“I say, Deland, you’re a spiffing sort—I like you!” he said bluntly, after they’d played one or two sets of tennis with the ladies and done their “social duties” generally. “If things look up a bit and I’m able to go back to Oxford for the next term (and the Lord knows how I shall, if the mater doesn’t succeed in ‘touching’ Carruthers for some money for we’re jolly near broke and up to our eyes in debt), but if I do go back and you’re in England still, I’ll have you up for the May week and give you the time of your life. Oh, Lord! here’s the mater coming now. Let’s hook it. Come round to the stables, will you, and have a look at my collection. Pippin’ lot—they’ll interest you.”
They did; for on investigation the “collection” proved to be made up of pigeons, magpies, parrakeets, white mice, monkeys, and even a tame squirrel, all of which came forth at their master’s call and swarmed or flocked all over him.
“Now then, Dolly Varden, you keep your thieving tongs away from my scarfpin, old lady!” exclaimed this enthusiast to a magpie which perched upon his shoulder and immediately made a peck at the small pearl in his necktie. “Awfullest old thief and vagrant that ever sprouted a feather, this beauty,” he explained to Cleek as he smoothed the magpie’s head. “Steal your eye teeth if she could get at them, and goes off on the loose like a blessed wandering gypsy. Lost her for three days and nights a couple of weeks ago, and the Lord knows where the old vagrant put in her time. What’s that? The white stuff on her beak? Blest if I know. Been pecking at a wall or something, I reckon, and—hullo! There’s Carruthers and his little lordship strolling about hand in hand. Let’s go and have a word with them. Strathmere’s amazingly fond of my mice and birds.”
With that he walked away with the mice and the monkeys and the squirrel clinging to him, and those of the birds that were not perched upon his shoulders or his hands circling round his head with a flurry of moving wings. Cleek followed. A word in private with the Honourable Felix was accountable for his appearance in the grounds with the boy, and Cleek was anxious to get a good look at him without exciting any possible suspicion in Lady Essington’s mind regarding the “Lieutenant’s” interest in him.
He was a bonny little chap, this last Earl of Strathmere, with a head and face that might have done duty for one of Raphael’s “Cherubim” and the big “wonder eyes” that make baby faces so alluring.
“Strathmere, this is Lieutenant Deland, come all the way from India to visit us,” said the Honourable Felix, as Cleek went down on his knees and spoke to the boy (examining him carefully the while). “Won’t you tell him you are pleased to see him?”
“Pleased to see oo,” said the boy, then broke into a shout of glee as he caught sight of young Essington with the animals and birds. “Pitty birdies! pitty mouses! Give! give!” he exclaimed eagerly, stretching forth his little hands.
“Certainly. Which will you have, old chap—magpie, parrakeet, pigeon, monkey, or mice?” said young Essington, gayly. “Here! take the lot and be happy!” Then he made as if to bundle them all into the child’s arms, and might have succeeded in doing so, but that Cleek rose up and came between them and the boy.
“Do have some sense, Essington!” he rapped out sharply. “Those things may not bite nor claw you, but one can’t be sure when they are handled by some one else. Besides, the boy is not well and he ought not to be frightened.”
“Sorry, old chap—always puttin’ my foot into it. But Strathmere likes ’em, don’t you, bonny boy? and I didn’t think.”