THE JUMBLE SALE.
Aunt Angela coughed. "By the way, Etta was here this afternoon."
Edward's eye met mine. The result of Etta's last call was that Edward spent a vivid afternoon got up as Father Christmas in a red dressing-gown and cotton-wool whiskers, which caught fire and singed his home-grown articles, small boys at the same time pinching his legs to see if he was real, while I put in some sultry hours under a hearthrug playing the benevolent polar-bear to a crowd of small girls who hunted me with fire-irons.
"What is it this time?" I asked.
"A jumble sale," said Aunt Angela.
"What's that?"
"A scheme by which the bucolic English exchange garbage," Edward explained.
"Oh, well, that has nothing to do with us, thank goodness."
He returned to his book, a romance entitled Gertie, or Should She Have Done It? Edward, I should explain, is a philosopher by trade, but he beguiles his hours of ease with works of fiction borrowed from the cook.
Aunt Angela was of a different opinion. "Oh, yes, it has: both of you are gradually filling the house up with accumulated rubbish. If you don't surrender most of it for Etta's sale there'll be a raid."
My eye met Edward's. We walked out into the hall.
"We'll have to give Angela something or she'll tidy us," he groaned.
"These orderly people are a curse," I protested. "They have no consideration for others. Look at me; I am naturally disorderly, but I don't run round and untidy people's houses for them."
Edward nodded. "I know; I know it's all wrong, of course; we should make a stand. Still, if we can buy Angela off, I think ... you understand?..." And he ambled off to his muck-room.
If anybody in this neighbourhood has anything that is both an eyesore and an encumbrance they bestow it on Edward for his muck-room, where he stores it against an impossible contingency. I trotted upstairs to my bedroom and routed about among my Lares et Penates. I have many articles which, though of no intrinsic value, are bound to me by strong ties of sentiment; little old bits of things—you know how it is. After twenty minutes' heart-and-drawer-searching I decided to sacrifice a policeman's helmet and a sock, the upper of which had outlasted the toe and heel. I bore these downstairs and laid them at Aunt Angela's feet.
"What's this?" said she, stirring the helmet disdainfully with her toe.
"Relic of the Great War. The Crown Prince used to wear it in wet weather to keep the crown dry."
Aunt Angela sniffed and picked up the sock with the fire-tongs. "And this?"
"A sock, of course," I explained. "An emergency sock of my own invention. It has three exits, you will observe, very handy in case of fire."
"Hump!" said Aunt Angela.
Edward returned bearing his offerings, a gent's rimless boater, a doorknob, six inches of lead-piping and half a bottle of cod-liver oil.
"Hump!" said Aunt Angela.
No more was said of it that night. Aunt Angela resumed her sewing, Edward his Gertie, I my slumb—, my meditations. Nor indeed was the jumble sale again mentioned, a fact which in itself should have aroused my suspicions; but I am like that, innocent as a sucking-dove. I had put the matter out of my mind altogether until yesterday evening, when, hearing the sound of laboured breathing and the frantic clanking of a bicycle pump proceeding from the shed, I went thither to investigate, and was nearly capsized by Edward charging out.
"It's gone," he cried—"gone!" and pawed wildly for his stirrup.
"What has?" I inquired.
"'The Limit,'" he wailed. "She's picked ... lock ... muck-room with a hairpin, sent ... Limit ... jumble sale!"
He sprang aboard his cycle and disappeared down the high road to St. Gwithian, pedalling like a squirrel on a treadmill, the tails of his new mackintosh spread like wings on the breeze. So Aunt Angela with serpentine guile had deferred her raid until the last moment and then bagged "The Limit," the pride of the muck-room.
