The toe was still bleeding through the white rag old Molly had bound it up with.
“Poor cousin Johnnie!”
“Never mind, Peg. I brought him home, anyhow, and he is such a monster. He is walking about outside your caravan at this moment. Yes, Daddy, thank you. I love ham and eggs. Gourmie, do I see you well?”
“There’s plenty of me to see, anyhow,” grunted Gourmand, good-naturedly.
“Well, don’t take on about it, there’s a little dear. And I’ll have the half of that cold hoggie.”
“Have the whole of it, lad. And the whole of it is only a half, after all. Our sweet little Molly is going to cook her Gourmie another goose’s egg.”
Molly was old, like a withered dock as to colour, but she tried to smile a girlish smile as she went bustling out of the tent now to do the giant’s bidding.
Peggy’s story set Mr. Fitzroy thinking. After breakfast he threw himself prone upon the tent sofa, with his flute in his hand. This was his favourite attitude. His sofa was a very primitive one—three boxes covered with a goat-skin and with rugs for pillows—but it served the purpose very well indeed.
Fitzroy played a little, then mused a little, and kept this up for a good half-hour. He could think best when lying down, and the flute assisted his cogitations. He did not mean to build any flutes to-day, he told himself; he would take a forenoon off and be ready for afternoon rehearsal. The neighbouring village had been well billed, and the giant had walked twice through it, dressed as a little charity school-boy with a big, treacle-stained bib on, while Willie, the dwarf, walked in front of him, and pretended to be his father. “The Forest Maiden” was emblazoned on every old wall and boarding to be found, so they were sure of a bumper house. Had not this great show been patronised by all the crowned heads of Europe?—so the bills informed one; surely, then, it was good enough for Stickleton-on-the-Moor. Fitzroy, without getting out of the horizontal, played a difficult study from Wagner.
“Nothing like Wagner for clearing the cobwebs out of the brain,” he murmured.