"The spirit was willing, though the flesh was weak!" said our good old Doctor of the parish of "Dulce Cor." "I wish all my own prayers had as good a chance of being heard as this little sleeping child's!" After this Toady Lion declared that he would always say his prayers in the same way—asleep!
Well, of course you could not imagine—nobody could—the new and peculiar wickedness devised by Sir Toady. It was simply bound to be a success. Besides which, it was perfectly safe; after what Mr. Massa had told up at the Communion Stones of Iron-gray, The Powers-That-Be could not say a word. Oh, the beautiful thing it is to have a friend of your youth with a good memory, and, above all, communicative and frank with your own children! Oh, I know that there are people who will say, with some outside show of reason, "Well, just be perfectly good when you are young, and then you don't need to fear the frankest of your intimate friends!"
This, of course, is rank nonsense, and nothing but! For that kind of very immaculate young person does not make the best sort of father or mother when the time comes. They don't know anything. They are not up to things, and get "taken the loan of," as the boys say in that rude but expressive speech of theirs. But it is not accounted healthy to "monkey" with ours, who generally can tell beforehand when you are going to do a thing, and after it is done (if you get the chance) will tell you—what very likely you didn't know before—why you did it. If, in spite of all, you get into scrapes, The Powers-That-Be usually sympathize. But (and this is the awkward part) they remember the remedy that proved effectual in former and more personal cases. That remedy is applied, and, generally speaking, the same result follows. With this experience we shall all make excellent heads of families, and shall hire ourselves out—if we do not happen to have any of our own! Only, we are glad that we came into the world too early to be part of Hugh John's family. His methods are altogether too Spartan. And we tell him that the plain English for the name of his favorite hero, Brutus (the one who cut his children's heads off), was just simply Brute!
To return to Sir Toady, we were at the time at the little seaside village of the Scaur. Mark Hill is behind it, and Rough Island in front. Nothing could possibly be more delightful. At every low tide, for two or three hours we could walk on a long pebbly trail which led seaward, the wash of the tides coming from two directions round the pleasant green shoulders of the Isle, epauletted with purple heather, and buttoned down the front with white sheep. What dainty coves! What pleasing, friendly-featured lambs with shiny black noses and goggle eyes! How tame the very gulls had become from never being shot at! There never was such a place as Rough Island for us, or, indeed, any children. Away to the right you could see Isle Rathan, certainly more famous in romance. But to go there you had to get kind Captain Cassidy to take you in his boat. And generally it ended (because the Captain is a busy man) in your staying with his wife, and seeing—and being the better for seeing—how the threatening of blindness at once sweetens and strengthens the life of a delicate woman. But to Rough Island we could go by ourselves, so be that we returned with the first flowing of the tide. There is a certain Black Skerry to the south which, when covered, announces to all concerned that haste of the hastiest kind had better be made. Of course we called it Signal Rock. But one fine September forenoon, when the light was mellow and gracious even on the rough slopes of the Island of our choice, Sir Toady set us all (that is, all the children) searching in sheltered coves and little pebbly bays for "leg-o'-mutton" shells—just, he said, what father used to do. It was the bottom of the "neaps," when the water does not go very far out—which, of course, every shore child would have known by instinct. But we were landward bred, and such distinctions as to the ebbing and flowing of salt water were too fine for us! But Sir Toady had had converse with the instructed. He had profited thereby. And so no one will be surprised that, by dint of keeping our backs to the Signal Rock, our noses pointing down, and our eyes well employed in the search for "legs-o'-mutton," we did not discover the treachery of Sir Toady till the Rock was covered, and there was no hope of return! None, that is, for most of us. But Sir Toady, already singing his song of triumph, had reckoned without his Hugh John!
That austere stickler for "The Proper-Thing-To-Do-You-Know" made one dash for the rapidly covering causeway, over which the tawny Solway water was already lapping and curling in little oozy whorls, like a very soap-suddy pot coming to the boil. He had only time to shout, "You, Sis, stay where you are! Take care of the Maid. I will make it all right with The-Folk-Over-There!"
And at first Toady Lion had laughed, thinking that for once the immaculate Hugh John would be caught along with the rest of us. He did not laugh, however, at all when he saw his elder brother take his watch out of his pocket and place it in his cap. He shouted out, "It's all right, Hugh John; Mr. Massa told me at Iron-gray that he and father often did it—spent ''Tween-Tides' on the Island. He will know all about it. Come back, you fool, you'll be drowned!"
But our Old Ironsides only shouted back over his shoulder that father and Mr. Massa had not passed their words to be in for lunch, and that he had!
"If the People are anxious Over-Yonder, they can come and fetch us off in a boat. We can say that we forgot!"
But by this time Hugh John had made his first dash into the wimpling line of creamy chocolate, like a steamer's wake, which marked the causeway to the land. His last will and testimony came to us in the command to "Stay where we were!" And in the final far-heard rider that, "when he got him," he would quicken Sir Toady's uncertain memory by one of the most complete fraternal "hidings" on record.
All the same, as we watched him plod along, the tides sweeping in from both sides upon him, and the struggle swaying him now to one side and now to the other in the effort to keep his feet, Sir Toady burst into a kind of roar (which he now says is a "way they have in the Navy" for long-distance signaling, but which sounded to us very much like a howl). "Come back, Hugh John," he cried, "and I'll take the best 'whaling' you can give me now!"