Wise children always choose
a mother who was a shocking flirt
in her maiden days, and so had
several offers before she accepted
their fortunate papa. The reason
they do this is because every
offer refused by their mother
means another pantomime to them.
You see you can't trust to your
father's taking you to the pantomime,
but you can trust to every one
of the poor frenzied gentlemen
for whom that lady has wept a
delicious little tear on her
lovely little cambric handkerchief.
It is pretty (but dreadfully
affecting) to see them on Boxing
Night gathering together the
babies of their old loves. Some
knock at but one door and bring
a hansom, but others go from
street to street in private 'buses,
and even wear false noses to
conceal the sufferings you inflict
upon them as you grew more and
more like
your sweet cruel mamma.
So I took David
to the pantomime, and I hope
you follow my reasoning,
for I don't. He went with the
fairest anticipations, pausing
on the threshold to peer through
the hole in the little house
called "Pay Here," which he thought
was Red Riding Hood's residence,
and asked politely whether he
might see her, but they said
she had gone to the wood, and
it was quite true, for there
she was in the wood gathering
a stick for her grandmother's
fire. She sang a beautiful song
about the Boys and their dashing
ways, which flattered David considerably,
but she forgot to take away the
stick after all. Other parts
of the play were not so nice,
but David thought it all lovely,
he really did.
Yet he left the place in tears.
All the way home he sobbed in
the darkest corner of the growler,
and if I tried to comfort him
he struck me.
The clown had
done it, that man of whom he
expected things
so fair. He had asked in a loud
voice of the middling funny gentleman
(then in the middle of a song)
whether he thought Joey would
be long in coming, and when at
last Joey did come he screamed
out, "How do you do, Joey!" and
went into convulsions of mirth.
Joey and his father were shadowing
a pork-butcher's shop, pocketing
the sausages for which their
family has such a fatal weakness,
and so when the butcher engaged
Joey as his assistant there was
soon not a sausage left. However,
this did not matter, for there
was a box rather like an ice-cream
machine, and you put chunks of
pork in at one end and turned
a handle and they came out as
sausages at the other end. Joey
quite enjoyed doing this, and
you could see that the sausages
were excellent by the way he
licked his fingers after touching
them, but soon there were no
more pieces of pork, and just
then a dear little Irish terrier-dog
came trotting down the street,
so what did Joey do but pop it
into the machine and it came
out at the other end as sausages.
It was this callous act that
turned all David's mirth to woe,
and drove us weeping to our growler.
Heaven knows
I have no wish to defend this
cruel deed, but
as Joey told me afterward, it
is very difficult to say what
they will think funny and what
barbarous. I was forced to admit
to him that David had perceived
only the joyous in the pokering
of the policeman's legs, and
had called out heartily "Do it
again!" every time Joey knocked
the pantaloon down with one kick
and helped him up with another.
"It hurts the poor chap," I
was told by Joey, whom I was
agreeably surprised to find by
no means wanting in the more
humane feelings, "and he wouldn't
stand it if there wasn't the
laugh to encourage him."
He maintained that the dog
got that laugh to encourage him
also.
However, he had not got it
from David, whose mother and
father and nurse combined could
not comfort him, though they
swore that the dog was still
alive and kicking, which might
all have been very well had not
David seen the sausages. It was
to inquire whether anything could
be done to atone that in considerable
trepidation I sent in my card
to the clown, and the result
of our talk was that he invited
me and David to have tea with
him on Thursday next at his lodgings.
"I sha'n't laugh," David said,
nobly true to the memory of the
little dog, "I sha'n't laugh
once," and he closed his jaws
very tightly as we drew near
the house in Soho where Joey
lodged. But he also gripped my
hand, like one who knew that
it would be an ordeal not to
laugh.
The house was
rather like the ordinary kind,
but there was
a convenient sausage-shop exactly
opposite (trust Joey for that)
and we saw a policeman in the
street looking the other way,
as they always do look just before
you rub them. A woman wearing
the same kind of clothes as people
in other houses wear, told us
to go up to the second floor,
and she grinned at David, as
if she had heard about him; so
up we went, David muttering through
his clenched teeth, "I sha'n't
laugh," and as soon as we knocked
a voice called out, "Here we
are again!" at which a shudder
passed through David as if he
feared that he had set himself
an impossible task. In we went,
however, and though the voice
had certainly come from this
room we found nobody there. I
looked in bewilderment at David,
and he quickly put his hand over
his mouth.
