Uncle Joe's Stories

by Baron Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen Brabourne

Still no word came from Philip, and his father, who was accustomed to be treated with respect and obedience, grew angry at his continued silence.

"Why don't you speak, boy?" he asked again. "Your mother and I are in trouble enough to-day without your adding to it by any childish folly of this kind. I should have thought you would have felt the same as we do."

Still the poor boy spoke not a word, which made his father still more angry.

"Have you got no tongue in your head, sir?" he cried, and laid his hand upon Philip's shoulder somewhat roughly.

But the mother here interposed.

"Don't scold him, James," she said. "Don't be cross with the boy—remember he is the only child we have left now," and she burst into tears.

In soothing her the husband forgot the boy, or perhaps found it more convenient to say nothing further at the moment. They went into dinner, and were astonished to see Philip shake his head when the servants offered him soup, fish, and roast veal (of which he was particularly fond) and content himself with eating his bread and drinking a glass of water. They began to think that their son must be ill; but it was in vain that they questioned him. He only put his finger over his mouth and resolutely declined to speak. Then his father expressed his fear that something or other must have frightened or hurt him in such a manner as to have affected his brain, and, at length, he determined to send for the doctor, who lived about three miles off, in the nearest town. Still Philip remained silent, and the strangeness of the occurrence was so far useful to his parents as that it, in some measure, turned the current of their thoughts from the great sorrow in which they had previously been absorbed.

As soon as the doctor came he performed the usual mysteries of his profession. He looked at Philip's tongue and said it was not unhealthy. He felt his pulse and declared there was no fever, and he finally pronounced that his indisposition—for such he termed it—though Philip was never better in his life, proceeded from some temporary disarrangement of the nervous system, which he had no doubt of being able to treat with success. He prescribed two pills to be taken at night, and a draught (the colour of which was the only pleasant thing about it) in the morning, and left the patient with a promise to return next day. During the whole of his visit, however, not one syllable did he get out of Philip, which, as he prided himself upon his conversational powers, and the successful manner in which he always got on, especially with young people, rather annoyed him.

When Doctor Pillgiver had gone, the parents, somewhat relieved by his report, strove again to persuade their son to resume his natural habits of conversation, for Philip was a boy neither sullen nor shy, but one that generally talked freely, and had plenty to say for himself. As, however, he entirely declined to say anything, his father at last got angry, and, telling him that he feared he was giving way to an obstinacy which, unless conquered, would prove his ruin, sent him upstairs to bed.

Poor Philip was really rejoiced at this, for he was not likely to have any mortal to speak to before morning. But his tender mother, unhappy at the thought that her boy might be ill, and thinking that he might repent of his silence after he had left her and his father, came to his bedside to see him the last thing before she herself retired. This was hard to bear, for to refuse the last kiss and "good-night" to one's mother is difficult indeed. Philip felt this, but he also felt that everything probably depended upon his obeying the conditions of the fairy queen, so the rogue pretended to be asleep, and said nothing, even when the dear mother softly kissed his forehead and invoked a blessing upon her beloved son.