“Don’t be so atrocious,” said Charles. “In my mind’s eye, I can look back eight years or so, and see a battered-knuckled urchin called Steve Goodfellow, wriggling on a bench in a certain Sunday School, and turning idly round and round a beautiful silver ring, that adorned first one and then another of his fingers.”
Steve sat down so suddenly that he burst the paper collar around his neck. However, he took no notice of this, but changed the subject and diverted the boys’ attention by saying: “I say, Will and Marmaduke, George, as well as you, has had disappointments to-day. I shouldn’t relate this little anecdote, if George hadn’t given me permission; because it would be too mean for even me, and that is saying a good deal. O dear! I’m sorry, boys; but I can’t help it!”
“Well, Steve, there is one thing in your favor,” Charles said soothingly. “You always confine what you are pleased to call your meanness to us boys; and we can survive it all—in fact, we expect it from you, old fellow.”
“Thank you, Charley; you can see below the surface, and see just how heavily and guiltily my great heart beats when I attempt to insult over you boys. But now for my anecdote. George and I meet in a ‘bowery glade.’ Though we glare wickedly round in search of prey, I see nothing but Nature’s loveliness. George espies a phenomenon high up in a monster of the forest, ‘an old primeval giant,’ whose branching top fanned the blue sky. In other words, he espies something queer, perched high in a grand old fir. It is large; it is strange; it moves. ‘It is a creature of the air,’ thinks George. ‘It is! It is a bird new to science! Oh, what pleasing discovery do I make? Am I about to cover myself with glory? I am! I feel it in my inmost heart, my heart of heart. Steve,’ he continues, ‘I know my destiny—the pursuit of science. My fate is now marked out; I shall write ornithologies! Now I must shoot this percher down; I cannot climb to catch it, though more’s the pity.’ O boys, it was, alas! a bird’s nest! A great big bird’s nest! And when he fired, it was no more. This is my mournful tale: this is my anecdote.”
“Steve, don’t relate any more such anecdotes,” said Charles, “or you will burst your ‘great heart’ as you have burst your paper collar.”
“Steve, did George tell you how you might relate that incident?” Will asked suspiciously. “But, Steve,” he added gravely, “be good enough to tell me what you have shot to-day to make you so merry.”
“With the greatest pleasure,” Steve replied grimly. “I shot the barrel of my gun all to pieces.”
“What?” Will asked, at a loss to take Steve’s meaning.
“In other words,” Mr. Lawrence said, “Stephen overcharged his gun, and it burst—burst with a vengeance.”