Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/642

 The little chap with the puppy was breathing hard, and to Brown-Smith's eye, looked likely to be dangerous. The poet had half a mind to steal silently along the lane until he found the gate, then to enter, and effect at least a momentary modification in the sentiment of the boy with the freckles. But he was a shy man, and contented himself with watching. The mean boy, quite secure by this time, stood over the object of his scorn, and goaded him still further.

"They've got the pup in the catalogue."

At this the smaller boy started to his feet, hugging his burden.

"No, they haven't," he said, defiantly, but yet with a tremor of doubt in his tone.

"Yes they have, though," said the freckled boy. "They're going to sell him. Not as he'll fetch much. Yah! You have got to be hard up before you'd sell a pup like that."

Then the pup and the bard and the boy with the freckles were all simultaneously startled. The pup was whirled wildly in air, the freckled boy was smitten with extreme violence on the very tip of his jeering nose, and the poet exulted, as a poet has a right to exult whenever he sees the trampled soul arise, and the tyrant tremble. The freckled boy was not valiant in fight, but he was robust of lung. He yelled manfully, and his screams brought out an excited nurse-girl, in a whirl of flounces.

"Look what your Bob's done," said the chastised tormentor. His nose was bleeding, and from the spectacle he presented there was no knowing what injury he had received.

"Oh, you bad, wicked, naughty, abominable child!" cried the nurse-girl, and in one second the champion of the right was on her knee, and every adjective took emphasis from a sounding slap. The little fellow struggled away from her and stood on the defensive.

"He said they'd sell my puppy."

"So they will," said the nurse-girl, spitefully angry. "I'll see to that. Oh, master Gordon, don't be making that noise, you'll have everybody thinking you're killed. Come indoors and let me wash your face."

With that she marched the discomfited intruder away. The puppy, at whose age emotions, however violent, are short lived, had forgotten his astonishment, and returned frisking to his playmate.

"They shan't sell you!" said the boy. "I won't let them sell you. You haven't done anything to be sold, have you, Tiny? Look here, I'll go away and be a cabin boy. I'll take you with me, and then they can't sell you."

He kissed the puppy on the nose, and set out at once, hot with determination. Brown-Smith arose with intent to meet the child at the gate and soothe injured honour with the plaster of a new half-crown, bright from the mint, which he happened to carry in his purse. But before he had gained the gate the boy was in the lane, running as fast as his small legs would carry him.

"He won't go far," said the poet to himself, and refrained from quickening his own pace, lest he should frighten him.

After a burst of thirty or forty yards the adventurer fell into a jog trot, and from that into a walk. But the walk was dogged and full of purpose. The poet would not have been a poet if he had not remembered his own childhood. He, too, had risen, though many years ago, against abuse and tyranny with a soul which flamed with all the passionate valour which inspired Garibaldi or Kosciusko. If all good men, so Brown-Smith mused, wistfully watching the little figure before him, kept the childish courage and the childish hate of tyranny the world would have had smooth going for the weakest long and long ago.