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294 now directly, won't you? You won't believe how clean I've kept the study. All your things are just as you left them; and I feed the old magpie just when you used, though I have to come in from bigside for him, the old rip. He won't look pleased all I can do, and sticks his head first on one side and then on the other, and blinks at me before hell begin to eat, till I'm half inclined to box his ears. And whenever East comes in, you should see him hop off to the window, dot and go one, though Harry wouldn't touch a feather of him now."

Arthur laughed. "Old Gravey has a good memory, he can't forget the sieges of poor Martin's den in old times." He paused a moment, and then went on: "You can't think how often I've been thinking of old Martin since I've been ill; I suppose one's mind gets restless, and likes to wander off to strange unknown places. I wonder what queer new pets the old boy has got; how he must be revelling in the thousand new birds, beasts, and fishes!"

Tom felt a pang of jealousy, but kicked it out in a moment. "Fancy him on a South-Sea Island, with the Cherokees or Patagonians, or some such wild niggers!" (Tom's ethnology and geography were faulty, but sufficient for his needs); they'll make the old Madman cock medicine-man and tattoo him all over. Perhaps he's cutting about now all blue, and has a squaw and a wigwam. He'll improve their boomarangs, and be able to throw them too, without having old Thomas sent after him by the Doctor to take them away."

Arthur laughed at the remembrance of the boomarang story, but then looked grave again, and said, "He'll convert all the Island, I know."

"Yes, if he don't blow it up first."