The Human Boy Again

by Eden Phillpotts

In fact, Tinned Cow had translated part of his letter home to me. It was in Chinese characters, and went down the paper instead of along, and looked as if you'd dipped a grasshopper in ink and then put him out to dry. But his mother evidently understood, and sent such sweets as were never before sucked in England—since the Christian era very likely. And Tinned Cow had also asked for one of his mother's precious rings for Milly; but this he didn't much expect her to send; and she didn't. So he bought Milly a ring from a proper ring-shop with three weeks' pocket-money; which, seeing that he had the huge sum of five bob a week, amounted to fifteen shillings; and it had a real precious stone in it, though no one, not even Gideon, exactly knew what.

Anyway, Milly wore it at chapel, and flashed it at Tinned Cow when the Doctor had his back turned saying the Litany. And Blount said the flash of it was like a knife in his heart. Which shows what a footling ass Blount was over this wretched girl. I warned Tinned Cow, all the same, that he'd simply chucked fifteen bob away; because she'd change again the moment his Chinese sweets were finished. And she never gave back presents when she changed; as Millbrook had found to his cost, being an awfully rich chap, who gave her a bracelet that cost one pound ten—so he said. And when she threw him over and wouldn't give it up, Millbrook, who was certainly rich but a frightful hound, went to the Doctor. So he got his bracelet and left soon afterwards; and Milly, much to her horror, was sent to a boarding school for a term or two. But then old Dunstan, who is simply an infant in Milly's hands, gave way and let her come home again because she cried over a letter and splashed it with tears, or more likely common water, and told him that nobody in the world could teach her Greek but him. Which shows the cunningness of her. And many suchlike things she did.

Myself, though I despise all girls, I never hated one worse than this. The best a girl can be at any time is harmless; but Milly Dunstan was brimful of trickery, and, just because her eyes were accidentally blue, thought she could score off everybody and everything. Not that she ever scored off me. She knew that I barred her altogether, and scorned me in consequence, and called me "Master Tomkins" to make me waxy, me being only about four months younger than her.

She got his mother's pet name for him out of Tinned Cow, and called him by it in secret. Not that I ever heard it, or wanted to. And she also gave out that anybody calling him Tinned Cow any more would be her enemy; and one or two chaps were feeble enough actually to stop.

She utterly wrecked his character. Before, he'd been as keen as knives about sport and so on, and there is no doubt that he would have got into the second footer team next term if Gregson minor had passed his exam. for the army. But Milly Dunstan didn't care a straw about footer, though she understood cricket fairly well for a girl; and so Tinned Cow, like a fool, gave up all hope of getting on at footer, at which he promised to be some use, and went in like mad for cricket, at which he never could be any earthly good whatever. And that made another row, because Milly promised to walk twice round old Dunstan's private garden with Street, the captain of the third eleven (cricket), if he'd give Tinned Cow a trial in an unimportant match; and Street said "Right." And they went, during prep., and it happened that the Doctor, coming out of his greenhouse, caught them; and Street got five hundred lines; which naturally made him in such a bate, thinking it was a trap, that he refused to try Tinned Cow for ever.

I'm sure I did all I could, for, though I'd lost any feeling for him since he let this girl sit on him, still I was his chum once. And I tried to save him, and asked him, many a time and oft, why he let himself go dotty about a skimpy girl. And he said that it was her skimpiness he liked, for she put him in mind of his sister—only his sister was smaller, and, of course, had squashed feet. To see a girl who can walk about seems to be a fearful treat to the Chinese; so what they let theirs all squash their feet for, the Lord knows.

