The Red Bicycle

by Fergus Hume

"Then don't let me 'ear you use sich a wicked word, or I'll take the skin off your back," said his mother, wiping her large crimson face with a corner of her tartan shawl. "Maranatha! it gives me the shivers, it do."

"You're using it yourself," murmured Neddy, in an injured tone.

"Me, being your elder and your ma, has a right to use words as ain't fit for you," said Mrs. Mellin, tartly, "and as we've got the washing of the new gent as has come to live there, I'll say the name often enough. I'll be bound. But not you, Neddy. Say the 'Ouse, and I'll know what you mean. And for 'Eaven's sake, child don't 'it the donkey. I want to look at the place."

Mrs. Mellin craned forward so as to get a better view, and stared at the square, ugly building, the damp red bricks of which were almost hidden by dark curtains of untrimmed ivy. Smoke came from one chimney, which showed that the house was inhabited, but as the shutters were up and the door closed, there was a sinister look about the whole place which made the washerwoman shiver. In its wilderness of shrubs and long grass, girdled by gigantic elms, all sopping and dripping, the mansion loomed portentously through the mists. It looked like a house with an evil history, and the queer name on the gate suited it extraordinarily well. Mrs. Mellin was not imaginative, yet she shivered again as she signed that Nelly could proceed. Tired of standing and anxious to get her day's work over, Nelly changed her funeral pace for a more active one.

"Maranatha!" murmured Mrs. Mellin, as the cart turned into the Parade. "Well, baronet or no baronet, he won't get much good out of Maranatha. Arter suicides you may paint a 'ouse, you may furnish a 'ouse, and you may advertise 'ouses till you're sick, but them as comes to live in sich allays leaves afore the term's out. An' no wonder 'ow long he'll stay?"

"Who'll stay?" asked Neddy curiously.

"I wasn't speaking to you, child. 'Old your tongue and drive on. I do 'ope as Mrs. Craver ain't 'eard. This will be news for 'er. And that Emily Pyne is sich a gossip, as never was."

All the way to the Rectory, Mrs. Mellin continued to talk in this way to herself, while Neddy kept his ears open to drink in every word. He was a slender boy with a wonderfully delicate complexion, curly golden hair, and innocent blue eyes, looking, on the whole, like a stray angel. And when in the choir he not only looked like an angel but sang like one, as his voice was remarkably beautiful.

But all Neddy's goods were in the shop-window, since he was as naughty an urchin as ever existed, to worry a hard-working mother. He told lies, he played truant, he associated with the worst boys in the parish, smoked on the sly, and behaved like the unscrupulous young rascal he truly was. Yet, when necessary, Neddy could play the saint so perfectly that his conduct, taken in conjuncture with his angelic looks, quite imposed upon the Rector, who believed him to be a modern Samuel.

Mrs. Mellin had her doubts, as experience told her otherwise, but naturally, she kept them to herself, and proclaimed on all and every occasion that Neddy was too good to live. All the same she was on her guard against his wiles, and rebuked him sharply when she noticed that he was listening to her soliloquy. By the time she had finished telling him where bad boys went and how they fared when they died, the cart appeared at the Rectory and Mrs. Craver appeared at the back door.