BOBBIE.
TT is one thing to have a little girl to look after, and another to take charge of a biggish boy even for a short time. That is what the lone woman living under a small section of a huge London roof (whom our readers may remember as taking care of " Anzac " and being taken care of by " Polly") felt when she was asked to receive for a little while Polly's brother Bob. " A school- boy ! Nearly thirteen! But there is nothing for him to do in this flat ! Good gracious ! r don't think I can do it." That is what she said. But no one more suitable offered, and Bob came. " You won't mind ? " said the mistress meekly to the East End maid. " Much leas trouble than girls," replied the latter, and left her employer to puzzle over one more of the queer conclusions to which they come at the other end of the town. Bob, like his younger sister, is small for his age and red-haired, but, unlike her, he is correctly pretty. He has no freckles, and has big brown eyes instead of her little forget-me-not pair. The moment of arrival in a strange house is a trying one for a little boy. Bob came in unannounced and before he was expected; consequently the pet dog flew at him. The
dog does not bite, but he thinks it a duty to test the nerves of caller: below a certain size. Bob's social courage is, however, unassailable. He did not appear to see the dog until he had shaken hands with
the lady. Then he stooped to him and began to cajole Lion dog of Peking," he said, "don't be angry. Your eyes will corm out of your head, you sweet toad." The Pekingese succumbed, and before the afternoon was over so did his mistrees. With the dog balanced upon his bare knees, and a piece of broad and margarine crowned with jam in his hand, he smiled pleasantly at his hostess. A ray of watery sun lit up the square, and Bobbie drew a long breath of content. " It's nice here," he said ; " nicer than IC dared hope." Bobbie is one of those persons who have the good fortune to be born pleased. Wherever he finds himself he "likes himself," as the saying is He loves his home, though since the war he has hardly been in it, poor little chap. He likes his school, " all but the lessons," and he likes his master without any quali- fication. The latter is always alluded to in connexion with the word " decent," and is even said to be at times so unlike a school- master that you could hardly think he was one ! By all accounts he must be a remarkably good fellow. Manners, morals, and mirth are certainly instilled at his establishment. As for book- learning, Bobbie's hostess could never discover that he had any. His lack of it was marvellous considering his intelligence; but then she knows no Latin or Greek, and perhaps Bobbie does.
The only thing Bobbie does not like is London, though after he had been to Madame Tussaud's and the Tower he said he quits understood why people lived in it ! The son of a landscape artist, he has an almost precocious sense of the beauty of Nature, but apparently none at all of the picturesque. Streets, crowds, and squalor revolt him. "I suppose these awful-looking people have to live in this place," he said when taken through Soho on a " mar- malade and cheese hunt." No buildings pleased him very much. Churches he regarded as " not for the holidays," so his hostel: took him to Kew to get him away from bricks and mortar. The weather smiled, and surely so ill-assorted a pair never enjoyed that paradisiacal garden so much. The rhododendrons are out, most of the big trees are still bare, but the little ones are spangled with emeralds. The lady is not particularly active, and she strolled, while the boy ran about like a young dog hunting not smells but sights, getting close to the patches of colour which hailed him from afar, and coming back to drag his companion to look at spring flowers in the grass. " It seems as if we couldn't go back into ths 'bus," he panted. Bobbie has of course a certain familiarity with pictures. He has been accustomed from his cradle to look at them seriously, and to look upon the world in relation to them. He considers the paintableness of all that he sees. " Did yea know that John has gone to the front ? " he asked on his way home. It had to be explained that he meant " the great John," not his own young cousin. His interlocutor was obliged to confer:; that she did not admire the great man in question. " Well, no more do I, in a way," said Bobbie. " Father's things are very different. Of course John's are good and father's are good-looking." Then, after a pause as though his words had suggested a further criticism to himself, he added : " I suppose that is the difference."
Bobbie was very keen to see the waxworks, of which he had heard a great. deal at schooL His interest in the show was keen, but in talking about them he did not, to his hostess's disappointment, exhibit his usual intelligence. He glanced respectfully at the Generals, could not be bothered with the Government, and remained spell- bound in front of bearded and bedizened Monarchs of the Far Past. It is wearisome to stare at stage properties, but for all that there is to a grown person a certain relief in turning from sham men to real dolls. There is something uncanny about so many lifeless and lifelike figures. They produce a creepy sensation. There is about an effigy a suggestion of a corpse.
Perhaps the most successful of the many cheap treats which London afforded to the two pleasure-seekers was the " Tower." At first Bobbie seemed bored. Sir Walter Ralegh's sufferings left him unaccountably cold, though he warmed up to hear about Guy Fawkes in the "Little Ease." Why do children take such a fearful joy in the recital of punishments ? But what really delighted him was the ancient guns. He groaned in a sort of ecstasy in front of their muzzles, and in spite of the quaintly worded injunction at the entrance of the Armoury, " Touch not the arms," he could not keep his caressing hands off them. The sight of chased and inlaid sword-hilts transported him, and the thought of the havoc to be wrought in the ranks of the enemy by some horrid old instrument for belching out stones flushed his cheeks " as in a day of battle." The notion of cutting off heads with so lovely a piece of workman- ship as a sword whose handle was inwrought with mother-of-pearl seemed to bring together the savage and the artist in the child and to fill his very soul with joy. A kind wounded soldier explained the working of a blunderbuss in a case and talked a long time to a fascinated listener. No little girl ever looked longer or more enviously at a " Paris model " than Bobbie looked at a small suit of armour labelled " For a Boy." He left it on the insistence of his companion, walking backwards for a few steps that he might not lose the sight. He had hardly been persuaded out of the Armoury when he remembered that he had not seen " the block "- and that, together with a model of "the rack," engaged him for what seemed to his hostess a terribly long time. At last he was enticed away to the railway station, where hunger was beginning to cool his excitement till he caught sight of a Highlander with a dirk in his stocking. Fear seized his hostess lest he should ask the terribly smart-looking officer to let him handle it ; but manners prevailed, and he did nothing but stare.
In the evening Bobbie was unusually silent. All of a sudden be looked up with fright in his eyes. " It will be an awful thing after the war to know you've killed some one," he said—" to wake up and find you are a mur—" " Oh, not that !" Bobbie exclaimed. His hostess roused from her book to note the sharp revulsion of feeling, anxious for the honour of our gallant soldiers, but not altogether ill-pleased to see the savage mood gone. Bobbie said no more, but as he arranged the card-table he murmured : " It's hard on a chap." If such a terrible thing could happen as the con- reription of little boys, Bobbie would be overjoyed. He would caress his weapons, learn his drill, do his duty, and adore his captain. He would have moments of great heartsickness and fear—but not for himself. These thoughts went through the mind of his hostess as she endeavoured to play bezique. Neither party was really familiar with the game, which was played nightly for low stakes of sweets) upon such portion of the card-table as was not taken up by a huge volume of the penultimate edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica containing the rules of the game, to which constant refer- ence had to be made. In a few minutes Bobbie had forgotten every- thing, blood and glory and scruples and shining armour—every- thing except that he was winning, and would soon eat the sweets.
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