It was a moment of terrific suspense. We had drawn a mental picture of some wonderful creature, half Princess, half like a schoolgirl, we sighed after. The god was tying Carnations to wire spirals, and his expression was limited, since he had a knife in his mouth.
“S.M. on me arm,” he said, removing the knife.
A SHEPHERD OF CONISTON.
We nodded mysteriously, full of breathless expectation.
Walter began to smile. He stood up and surveyed us with his face alight with the memory of some great day. To us he looked an heroic figure, even despite the pieces of old drawing-room carpet tied to his knees with string, and his very unkempt beard.
“You won’t exactly understand,” he said, mopping his forehead. “But I tell ’ee if you’ve got to mind some-at after a day at a fair, you’d be fair mazed. I give my word to my mother as I’d a-put sixpence in a raffle for to try to win her a sewing machine, and so when the fellow was making they images on my arm, I sed to un, I sed, put me S.M., I sed, so’s I’ll mind to put in the sewing machine raffle, I sed, or else if so be as I don’t I shall get a slice of tongue pie when I do get home along.”
Our faces fell. Our hearts, full of romance, now became like lead. In despair we put the last question, a forlorn hope in the storming of his heart’s citadel.
“And the other thing on your arms, Walter? The heart.”
“Cooriosity killed a monkey,” said he. “Mind out, I’m going round the corners.”