Still the inquisitive fag lingered. Whereupon Charlie, taking him kindly yet firmly by the collar of his coat, conveyed him to the open window, whence he gently dropped him a distance of six feet to the earth.
Privacy being thus secured, he turned again to his parcel and opened it. Imagine his delight and my agony when there came to light a splendid gold watch and chain! I turned faint with jealousy, and when a second glance showed me that the interloper was no other than the identical gold repeater whom I had known and dreaded in my infancy, I was ready to break my mainspring with vexation. To me the surprise had brought nothing but foreboding and despair, and already I felt myself discarded for my rival; but to Charlie it brought a rapture of delight which expressed itself in a whoop which could be heard half over the school.
“What on earth’s the row?” said a head looking in at the door; “caught cold, or what?”
“Come here, Jim, this moment; look at this!”
And Jim came and looked, and as he looked his eyes sparkled with admiration.
“My eye, Charlie, what a beauty!” said he, taking up the treasure in his hand. His thumb happened to touch the spring on the handle, and instantly there came a low melodious note from inside the repeater—One, two, three, and then a double tinkle twice repeated.
“That’s striking,” observed Jim, who was occasionally guilty of a pun. “Why, it’s a repeater!”
“So it is! Did you ever know such a brick as that uncle of mine?”
“It’s a pity your people can’t think of anything else but watches for presents. Why, what a donkey you made of yourself about that silver turnip when you first had it! Don’t you remember? What’s to become of it, by the by?”
“How do I know? I say, Jim, this one wasn’t got for nothing.” And then the boys together investigated the wonders of the new watch, peeping at its works and making it strike, till I was quite sick of hearing it. But then I was jealous. There was no more Cicero for Charlie that day. He was almost as ridiculous, though not so rough, with his new treasure as he had been with me. He turned me out of my pocket to make room for it; and then half a dozen times a minute pulled it out and gloated over it. At night he put us both under his pillow, little dreaming of the sorrow and disappointment that filled my breast.