A Knight on Wheels. Ian Hay
frankly, "but some of it sounds pretty silly. Is your Uncle Joseph a nice man? Do you like him?"
"Yes," said Philip stoutly. "He is very kind to me."
"He sounds a funny man," mused Peggy. "I shall talk to Mother about him. I must go now. It is getting dark."
She slipped off the gate, and Philip perceived, for the first time, that for all her youthfulness she was half a head taller than himself.
"Where do you live?" enquired Philip, forgetting his previous intentions.
"Over there, where the lamp-posts are. Goodnight, Phil!"
"Good night, Pegs!"
The children shook hands gravely. Both desired most ardently to ask the same question; but Philip was restrained by his principles (now returning hurriedly to duty), and Miss Peggy by maidenly reserve. But each secretly made the same resolution at the same moment.
II
Philip found his uncle smoking a pipe in a big armchair before the study fire. He was jotting down calculations on a blotting-pad.
"The opposite sex has its uses, Philip," he said. "To-day, thanks to the sentimental credulity of a number of estimable but credulous females, we have raked in forty-seven pounds ten. With that sum we shall be able to do some real good."
"How are you going to spend it this week, Uncle Joseph?" asked Philip.
"Considering the season of the year, I think the best thing I can do is to devote practically all of it to Christmas benevolences—chiefly of the coal-and-blanket order. I have no quarrel with the very young, and I don't like to think of any child, male or female, going hungry or cold on Christmas Day. You can do a lot with forty-seven pounds ten, Philip. For about fourpence you can distend a small stomach to its utmost capacity, and you can wrap it up and keep it warm for very little more. What a blessed thing it is that these misguided females have some one to divert their foolish offerings into wise channels. This very week, but for us, forty-seven pounds ten would have dropped into the banking-account of some professional beggar, or gone to bolster up some perfectly impossible enterprise, such as the overthrow of the Church of Rome or the conversion of the Jews."
Uncle Joseph laughed whimsically.
"There is a touch of humour about it all," he said. "It would appeal to the editor of the 'Searchlight.' I must tell him all about it some day—when I go out of business! Yes, we'll stick to coal-and-blanket charities at present, Philip. After Christmas I want to tackle the question of emigration again. Now get your writing-pad. I want to dictate rough copies of the letters for next Monday."
Uncle Joseph filled a fresh pipe, and began to stimulate his epistolary faculties by walking about the room. Philip silently took his seat at the table.
"Aubrey Buck must go," was Uncle Joseph's first announcement. "Let us make a start upon his successor. His name shall be Arthur Brown, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Trinity is so big that it is very hard to trace all its late Fellows, especially if their name is Brown. John's is good, too, but we did very well with a Johnian missionary to Central Patagonia a couple of years ago, and we must divide our favours impartially. Now, take this down:—
"Dear Madam—Not long ago I was like yourself—a personality in the world of letters. Not of letters such as this, which (between you and I) it is with the utmost repugnance that I have brought myself to sit down and address to a fellow-scribe—
"That's a purposely turgid and ungrammatical sentence, but she won't know. It does me good to dictate it—
"—but of the great world of Literature, where the rarest spirits assemble and meet together—
"That's out of the Prayer Book, and fits in rather well there—
"—spirits that live as gods, and take sweet counsel together.
"That last bit is King David, but she will probably think it is Ella Wheeler Wilcox—
"The busy life that you lead, as one of the protagonists of modern thought—
"She won't know what a protagonist is, but it will please her to be called one—
"—deprives me of the hope that you can possibly have found time to glance through my poor works. Yet, believe me, even I have had my little circle. I, too, have walked in the groves of the Academy with my cluster of disciples, striving to contribute my mite to the sum-total of our knowledge.
"Now we might come to the point, I think—
"But my course is run; my torch extinguished. Two years ago I was attacked by paralysis of the lower limbs—
"Always say 'lower limbs' when talking to a lady, Philip—
"—lower limbs, followed by general prostration of the entire system. I am now sufficiently recovered to don my armour once more; but alas! my occupation is gone. My Fellowship expired six months ago, and has not been renewed. My pupils are dispersed to the corners of the earth. Entirely without private means, I have migrated to London, where I am endeavouring to eke out an existence in a populous but inexpensive quarter of the town—the existence of a retired scholar and gentleman, save the mark!—
"That's a good touch, Philip!
"—by clerical work.
"No, don't put that. She will think clerical means something to do with the Church. Say 'secretarial' instead—
"Have you any typing you could give me to do? I hate asking, and I know that you know I hate asking; but there is a subconscious, subliminal bond, subjective and objective—
"I don't know what that means, but it sounds splendid—
"—that links together all brothers of the pen; and I venture to hope that in appealing to you, of all our great brotherhood, I shall not appeal in vain.
"We had better wind up with a classical quotation of some kind," concluded Uncle Joseph. "She will expect it from a Don with paralytic legs, I fancy. Reach me down that Juvenal, Philip. I have a notion. Yes, here we are:—
"Possibly you may ask, and ask with justice, why the University has done nothing for me. I did make an appeal to the authorities; but—well, a man hates to have to appeal twice for a thing that should by rights be granted without appeal at all; and I desisted. The University is rich and respectable; I am worn-out and shabby. What could I do?
Plurima sunt quæ
Non homines audent pertusa dicere læna.
"Get that down right, Philip. She may take it to some educated person to get it translated."
"What does it mean, Uncle Joseph?" asked Philip, carefully copying out the tag.
"It means, roughly, that a man with patches on his trousers cannot afford to ask for much. Now to wind up:—
"So I pray you—not of your charity, but of your good-comradeship—to send me a little work to do. The remuneration I leave to you. I am too destitute—and perhaps too proud—to drive a bargain.
Yours fraternally,
Arthur Brown.
"Put 'Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.' You can add the Islington address when James Nimmo has fixed it up. Then type it out. Do about seventy copies. I have been going through the lady members of the Authors' Society, and have picked out most of its female geniuses. Now for next week's list for the Kind Young Hearts! Three or four of the old items can stand—particularly Papodoodlekos: he is a very lucrative old gentleman—but the others must come out. I shall not send the revised list, though, to your friend—what was that humourist's name?"
"Mr. Julius Mablethorpe," said Philip.
"That's the man. Now I think of it, I have read some novels by him. I shall not send him the revised list, but I am grateful to him, all the same,