As the train went out slowly, Mrs. Landys-Haggert
leaned out of the window to say good-bye—“On
second thoughts au revoir, Mr. Hannasyde.
I go Home in the Spring, and perhaps I may meet you
in Town.”
Hannasyde shook hands, and said very earnestly and
adoringly—“I hope to Heaven I shall
never see your face again!”
And Mrs. Haggert understood.
And he told a tale.—Chronicles of Gautama
Buddha.
Far from the haunts of Company Officers who insist
upon kit-inspections, far from keen-nosed Sergeants
who sniff the pipe stuffed into the bedding-roll,
two miles from the tumult of the barracks, lies the
Trap. It is an old dry well, shadowed by a twisted
pipal tree and fenced with high grass.
Here, in the years gone by, did Private Ortheris establish
his depot and menagerie for such possessions, dead
and living, as could not safely be introduced to the
barrack-room. Here were gathered Houdin pullets,
and fox-terriers of undoubted pedigree and more than
doubtful ownership, for Ortheris was an inveterate
poacher and preeminent among a regiment of neat-handed
dog-stealers.
Never again will the long lazy evenings return wherein
Ortheris, whistling softly, moved surgeon-wise among
the captives of his craft at the bottom of the well;
when Learoyd sat in the niche, giving sage counsel
on the management of “tykes,” and Mulvaney,
from the crook of the overhanging pipal, waved
his enormous boots in benediction above our heads,
delighting us with tales of Love and War, and strange
experiences of cities and men.
Ortheris—landed at last in the “little
stuff bird-shop” for which your soul longed;
Learoyd—back again in the smoky, stone-ribbed
North, amid the clang of the Bradford looms; Mulvaney—grizzled,
tender, and very wise Ulysses, sweltering on the earthwork
of a Central India line—judge if I have
forgotten old days in the Trap!
Orth’ris, as allus thinks he knaws more than
other foaks, said she wasn’t a real laady, but
nobbut a Hewrasian. I don’t gainsay as her
culler was a bit doosky like. But she was
a laady. Why, she rode iv a carriage, an’
good ‘osses, too, an’ her ’air was
that oiled as you could see your faice in it, an’
she wore di’mond rings an’ a goold chain,
an’ silk an’ satin dresses as mun ‘a’
cost a deal, for it isn’t a cheap shop as keeps
enough o’ one pattern to fit a figure like hers.
Her name was Mrs. DeSussa, an’ t’ waay
I coom to be acquainted wi’ her was along of
our Colonel’s Laady’s dog Rip.
I’ve seen a vast o’ dogs, but Rip was
t’ prettiest picter of a cliver fox-tarrier
’at iver I set eyes on. He could do owt
you like but speeak, an’ t’ Colonel’s
Laady set more store by him than if he hed been a
Christian. She hed bairns of her awn, but they
was i’ England, and Rip seemed to get all t’
coodlin’ and pettin’ as belonged to a bairn
by good right.
