After this there was but one thing to do, and so the second division, under Sir Toady Lion, did it. He resolved to turn the enemy's flank, and attack him with reinforcements from an entirely unexpected quarter. So, leaving Prissy to her own devices, he took to his heels, and his fat legs carried him rapidly in the direction of the town of Edam. Difficulties there were of course, such as the barrier of the white lodge gate, where old Betty lay in wait for him.
But Toady Lion circumnavigated Betty by going to the lodge-door and shouting with all his might, "Betty, come quick, p'raps they's some soldiers comin' down the road—maybe Tom's comin', 'oo come and look."
"Sodjers—where?—what?" cried old Betty, waking up hastily from her doze, and fumbling in her pocket for the gate-key.
Toady Lion was at her elbow when she undid the latch. Toady Lion charged past her with a yell. Toady Lion it was who from the safe middle of the highway made the preposterous explanation, "Oh no, they isn't no soldiers. 'Tis only a silly old fish-man wif a tin trumpet."
"Come back, sir, or I'll tell your father! Come back at once!" cried old Betty.
But she might shake her head and nod with her nut-cracker chin till the black beads on her lace "kep" tinkled. All was in vain. Toady Lion was out of reach far down the dusty main road along which the Scots Greys had come the day that Hugh John became a soldier. Toady Lion was a born pioneer, and usually got what he wanted, first of all by dint of knowing exactly what he did want, and then "fighting it out on that line if it took all summer"—or even winter too.
The road to the town of Edam wound underneath trees great and tall, which hummed with bees and gnats that day as Toady Lion sped along, his bare feet "plapping" pleasantly in the white hot dust. He was furtively crying all the time—not from sorrow but with sheer indignation. He hated all his kind. He was going to desert to the Smoutchies. He would be a Comanche Cowboy if they would have him, since his brother and Cissy Carter had turned against him. Nobody loved him, and he was glad of it. Prissy—oh! yes, but Prissy did not count. She loved everybody and everything, even stitching and dollies, and putting on white thread gloves when you went into town. So he ran on, evading the hay waggons and red farm-carts without looking at them, till in a trice he had crossed Edam Bridge and entered the town—in the glaring streets and upon the hot pavement of which the sunshine was sleeping, and which on Saturday forenoon had more than its usual aspect of enjoying a perpetual siesta.
The leading chemist was standing at his door, wondering if the rustic who passed in such a hurry could actually be on the point of entering the shop of his hated rival. The linen-draper at the corner under the town clock was divided between keeping an eye on his apprentices to see that they did not spar with yard sticks, and mentally criticising the ludicrous and meretricious window-dressing of his next-door neighbour. None of them cared at all for the small dusty boy with the tear-furrowed countenance who kept on trotting so steadily through the town, turned confidently up the High Street, and finally dodged into the path which led past the Black Sheds to the wooden bridge which joined the castle island to the butcher's parks. As he crossed the grass Toady Lion heard a wrathful voice from somewhere calling loudly, "Nipper! Nipper-r-r-r! Oh, wait till I catch you!"
For it chanced that this day the leading butcher in Edam was without the services of both his younger assistants—his son Nipper and his message boy, Tommy Pratt. Mr. Donnan had a new cane in his hand, and he was making it whistle through the air in a most unpleasant and suggestive manner.
"Get away out of my field, little boy—where are you going? What are you doing there?"