"Direct Smith to place these remains in the spot I originally selected," he said; "and if anybody ventures to disturb them again the consequences will be exceedingly serious. Now go to your classes."
He waved his hand, and Macmullen took the parrot, and nobody ever saw it again. But to this day Mathers swears that Smith never buried him. He believes that in some secret place in his house the gardener has 'Joe' in a glass case; because, very truly, he says that no ordinary gardener would be likely to resist the temptation of having a rare and beautiful bird to decorate his house. Besides, the glass eyes. Also it is well known that Dr. Dunstan never goes into the gardener's house; which is really the entrance lodge to Merivale, and is full of Smith's wife and children. So I dare say Bunny is right there.
He told me afterwards that Dunstan was very cold, but not actively angry in the evening. Mathers said that the Doctor didn't seem to attach any importance to the fact that he'd stuffed 'Joe' to give him a great and sudden pleasure. Instead, he evidently thought that Bunny had done a rather daring thing to please himself.
"'Unseemly' was the word he used," said Mathers to me. "He seemed to think it was not a case for much punishment; but, all the same, he has told me to write out the article on the stuffer's art from the Encyclopædia Britannica, which is rather rot, because I shall certainly never want to stuff anything again in this world. I couldn't tell him all I'd been through to do it, because he'd got a sort of beastly idea that I liked doing it; though you know that it was nothing of the sort. On the whole it has left him against me, and he seems to take a good deal of credit to himself for not making a lot more row about it. But whether he's going to let it rankle in his mind, so that I may suffer for it more or less till the end of the term, or whether, when I've done the impot., he'll feel as usual—just neither for me nor against me—I can't say yet. He might have tried to look at it from my point of view."
"You could hardly expect him to do that: masters never do," I said.
"It's all the worse for him, anyway," answered Mathers minimus. "To rebury the parrot was a slight on me in a way; because whether he liked it or not he could have seen at a glance the hours and hours of awful trouble, and the fearful expense it must have been to me. The eyes alone were three shillings; and nobody in this world ever threw away valuable money in such a cruel manner. Besides, if it had gone off well and he'd taken it as I meant it, I fully intended other good surprises for him."
"You'd better not surprise him again for a jolly long time," I said. "He doesn't much like surprises—people don't when they grow up. They have a footling way of preferring everything to drag on in a tame and dull manner. My father hates telegrams, for instance."
"I had fully meant to get Johnson to bring him another and a better parrot," said Mathers. "Even a pair of parrots might have been arranged; and they would have made a nest about April, and laid eggs, and there would gradually have been parrots for all his daughters; and he could have taught them what he liked, even to the extent of Latin; for it is well known that a parrot will learn anything. But it's all over now. Never again will I try to give him pleasure—or anybody else either. Why, even Milly hasn't pitied me much—just because it's all a failure; whereas if he'd taken it in a manly way, and thanked me before the school, and, perhaps, given us a half-holiday or something and sent the parrot off at once to be measured for a glass case—how different it all would have been! Nobody would have called me 'body-snatcher' then; whereas now I shall be called that for life."
Which was all true enough in its way, and he was called 'body-snatcher' for ever more. Whereas, to show what mistakes happen, I'd done that part—simply as a friend.
THE BANKRUPTCY OF BANNISTER