"The Limit," I should tell you, is (or was) a waterproof. It is a faithful record of Edward's artistic activities during the last thirty years, being decorated all down the front with smears of red, white and green paint. Here and there it has been repaired with puncture patches and strips of surgical plaster, but more often it has not. As Edward is incapable of replacing a button and Aunt Angela refuses to touch the "Limit," he knots himself into it with odds and ends of string and has to be liberated by his ally, the cook, with a kitchen knife. Edward calls it his "garden coat," and swears he only wears it on dirty jobs, to save his new mackintosh, but nevertheless he is sincerely attached to the rag, and once attempted to travel to London to a Royal Society beano in it, and was only frustrated in the nick of time.
So the oft-threatened "Limit" had been reached at last. I laughed heartily for a moment, then a sudden cold dread gripped me, and I raced upstairs and tore open my wardrobe. Gregory, the glory of Gopherville, had gone too!
A word as to Gregory. If you look at a map of Montana and follow a line due North through from Fort Custer you will not find Gopherville, because a cyclone removed it some eight years ago. Nine years ago, however, Gregory and I first met in the "Bon Ton Parisian Clothing Store," in the main (and only) street of Gopherville, and I secured him for ten dollars cash. He is a mauve satin waistcoat, embroidered with a chaste design of anchors and forget-me-nots, subtly suggesting perennial fidelity. The combination of Gregory and me proved irresistible at all Gopherville's social events.
Wishing to create a favourable atmosphere, I wore Gregory at my first party in England. I learn that Aunt Angela disclaimed all knowledge of me during that evening.
Subsequently she made several determined attempts to present Gregory to the gardener, the butcher's boy and to an itinerant musician as an overcoat for his simian colleague. Had I foiled her in all of these to be beaten in the end? No, not without a struggle. I scampered downstairs again and, wresting Harriet's bicycle from its owner's hands (Harriet is the housemaid and it was her night out), was soon pedalling furiously after Edward.
The jumble sale was being held in the schools and all St. Gwithian was there, fighting tooth and nail over the bargains. A jumble sale is to rus what remnant sales are to urbs. I battled my way round to each table in turn, but nowhere could I find my poor dear old Gregory. Then I saw Etta, the presiding genius, and butted my way towards her.
"Look here," I gasped—"have you by any chance seen—?" I gave her a full description of the lost one.
Etta nodded. "Sort of illuminated horse-blanket? Oh, yes, I should say I have."
"Tell me," I panted—"tell me, is it sold yet? Who bought it? Where is—?"
"It's not sold yet," said Etta calmly. "There was such rivalry over it that it's going to be raffled. Tickets half-a-crown each. Like one?"
"But it's mine!" I protested.
"On the contrary, it's mine; Angela gave it to me. If you care to buy all the tickets—?"
"How much?" I growled.
"Four pounds."
"But—but that's twice as much as I paid for it originally!"
"I know," said Etta sweetly, "but prices have risen terribly owing to the War."
I found Edward outside leaning on his jaded velocipede. He was wearing the "Limit."
"Hello," said he, "got what you wanted?"
"Yes," said I, "and so, I observe, did you. How much did you have to pay?"
"Nothing," said he triumphantly; "Etta took my new mackintosh in exchange," he chuckled. "I think we rather scored off Angela this time, don't you?"
"Yes," said I—"ye-es."
Patlander.
From an invitation to a subscription-ball:—
"Hoping that you will endeavour to make this, our first dance, a bumping success...."
As the Latin gentleman might have said, Nemo repente fuit Terpsichore.
"Two pigs off their feet had hard work to get to food trough, but K—— Pig Powders soon put them right."—Local Paper.
Set them on their feet again, we conclude.
"Respectable reserved lady (25), of ability, wishes to meet respectable keen Business Gentleman, honourable and reserved."—Advt. in Irish Paper.
Obviously reserved for one another.
"A big re-union of all returned men and their dependents is to be held at the Board of Trade building on New Year's day.... A year ago the affair was a hug success and the ladies hope for an even better record this year."—Manitoba Free Press.
Manitoba is so embracing.
Small Boy (indicating highly-powdered lady). "Mummy, may I write 'dust' on that lady's back?"