Tinned Cow confessed to me that Milly Dunstan was pretty sharp, and had been reading up all about China in one of the Doctor's books. In fact, he confessed also that she knew a lot more about China in general than he did. And some things she liked, and some she hated; and especially the marriage customs she hated; and she told Tinned Cow that unless he let her father marry them in a proper Christian church when the time came, it was off. So he promised; and he also promised, though very reluctantly, not to say a word about it to Dr. Dunstan until he got to be head of the sixth and the school. But he knew that at the rate he was going, he would never get there till he was at least fifty years old. And sons of mandarins marry very early indeed in their own country, so he said—as soon as they like, in fact—so Tinned Cow promised about getting to the top of the sixth reluctantly. Then he took to working and swatting; yet all his swatting only got him into the lower fourth in three terms. Then, seeing what a lot it meant getting into the sixth, and what a frightful hard thing it was, especially for a foreigner, to do it, Tinned Cow fell back upon the customs of his country; and his methods of cribbing were certainly fine and new. But they couldn't get him into the sixth, let alone to the top of it; and he tried still other Chinese customs in an arithmetic exam, and attempted to bribe Mr. Thwaites with four weeks' pocket-money—a pound, in fact—if he would arrange to let him get enough marks to go up a form. Of course, everybody knew that Mr. Thwaites had a wife and hundreds of small children at Merivale, and, though a sixteenth wrangler in olden times, was at present frightfully hard up. But what is a paltry pound to a sixteenth wrangler? Anyway Mr. Thwaites raged with great fierceness and took Tinned Cow to the Doctor; and as the Doctor hates strategy of this kind, he made it jolly hot for Tinned Cow and flogged him pretty badly. I asked if it hurt, being the first time the Doctor had ever flogged him, and he said the only thing that hurt was the horrid feeling that he'd offered too little to Thwaites. He said that in his country, and especially among mandarins, offering too little was almost as great a crime as offering too much, and that he deserved to be flogged on the feet as well as elsewhere. He said that his father was such a good judge of people that he always offered just the right sum; and he felt certain that in the case of Thwaites not a penny less than ten pounds ought to have been offered. It was the well-known hard-upishness of Thwaites that made him think a pound would do; but now, seeing what a little way money seemed to go with a man, he felt about the only chap within reach of being bribed was the drill sergeant; and of course he couldn't help Tinned Cow to get into the sixth. Besides, the drill sergeant had fought in China in his early days, and he had a sort of warlike repugnance against Tinned Cow that would have taken at least several pounds to get over.

So things went on until the arrival of the sweets from China; and they were all right, though Tinned Cow told me that Milly wasn't as keen about them as he expected, or at any rate she pretended not to be. The truth is that some of the very swaggerest Chinese sweets take nearly a lifetime thoroughly to like; and by the time that Milly began to feel the remarkable splendour of this sort, she'd finished them. However, she was fairly just—for her, and didn't throw the beggar over before the taste of the last sweet was out of her mouth, as you might have expected. In fact, she kept friendly for a matter of several weeks; and then she began to get rather sick of his Chinese ways—so she said—and cool off towards him, even though in his despair he promised to become a Christian and get her idols and fireworks and many other curiosities that probably wouldn't have been sent even if he'd written home for them.

But Chinese chaps have quite different ideas to English chaps, owing to their bringing-up; and things we utterly bar and consider caddish, such as sneaking, a Chinese chap will do freely without the least idea he is making a beast of himself. I didn't know this, or else I should never have allowed Tinned Cow to be my chum, but at last I discovered the fatal truth; and the worst of it was that he sneaked against my bitterest enemy, called Forrester, thinking that he was doing a right and proper thing towards me.

This chap Forrester I hated for many reasons, but chiefly because he'd beaten me, by about ten marks only, in a Scripture exam, owing to knowing the names of the father and mother of Moses, which are not generally known. I always had a fixed idea, funnily enough, that Moses was the son of Pharaoh's daughter; and I said so, and I added, as a shot—for shots often come off, though they are dangerous—that Holy Writ was quite silent concerning the father of Moses. And the Doctor frightfully hates a shot that misses, so I had to write out the whole business of Moses fifty times, till I was sick of the very name of the man; whereas Forrester won the prize. Well, this Forrester kept sardines in his desk and ate them freely during Monsieur Michel's class. But one tin, already opened, he forgot for several weeks, owning to its getting hidden behind his paint-box and caterpillar cage. And these sardines—being rather doubtful of them when he found them again—he gave to Milly Dunstan's Persian kitten; and Tinned Cow saw him do it. Well, the kitten showed that Forrester was quite right to be doubtful about the sardines by dying. It disappeared from that very hour, and was believed to have gone next door to die, as cats are generally very unwilling to die in their own homes, and always go next door to do so, curious to say. And Milly was in an awful bate when Tinned Cow told her, thinking it would please me; whereas, if anything could have made me get friends with Forrester again, it would have been to know he'd got this terrific score off Milly Dunstan. But her rage against Forrester was pretty frightful—especially, she said, because a boy whose strong point was Scripture could have done this thing; and she made Tinned Cow tell the Doctor; and such was his piffling weakness where she was concerned, that he did. But old Dunstan, who hated cats, and did not mind the kitten going in the least, said it was a case of circumstantial evidence—whatever that is—and the proofs of the cat's death were too slight, seeing the body couldn't be found, and also remembering a cat's power of eating sardines, even when a bit off. Then he turned against Tinned Cow, and told him that the character of an informer ill became any pupil of Dunstan's, and that to try and undo a fellow-student might be Oriental but was far from English, and so on—all in words that you can find in dictionaries, but nowhere else that I ever heard of.