"Never mind, I don't care about cricket or anything now you are getting well, Geordie; and I shouldn't have hurt, I know, if they'd have let me come up,—nothing hurts me. But you'll get about now, directly, won't you? You won't believe how clean I've kept the study. All your things are just as you left them; and I feed the old magpie just when you used, though I have to come in from big-side for him, the old rip. He won't look pleased all I can do, and sticks his head first on one side and then on the other, and blinks at me before he'll begin to eat, till I'm half inclined to box his ears. And whenever East comes in you should see him hop off to the window, dot and go one,[5] though Harry wouldn't touch a feather of him now."
Arthur laughed. "Old Gravey has a good memory; he can't forget the sieges of poor Martin's den in old times." He paused a moment and then went on. "You can't think how often I've been thinking of old Martin since I've been ill; I suppose one's mind gets restless, and likes to wander off to strange, unknown places. I wonder what queer new pets the old boy has got; how he must be revelling in the thousand new birds, beasts, and fishes."
Tom felt a pang of jealousy, but kicked it out in a moment. "Fancy him on a South-sea island, with the Cherokees or Patagonians, or some such wild niggers" (Tom's ethnology[6] and geography were faulty, but sufficient for his needs); "they'll make the old Madman cock medicine-man[7] and tattoo him all over. Perhaps he's cutting about now all blue, and has a squaw and a wigwam. He'll improve their boomerangs,[8] and be able to throw them, too, without having old Thomas sent after him by the Doctor to take them away."
MEMORIES.
Arthur laughed at the remembrance of the boomerang story, but then looked grave again, and said: "He'll convert all the island, I know."
"Yes, if he doesn't blow it up first."
"Do you remember, Tom, how you and East used to laugh at him and chaff him, because he said he was sure the rooks all had calling-over or prayers, or something of that sort, when the locking-up bell rang? Well, I declare," said Arthur, looking up seriously into Tom's laughing eyes, "I do think he was right. Since I've been lying here, I've watched them every night; and do you know, they really do come and perch, all of them, just about locking-up time; and then first there's a regular chorus of caws, and then they stop a bit, and one old fellow, or perhaps two or three in different trees, caw solos, and then off they all go again, fluttering about and cawing anyhow till they roost."
"I wonder if the old blackies[9] do talk," said Tom, looking up at them. "How they must abuse me and East, and pray for the Doctor for stopping the singing!"
"There! look, look!" cried Arthur, "don't you see the old fellow without a tail coming up? Martin used to call him the 'clerk.'[10] He can't steer himself. You never saw such fun as he is in a high wind, when he can't steer himself home, and gets carried right past the trees, and has to bear up again and again before he can perch."
The locking-up bell began to toll, and the two boys were silent, and listened to it. The sound soon carried Tom off to the river and the woods, and he began to go over in his mind the many occasions on which he had heard that toll coming faintly down the breeze, and had to pack his rod in a hurry, and make a run for it, to get in before the gates were shut. He was aroused with a start from his memories by Arthur's voice, gentle and weak from his late illness.