It was a funny room, of course,
but not so funny as you might
expect; there were droll things
in it, but they did nothing funny,
you could see that they were
just waiting for Joey. There
were padded chairs with friendly
looking rents down the middle
of them, and a table and a horse-hair
sofa, and we sat down very cautiously
on the sofa but nothing happened
to us.
The biggest piece of furniture
was an enormous wicker trunk,
with a very lively coloured stocking
dangling out at a hole in it,
and a notice on the top that
Joey was the funniest man on
earth. David tried to pull the
stocking out of the hole, but
it was so long that it never
came to an end, and when it measured
six times the length of the room
he had to cover his mouth again.
"I'm not laughing," he
said to me, quite fiercely.
He even
managed not to laugh (though
he did gulp) when we discovered
on the mantelpiece a photograph
of Joey in ordinary clothes,
the garments he wore before he
became a clown. You can't think
how absurd he looked in them.
But David didn't laugh.
Suddenly Joey was standing
beside us, it could not have
been more sudden though he had
come from beneath the table,
and he was wearing his pantomime
clothes (which he told us afterward
were the only clothes he had)
and his red and white face was
so funny that David made gurgling
sounds, which were his laugh
trying to force a passage.
I introduced
David, who offered his hand
stiffly, but Joey, instead
of taking it, put out his tongue
and waggled it, and this was
so droll that David had again
to save himself by clapping his
hand over his mouth. Joey thought
he had toothache, so I explained
what it really meant, and then
Joey said, "Oh, I shall soon
make him laugh," whereupon the
following conversation took place
between them:
"No, you sha'n't," said
David doggedly.
"Yes, I shall."
"No, you sha'n't
not."
"Yes, I shall
so."
"Sha'n't, sha'n't,
sha'n't."
"Shall, shall,
shall."
"You shut up."
"You're another."
By this time Joey was in a
frightful way (because he saw
he was getting the worst of it),
and he boasted that he had David's
laugh in his pocket, and David
challenged him to produce it,
and Joey searched his pockets
and brought out the most unexpected
articles, including a duck and
a bunch of carrots; and you could
see by his manner that the simple
soul thought these were things
which all boys carried loose
in their pockets.
I daresay David would have
had to laugh in the end, had
there not been a half-gnawed
sausage in one of the pockets,
and the sight of it reminded
him so cruelly of the poor dog's
fate that he howled, and Joey's
heart was touched at last, and
he also wept, but he wiped his
eyes with the duck.
It was at this touching moment
that the pantaloon hobbled in,
also dressed as we had seen him
last, and carrying, unfortunately,
a trayful of sausages, which
at once increased the general
gloom, for he announced, in his
squeaky voice, that they were
the very sausages that had lately
been the dog.
Then Joey seemed to have a
great idea, and his excitement
was so impressive that we stood
gazing at him. First, he counted
the sausages, and said that they
were two short, and he found
the missing two up the pantaloon's
sleeve. Then he ran out of the
room and came back with the sausage-machine;
and what do you think he did?
He put all the sausages into
the end of the machine that they
had issued from, and turned the
handle backward, and then out
came the dog at the other end!
Can you picture the joy of
David?
He clasped the dear little
terrier in his arms; and then
we noticed that there was a sausage
adhering to its tail. The pantaloon
said we must have put in a sausage
too many, but Joey said the machine
had not worked quite smoothly
and that he feared this sausage
was the dog's bark, which distressed
David, for he saw how awkward
it must be to a dog to have its
bark outside, and we were considering
what should be done when the
dog closed the discussion by
swallowing the sausage.
After that,
David had the most hilarious
hour of his life, entering
into the childish pleasures of
this family as heartily as if
he had been brought up on sausages,
and knocking the pantaloon down
repeatedly. You must not think
that he did this viciously; he
did it to please the old gentleman,
who begged him to do it, and
always shook hands warmly and
said "Thank you," when he had
done it. They are quite a simple
people.
Joey called
David and me "Sonny," and
asked David, who addressed him
as "Mr. Clown," to call him Joey.
He also told us that the pantaloon's
name was old Joey, and the columbine's
Josy, and the harlequin's Joeykin.
