Mew VII.
The Cricket of the Hearth. Pretty Dick.
Blinks had not travelled many legs (leagues?) till he was met by a very funny little ill-shaped gentleman. He was like a very wee mahogany table, but not much bigger than Blinks’s mamma’s red nose (if it had been a mahogany table); and he had two big nippers hanging down in front of him; and Blinks observed that he also had too small black eyes like the points of as many needles, and very shiny they were, and altogether very knowing and wicked-looking. Blinks stopped, and the little mahogany gentleman laid a dead fly on the ground, and did the same.
“Ho! ho! Mr. Fluff,” said the latter, looking up at Blinks with one eye and shutting the other, as if he had no immediate use for it, and thought that one was enough for the occasion. “Ho! ho, Mr. Fluff; so you’re learning to crawl, are you? Eh? Does your mother know you’re out? Eh?”
Blinks was highly indignant at this style of address, and also at being called Fluff, so he replied with considerable dignity,—
“I am not Fluff, sir; I am Blinks, Blinks, sir; and I may inform you, sir, that my maternal relative is entirely cognisant of my being abroad, sir.”
“Blinks, are you?” said the little fellow, not at all abashed. “Blinks! He! he! he! a pretty Blinks you are. Let me see you.” And the small brown gentleman commenced running round him so quickly, that Blinks, in trying to wheel on a pivot, fairly rolled over on his back; and the man of mahogany was forced to hold his sides with laughing.
“He! he! he—e!” he laughed, and “Ha! ha! haa—a!” and “Ho! ho! hoo—o!” and then “He! he! hee—e!” again; and then “Oh dear!” he cried “I shall split;” and the tears ran out of his needle points and down over his nose and nippers.
To say that Blinks was angry, would but poorly describe the torrent of wrath that raged within his youthful breast. After carefully gathering himself up again, he confronted the wee brown gent, and——
“Sir,” cried Blinks, “imp or devil, tell me who you are and where you dwell; and should it even be in yonder evil-place, beneath yon horrid cauldron, a friend of mine shall wait upon you in the morning.”
“I,” said the mahogany one, drawing himself up to his full height, which was not much after all—“I, sir—I am, sir, the cricket of the hearth, sir! the cricket—of—the—hearth, sir; and I have a good mind to pull your nose, sir;” here he shook one pair of his immense nippers; “and the nose, sir—” here he shook his other pair of nippers—“of the ignorant old lady, your mother, who allows her fluffy fools of children, to trespass upon, and insult grown gentlemen on their own policies.” The little gent would have added much more; but just then he was interrupted by a loud voice, apparently in the air, making the remark—
“Bravo! br-r-ravo! bravo!” And looking up, Blinks espied a very large bird perched on a high wooden erection; the cricket of the hearth was observed to turn very pale at the same time. I say, he turned pale; and he also turned tail, and muttering, “Fire and fury!” made off as fast as six legs could carry him.
“I’ll fluff you,” cried Blinks; and was about to give chase, when the bird alighted on the ground in front of him, and almost at the same time the cricket disappeared, as suddenly as if he had vanished from the face of the earth; and indeed that is precisely what he had done.
“Why,” said Blinks, “what has become of our little mahogany friend?”
This question he put to the bird, who was now standing in a very ludicrous attitude, with his head and neck all awry, and a big swelling or lump in his throat, as if he had been improperly hanged.
“Did you hear me?” said Blinks, as the bird made no immediate answer and appeared slightly convulsed.
“Ca-can’t—you—see,” said Pretty Dick; for it was no other, and he spoke with great difficulty—“can’t you see—I’m—chic-chu-choking?” at last getting out the word and straightening his neck at the same time. “I ate him—bravo! Pretty Dick, whew, whew, whew;” and he burst into the “Sprig of Shillelah” and finished off with two bars of “Duncan Gray.”
“Good heavens!” cried Blinks, standing aghast, “did you real—you don’t mean to say that you positively swallowed him, you know?”
“Positively, damme,” said the bird. “Tse, tse, tse, whew, whew, whew; hurra, hurra, hurra! Bravo, Dick! He is now engaged turning over the stones in my gizzard and counting them; I fear I am two or three short. After that job is finished, I shall bring him up again, break him in pieces, and eat him properly. Whew, whew, whew! Bravo, Dick! Sugar, snails, and brandy! Tse, tse, tse!”
“Monstrous!” said Blinks.
“Is the darling starling pretty, snails?”
“Sir?” said Blinks.
“Yes!” said Dick.
“I thought you spoke,” said Blinks.
“Oh no,” said the bird, “I often talk to myself. What is that between your toes?” So saying, the bird hopped up to Blinks, and separating his toes with his beak in a very rude manner, he gazed between them.
“Don’t do that again, if you please,” said Blinks.
“Certainly not, if you desire it. Cock-a-doodle-doo, sugar and brandy, pretty darling; but what is that in your nostril? Sugar, snails.” And before our hero was aware, the starling’s bill was inserted, opened like the toes of a compass, and the nose of poor Blinks nearly torn open. This was too much of a good thing; and Blinks aimed a cuff and fired a lucifer-match at the bird, causing that gentleman to spring quickly backwards and ejaculate.
“Hurrah! hurrah! you rascal! Love is the soul of a nate Irish snail, you rogue.” After which he brought up the poor cricket again; and he, glad to see day-light again, said, “Thank you, sir,” and was moving off.
“No, you don’t now!” said the bird, seizing him by the hindermost leg. “How many stones in my gizzard, you unhappy little wretch?”
“Mercy, mercy!” cried the cricket, “I entirely forget.”
“Then down you go again,” said the starling; and down the cricket went.
Blinks stood gazing, horror-stricken, when the bird, piping a few bars of a tune, wheeled suddenly round, and made a determined effort to compass out Blinks’s eye.
“Is that an eye?” said he, as if he didn’t know.
“Rather,” said Blinks, a little proudly.
“Then give us a bit,” cried Dick. “Chickey, chick, chick; whew-w-w, whew, whew. Snails and brandy! Pretty starling! bravo!”
“Do you know,” said Blinks, “it strikes me you’re a fool.”
“No I ain’t,” said the bird, “only a foolosopher—always gay, you know. Love is the soul of a darling pretty starling; but I say, you know, you and I will be excellent friends, and you shall play in my cage, and I will give you sugar, snails, and brandy. Quack, quack, quack. Don’t be frightened, it’s only my fun; and now I must be off, master will want me to sing to him after dinner. He has just finished his sucking pig; he plays the fiddle and I sing. Just fly up with me on the table; but, oh! I forgot, you awkward creature,”—digging Blinks in the ribs,—“you haven’t the vestige of a wing; well, my master——”
“The ogre?” said Blinks.
“Bravo!” cried the bird, “just you call him an ogre, and he will soon have a new string to his fiddle.”
“What do you mean?” inquired Blinks.
“Why,” said the starling, “he has a pretty little box called a violin, filled with the souls of defunct cats, your brothers and sisters are all there,—and their insides are made into strings, and stretched all over; and when he tickles the strings with a hair, they all cauterwaul. Master sings, and pretty Dickie sings—Chick, chick, chick; chirl, chirl, chirl. But, snails and brandy! I’m off.” And away flew the beautiful bird, who was all shiny with black and blue and silver; and Blinks sat for quite a long time gazing up after him with his lack-lustre eyes; and then, getting to his feet, he commenced walking homewards, musing on all the strange things he had seen and heard.