He was, however, non-volcanic, and placidly accepted Jimmy, the promoted garden-boy. This was not reciprocal, for Jimmy, who displayed a degree of conscientiousness, peculiar indeed in the light of after-events, could not reconcile himself to the change.
He would canter heavily, smothered to the chin in six-foot’s pantry apron, into the drawing-room to announce with a burst of tears to the young housekeeper:
“Please, miss, ’e won’t suit! ’E won’t do nuthin’ I tell him! Oh, please, miss, he’s putting the cups—the mistress’s own cup—in the wrong cupboard, and”—with a howl—“he ain’t washed it, miss! And when I tell him, ’e says it doesn’t matter!”
We didn’t think he would suit, ourselves. We had all said so often that Juvenal was perfectly dreadful, and couldn’t be endured another minute, and every member of the famiglia had so frequently declared with tears that if Mr. Juvenal remained she could not possibly stay; she had borne it as long as she could, not to make unpleasantness, but——
We were unanimous now in regrets.
“God be with poor Juvenal!” said Mrs. MacComfort, the dear, soft-spoken Irish cook; and added darkly: She wouldn’t like to be saying what she thought of the new butler.
However, à quelque chose malheur est bon, for had the following incident taken place under Juvenal’s dog-loving eye, as Juvenal himself subsequently remarked, there would certainly have been murder done. We ourselves had been inclined to consider Jimmy an agreeable member of the domestic circle. Nobody minded telling him to take out the dogs, no matter how bad the weather was, and Jimmy always responded with that smile of cheerful alacrity that so endeared him.
The tale which is here narrated may seem irrelevant to the share which the Villino has had to take in the universal and terrible cataclysm, but nevertheless the incidents therein set forth directly issued from it; and, in spite of a dash of comedy, they were tragic enough for those chiefly concerned, namely, the youngest “fur-child” and Jimmy himself. If we had not taken Jimmy into the house, Jimmy would not have been told to walk the dogs; and if Jimmy had not walked the dogs, the singular drama of the phantom dog-stealers and the baby Pekinese would never have occurred.
There were then three fur-children: Arabella, the Lavroch setter—lovely, dull, early Victorian, worthy creature; Loki, the beloved, chief of all the little dumb family, first in our affections—a quaint, saturnine, very Chinese little gentleman, with crusty and disconcerting ways, and almost a human heart; and Mimi, the heroine of this adventure—Mimosa on solemn occasions—really a beauty, with all the engaging Pekinese oddities and that individuality of character which each one seems to possess; spoilt, imperious, vivid!
It was a very wet day, and Jimmy had been ordered to don his master’s mackintosh cape and take the fur-children up the moor. The first peculiar incident was that Mimi ran three times headlong from his guardianship. As fast as she was coaxed down one stairs she was up the other, with her tail between her legs. It might have made us pause, but it didn’t. We said: “Poor Mimi doesn’t like getting her feet wet.” Anyone who had heard the boy cooing to his charges in tones of the most dulcet affection would have been as dense as we were.