Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 65).djvu/392

376 and nodding as to an old friend before passing it by and coming to the first page. His mother and father. What a long time ago those photographs were taken! How serene, how prim his mother looked, with her smooth, parted hair, the rolled plaits over her ears, and her little tight-corseted body with the crinoline that billowed from her waist in a score of pipe-edged flounces. He wondered what book it was that lay in her lap, cradled in the mittened hands. All his life he had wondered about that book. He would die wondering. How stern and implacable was his father—a very man, with his side whiskers, his stock, the short cut-away coat, the splendid vest, and the clinging trousers strapped beneath the boots.


 * “.... the front of Jove himself;

An eye like Mars, to threaten and command.”

It was a pity he should have worn that trivial and almost brimless bowler hat. It was a comic hat. Mr. Freemantle could remember having laughed at it when he was still a child. The laugh had angered his father and a penalty associated with the back of a hair-brush had been exacted. There was discipline in those days. As memory of the little incident revived Mr.

How serene, how prim his mother looked!

Freemantle chuckled, and at the chuckle his wife woke up with a start, and said :-—

“What is it?”

“I was looking through the old book,” he answered. “It brings things back—old things.”

She put on her glasses and came and sat beside him. He turned another page, and she pointed with a thin, almost transparent finger.

“You,” she said.

UCH a scrubby youth he was, all hands and feet, and untidy hair. About his neck was a crimson woollen comforter with the ends passed under his arms and knotted behind his back. It would have been impossible to say whether he wore knickerbockers or trousers, for they were too long for the one and too short for the other. With a large flint he was engaged in hacking out bricks from the wall of a pigsty. His hands were red and chapped, for it was winter and there were little pillows of snow here and there in the farmyard and thin white mattresses on the roofs of the buildings.

“Four we want,” said Edward. “Four. I’ll knock ’em out and you chip off the mortar.”

His companion, a boy of fifteen, nodded rather vaguely. To revive his interest, Edward, who was a year older, dropped a brick on his toe.

“Teach you,” he remarked, “to listen when I'm talking.”

Ernie, for so he was named, endured this disciplinary measure with fortitude and even apologized for lack of attention.

“Don’t know what's come to me,” he added.

“Nor do I,” said Edward, sternly; "but you look a fool. You’ve been on at me for months to show you how to make a brick trap, and now I’m doing it you don’t even look.”

Ernie nodded.

“I feel a fool,” he admitted, “and expect I look one, Ed.”

“You do,” was the candid retort. “Here, get on with that chipping.”

Without enthusiasm, Ernie picked up the brick and a garden trowel and fell to work.

“Snowy weather is best for brick traps.” stated Edward, with authority. "We’re almost certain to get a blackie or a thrush if we set it right. I didn’t tell you before, but old Dodge's magpie died yesterday, and he gave me that wicker cage.”

Before turning to mark its effect, he allowed a full moment for the tremendous significance of this announcement to soak