We were sorry to hear that
old Joey gave him a good deal
of trouble. This was because
his memory is so bad that he
often forgets whether it is your
head or your feet you should
stand on, and he usually begins
the day by standing on the end
that happens to get out of bed
first. Thus he requires constant
watching, and the worst of it
is, you dare not draw attention
to his mistake, he is so shrinkingly
sensitive about it. No sooner
had Joey told us this than the
poor old fellow began to turn
upside down and stood on his
head; but we pretended not to
notice, and talked about the
weather until he came to.
Josy and Joeykin, all skirts
and spangles, were with us by
this time, for they had been
invited to tea. They came in
dancing, and danced off and on
most of the time. Even in the
middle of what they were saying
they would begin to flutter;
it was not so much that they
meant to dance as that the slightest
thing set them going, such as
sitting in a draught; and David
found he could blow them about
the room like pieces of paper.
You could see by the shortness
of Josy's dress that she was
very young indeed, and at first
this made him shy, as he always
is when introduced formally to
little girls, and he stood sucking
his thumb, and so did she, but
soon the stiffness wore off and
they sat together on the sofa,
holding each other's hands.
All this time the harlequin
was rotating like a beautiful
fish, and David requested him
to jump through the wall, at
which he is such an adept, and
first he said he would, and then
he said better not, for the last
time he did it the people in
the next house had made such
a fuss. David had to admit that
it must be rather startling to
the people on the other side
of the wall, but he was sorry.
By this time tea was ready,
and Josy, who poured out, remembered
to ask if you took milk with
just one drop of tea in it, exactly
as her mother would have asked.
There was nothing to eat, of
course, except sausages, but
what a number of them there were!
hundreds at least, strings of
sausages, and every now and then
Joey jumped up and played skipping
rope with them. David had been
taught not to look greedy, even
though he felt greedy, and he
was shocked to see the way in
which Joey and old Joey and even
Josy eyed the sausages they had
given him. Soon Josy developed
nobler feelings, for she and
Joeykin suddenly fell madly in
love with each other across the
table, but unaffected by this
pretty picture, Joey continued
to put whole sausages in his
mouth at a time, and then rubbed
himself a little lower down,
while old Joey secreted them
about his person; and when David
wasn't looking they both pounced
on his sausages, and yet as they
gobbled they were constantly
running to the top of the stair
and screaming to the servant
to bring up more sausages.
You could see that Joey (if
you caught him with his hand
in your plate) was a bit ashamed
of himself, and he admitted to
us that sausages were a passion
with him.
He said he had never once in
his life had a sufficient number
of sausages. They had maddened
him since he was the smallest
boy. He told us how, even in
those days, his mother had feared
for him, though fond of a sausage
herself; how he had bought a
sausage with his first penny,
and hoped to buy one with his
last (if they could not be got
in any other way), and that he
always slept with a string of
them beneath his pillow.
While he was giving us these
confidences, unfortunately, his
eyes came to rest, at first accidentally,
then wistfully, then with a horrid
gleam in them, on the little
dog, which was fooling about
on the top of the sausage-machine,
and his hands went out toward
it convulsively, whereat David,
in sudden fear, seized the dog
in one arm and gallantly clenched
his other fist, and then Joey
begged his pardon and burst into
tears, each one of which he flung
against the wall, where it exploded
with a bang.
David refused to pardon him
unless he promised on wood never
to look in that way at the dog
again, but Joey said promises
were nothing to him when he was
short of sausages, and so his
wisest course would be to present
the dog to David. Oh, the joy
of David when he understood that
the little dog he had saved was
his very own! I can tell you
he was now in a hurry to be off
before Joey had time to change
his mind.
"All I ask of you," Joey said
with a break in his voice, "is
to call him after me, and always
to give him a sausage, sonny,
of a Saturday night."
There was a quiet dignity about
Joey at the end, which showed
that he might have risen to high
distinction but for his fatal
passion.
The last we saw of him was
from the street. He was waving
his tongue at us in his attractive,
foolish way, and Josy was poised
on Joeykin's hand like a butterfly
that had alighted on a flower.
We could not exactly see old
Joey, but we saw his feet, and
so feared the worst. Of course
they are not everything they
should be, but one can't help
liking them.
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