Austin and His Friends

by Frederic Henry Balfour

"Oh, do help me to screw on my leg. That's it. I say, it's a quarter-past one! We must hurry up, or Aunt Charlotte will be cursing. What does it matter if one eats at half-past one or at a quarter to two? I really am very fond of Aunt Charlotte, you know, though I find it awfully difficult to educate her. I sometimes despair of ever being able to bring her up properly at all, she is so hopelessly Early Victorian, poor thing. But, then, so many people are, aren't they? Now animals are never Early Victorian; that's why I respect them so. If you weren't a human being, Lubin—and a very nice one, as you are—what sort of an animal would you like to be?"

"Well, I don't rightly know as I ever considered the point," said Lubin, passing his fingers through his drenched curls. "Perhaps I'd as lief be a squirrel as anything. I'm awfully fond o' nuts, and when I was a kid I used to spend half my time a-climbing trees. A squirrel must have rather a jolly life of it, when one comes to think."

"What a splendid idea!" cried Austin, as they prepared to start. "You are clever, Lubin. It would be lovely to live in a tree, curtained all round with thousands of quivering green leaves. I wish I knew what animals think about all day. It must be very dull for them never to have any thoughts, poor dears, and yet they seem happy enough somehow. Perhaps they have something else instead to make up for it—something that we've no idea of. I say—it's half-past one!"

So Austin was late for lunch after all, and got a scolding from Aunt Charlotte, who told him that it was exceedingly ill-bred to inconvenience other people by habitual unpunctuality. Austin was very penitent, and promised he'd never be unpunctual again if he lived to be a hundred. Then Aunt Charlotte was mollified, and regaled him with an improving account of a most excellent book she had just been reading, upon the importance of instilling sound principles of political economy into the mind of the agricultural labourer. It was so essential, she explained, that people in that position should understand something about the laws which govern prices, the relations of capital and labour, the metayer system, and the ratio which should exist between an increase of population and the exhaustion of the soil by too frequent crops of wheat; and she wound up by propounding a series of hypothetical problems based on the doctrines she had set forth, for Austin to solve offhand.

Austin listened very dutifully for some time, but the subject bored him atrociously, and his attention began to wander. At last he made some rather vague and irrelevant replies, and then announced boldly that he thought all politicians were very silly old gentlemen, particularly economists; for his own part, he hated economy, especially when he wanted to buy something beautiful to look at; he further considered that political economists would be much better employed if they sat contemplating tulips instead of writing horrid books, and that Lubin was a great deal wiser than the whole pack of them put together. Then Aunt Charlotte got extremely angry, and a great wrangle ensued, in the course of which she said he was a foolish, ignorant boy, who talked nonsense for the sake of talking it. Austin replied by asking if she knew what a quincunx was, or what Virgil was really driving at when he composed the First Eclogue, and whether she had ever heard of Lycidas; and when she said that she had something better to do than stuff her head with quidnunxes and all such pagan rubbish, he remarked very politely that ignorance was evidently not all of the same sort. Which sent Aunt Charlotte bustling away in a huff to look after her household duties.

"It's all very sad and very ugly, isn't it, Gioconda?" sighed Austin, as he lifted the large, white, fluffy animal upon his lap. "You're a great philosopher, my dear; I wish I were as wise as you. You're so scornful, so dignified, so divinely egoistic. But you don't mind being worshipped, do you, Gioconda? Because you know it's your right, of course. There—she's actually condescending to purr! Now we'll come and disport ourselves under the trees, and you shall watch the birds from a safe distance. I know your wicked ways, and I must teach you how to treat your inferiors with proper benignity and toleration."

But Gioconda had plans of her own for the afternoon, and declined the proposed discipline; so Austin strolled off by himself, and lay down under the trees with a large book on Italian gardens to console him. His improvised exertions in the water had produced a certain fatigue, and he felt lazy and inert. Gradually he dropped off into a doze, which lasted more than an hour. And he had a curious dream. He thought he was in some strange land—a land like a garden seen through yellow glass—where everything was transparent, and people glided about as though they were skating, without any conscious effort. Then Aunt Charlotte appeared upon the scene, and he saw by her eyes that she was very angry because Lycidas had been drowned while bathing; but Austin assured her that it was Lubin who was drowned, and that it really was of no consequence, because Lubin was only a squirrel after all. At this point things got extremely mixed, and the sound of voices broke in upon his slumbers. He opened his eyes, and saw Aunt Charlotte herself in the act of walking away with a toss of her head that betokened a ruffled temper.

Austin's interest was immediately aroused. "Lubin!" he called softly, motioning the lad to come nearer. "What was she rowing you about? Was she blowing you up about this morning?"

"Well," confessed Lubin with a broad smile, "she didn't seem over-pleased. Said you might have lost your life, going out o' your depth with only one leg to stand on, and that if you'd been drownded I should have had to answer for it before a judge and jury."

"What a wicked, abandoned old woman!" cried Austin. "Only one leg to stand on, indeed!—she hasn't a single leg to stand on when she says such things. She ought to have gone down on her knees and thanked you for taking such care of me. But I shall never make anything of her, I'm afraid. The more I try to educate her the worse she gets."