by another. The effect was magical. Aunt Maria started up with a shriek. Harold gave one startled glance around, and then fled like a hare, made straight for the back door, burst in upon the servants at supper, and buried himself in the broad bosom of the cook, his special ally. The curate faced the laurels--hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria flung herself on him.
"O Mr. Hodgitts!" I heard her cry, "you are brave! for my sake do not be rash!" He was not rash. When I peeped out a second later, the coast was entirely clear.
By this time there were sounds of a household timidly emerging; and Edward remarked to me that perhaps we had better be off.
Retreat was an easy matter. A stunted laurel gave a leg up on to the garden wall, which led in its turn to the roof of an out- house, up which, at a dubious angle, we could crawl to the window of the box-room. This overland route had been revealed to us one day by the domestic cat, when hard pressed in the course of an otter-hunt, in which the cat--somewhat unwillingly--was filling the title role; and it had proved distinctly useful on occasions like the present. We were snug in bed--minus some cuticle from knees and elbows--and Harold, sleepily chewing something sticky, had been carried up in the arms of the friendly cook, ere the clamour of the burglar-hunters had died away.
The curate's undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, was generally supposed to have terrified the burglars into flight, and much kudos accrued to him thereby. Some days later, however, when he hid dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild curatorial joke about the moral courage required for taking the last piece of bread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark dreamily, and as it were to the universe at large, "Mr.
Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, do not be rash!"
Fortunately for me, the vicar was also a caller on that day; and it was always a comparatively easy matter to dodge my long-coated friend in the open.
