'Where's your mother?'

'She's in heaven,' I answered simply. 'She went there two years ago.'

'Yes,' broke in The Seraph eagerly, 'but she's comin' back some day to make a _weally_ home for us.'

'Shut up!' said Angel gruffly, poking him with his elbow.

'The Seraph's very little,' I explained apologetically; 'he doesn't understand.'

The old gentleman put his hand in the pocket of his dressing-gown.

'Bantling,' he said with his droll smile, 'do you like peppermint bull's-eyes?'

'Yes,' said The Seraph, 'I like them--one for each of us.'

Whereupon this extraordinary man began throwing us peppermints as fast as we could catch them. It was surprising how we began to feel at home with him, as though we had known him for years.

He had traveled all over the world, it seemed, and he brought many curious things to the window to show us. One of these was a starling, whose wicker cage he placed on the sill where the sunlight fell.

He had got the bird, he said, from one of the crew of a trading vessel off the coast of Java. The sailor had brought it all the way from Devon for company; and he added, 'The brute had put out both its eyes so that it would learn to talk more readily; so now, you see, the poor little fellow is quite blind.'

'Blind--blind--blind!' echoed the starling briskly,--'blind--blind--blind!'

He took it from its cage on his finger. It hopped up his arm till it reached his cheek, and there it began to peck at his whiskers, crying all the while in its shrill, lonely tones, 'Blind--blind--blind!'

We three were entranced; and an idea that was swiftly forming in my mind struggled for expression.

If this wonderful old man had, as he said, sailed the seas from Land's End to Ceylon, was it not possible that he had seen, even fought with, real pirates? Might he not have followed hot on the trail of hidden treasure? My cheeks burned as I tried to put the question.

'Did you,' I began,--'did you--'

'Well?' he encouraged. 'Did I what, John?'

'Oh, did you,' I burst out, 'ever see a pirate ship, an' pirates--real ones?'

His face lit up.

'Surely,' he replied casually, 'many an one.'

'Praps,' ventured Angel, with an excited laugh, 'praps you're one yourself!'

The old gentleman searched our eager faces with his wide-open, sea-blue eyes; then he looked cautiously into the room behind him, and, being apparently satisfied that no one could overhear, he put his hand to the side of his mouth, and said in a loud, hoa.r.s.e whisper,--

'That I am. Pirate as ever was!'

I think you could have knocked me down with a feather. I know my knees shook and the room reeled. The Seraph was the first to recover, piping cheerfully,--

'I yike piwates!'

'Yes,' repeated the old gentleman, reflectively, 'pirate as ever was.

The things I've seen and done would fill the biggest book you ever saw, and it'd make your hair stand on end to read it--what with fights, and murders, and hangings, and storms, and shipwreck, and the hunt for gold!

Many a sweet schooner or frigate I've sunk, or taken for myself, and there isn't a port on the South Seas where women don't hush their children's crying with the fear of Captain Pegg!'

Then he added hastily, as though he feared he had gone too far,--

'But I'm a changed man, mark you--a reformed man. If things suit me pretty well here, I don't think I shall break out again. It is just that you chaps seem so sympathetic, makes me tell you all this; but you must swear never to breathe a word of it, for no one knows but you. My son and daughter-in-law think I'm an archaeologist. It'd be an awful shock to them to find that I'm a pirate.'

We swore the blackest secrecy, and were about to ply him with a hundred questions, when we saw a maid carrying a large tray enter the room behind him.

Captain Pegg, as I must now call him, gave us a gesture of warning and began to lower his window. A pleasant aroma of roast beef came across the alley. The next instant the flowered dressing-gown had disappeared and the window opposite stared blankly as before.

Angel drew a deep breath. 'Did you notice,' he said, 'how different he got once he had told us he was a pirate--wilder and rougher, and used more sailor words?'

'However did you guess it first?' I asked admiringly.

'I think I know a pirate when I see one,' he returned loftily. 'But oh, I say, wouldn't Mrs. Handsomebody be waxy if she knew?'

'An' wouldn't Mary Ellen be scared stiff if _she_ knew?'

'An' won't we have fun? Hurray!'

We rolled in ecstasy on the much-enduring bed.

We talked excitedly of the possibilities of such a wonderful and dangerous friendship. And as it turned out, none of our imaginings equaled what really happened.

The afternoon pa.s.sed quickly. As the hands of our alarm clock neared the hour of four we obliterated the traces of our sojourn on the bed as well as we could; and when Mrs. Handsomebody entered, she found us sitting in a row in the three cane-bottomed chairs on which we hung our clothes at night.

The scolding she gave us was even longer and more humiliating to our manhood than usual. She shook her hard white finger near our faces, and said that for very little she would write to our father and complain of our actions.

'Now,' she said, in conclusion, 'give your faces and hands a thorough washing, and comb your hair, which is disgraceful; then come quietly down to tea.'

The door closed behind her.

'What beats me,' said Angel, lathering his hands, 'is why that one white hair on her chin wiggles so when she jaws us. I can't keep my eyes off it.'

'It wiggles,' piped The Seraph, as he dragged a brush over his curls, ''cos it's nervous, an' I wiggle when she scolds, too, 'cos _I'm_ nervous.'

'Don't you worry, old man,' Angel responded gayly, 'we'll take care of you.'

We were in fine spirits despite our scolding. Indeed, we almost pitied Mrs. Handsomebody for her ignorance of the wonders among which she had her being.

Here she was, fussing over some stuffed birds in a gla.s.s case, when a live starling, who could talk, had perched near her very window-sill!

She spent hours in conversation with her Unitarian minister, while a real pirate lived next door!

It was pitiful, and yet it was very funny. We found it hard to go quietly down to tea with such thoughts in our minds, and after five hours in our bedroom.

III