The Magic Egg, and Other Stories

by Frank R. Stockton

There were persons—outsiders—who said that archery clubs always selected ladies for their presiding officers, but we did not care to be too much bound down and trammelled by customs and traditions. Another club might not have among its members such a genial elderly gentleman who owned a village green.

I soon found myself greatly interested in archery, especially when I succeeded in planting an arrow somewhere within the periphery of the target, but I never became such an enthusiast in bow-shooting as my friend Pepton.

If Pepton could have arranged matters to suit himself, he would have been born an archer. But as this did not happen to have been the case, he employed every means in his power to rectify what he considered this serious error in his construction. He gave his whole soul, and the greater part of his spare time, to archery, and as he was a young man of energy, this helped him along wonderfully.

His equipments were perfect. No one could excel him in, this respect. His bow was snakewood, backed with hickory. He carefully rubbed it down every evening with oil and beeswax, and it took its repose in a green baize bag. His arrows were Philip Highfield's best, his strings the finest Flanders hemp. He had shooting-gloves, and little leather tips that could be screwed fast on the ends of what he called his string-fingers. He had a quiver and a belt, and when equipped for the weekly meetings, he carried a fancy-colored wiping-tassel, and a little ebony grease-pot hanging from his belt. He wore, when shooting, a polished arm-guard or bracer, and if he had heard of anything else that an archer should have, he straightway would have procured it.

Pepton was a single man, and he lived with two good old maiden ladies, who took as much care of him as if they had been his mothers. And he was such a good, kind fellow that he deserved all the attention they gave him. They felt a great interest in his archery pursuits, and shared his anxious solicitude in the selection of a suitable place to hang his bow.

"You see," said he, "a fine bow like this, when not in use, should always be in a perfectly dry place."

"And when in use, too," said Miss Martha, "for I am sure that you oughtn't to be standing and shooting in any damp spot. There's no surer way of gettin' chilled."

To which sentiment Miss Maria agreed, and suggested wearing rubber shoes, or having a board to stand on, when the club met after a rain.

Pepton first hung his bow in the hall, but after he had arranged it symmetrically upon two long nails (bound with green worsted, lest they should scratch the bow through its woollen cover), he reflected that the front door would frequently be open, and that damp drafts must often go through the hall. He was sorry to give up this place for his bow, for it was convenient and appropriate, and for an instant he thought that it might remain, if the front door could be kept shut, and visitors admitted through a little side door which the family generally used, and which was almost as convenient as the other—except, indeed, on wash-days, when a wet sheet or some article of wearing apparel was apt to be hung in front of it. But although wash-day occurred but once a week, and although it was comparatively easy, after a little practice, to bob under a high-propped sheet, Pepton's heart was too kind to allow his mind to dwell upon this plan. So he drew the nails from the wall of the hall, and put them up in various places about the house. His own room had to be aired a great deal in all weathers, and so that would not do at all. The wall above the kitchen fireplace would be a good location, for the chimney was nearly always warm. But Pepton could not bring himself to keep his bow in the kitchen. There would be nothing esthetic about such a disposition of it, and, besides, the girl might be tempted to string and bend it. The old ladies really did not want it in the parlor, for its length and its green baize cover would make it an encroaching and unbecoming neighbor to the little engravings and the big samplers, the picture-frames of acorns and pine-cones, the fancifully patterned ornaments of clean wheat straw, and all the quaint adornments which had hung upon those walls for so many years. But they did not say so. If it had been necessary, to make room for the bow, they would have taken down the pencilled profiles of their grandfather, their grandmother, and their father when a little boy, which hung in a row over the mantelpiece.

However, Pepton did not ask this sacrifice. In the summer evenings the parlor windows must be open. The dining-room was really very little used in the evening, except when Miss Maria had stockings to darn, and then she always sat in that apartment, and of course she had the windows open. But Miss Maria was very willing to bring her work into the parlor,—it was foolish, anyway, to have a feeling about darning stockings before chance company,—and then the dining-room could be kept shut up after tea. So into the wall of that neat little room Pepton drove his worsted-covered nails, and on them carefully laid his bow. All the next day Miss Martha and Miss Maria went about the house, covering the nail-holes he had made with bits of wallpaper, carefully snipped out to fit the patterns, and pasted on so neatly that no one would have suspected they were there.