"What other?" grumbled Hugh John, sulking. He felt that Cissy was taking an unfair advantage.

"Oh, _you_ know," said Cissy, "what I did to you a little while ago."

"'Twasn't to be till after," urged our hero, half relenting. Like a woman, Cissy was quick to see her advantage.

"Just a little one to be going on with?" she pleaded.

Hugh John sighed. Girls were incomprehensible. Prissy liked church and being washed. Cissy, of whom he had more hopes, liked kissing.

"Well," he said, "goodness knows why you like it. I'm sure I don't and never shall. But--"

He ran to the corner and looked round into the stable-yard. All was quiet along the Potomac. He walked more sternly to the other corner, and glanced into the orchard. Peace reigned among the apple-trees. He came slowly and dejectedly back. In the inmost corner of the angle of the stable, and behind the thickest of the ivy bush, he straightened himself up and compressed his lips, as he had done when the Smoutchies were tying him up by the thumbs. He felt however that to beat Nipper Donnan he was ready to undergo anything--even this. No sacrifice was too great.

"All right," he said. "Come on, Cissy, and get it over--only don't be too long."

Cissy was thirteen, and tall for her age, but though fully a year younger, Hugh John was tall also, so that when she came joyously forward and put her hands on his shoulders, their eyes were exactly on a level.

"You needn't go shutting your eyes and holding your breath, as if it were medicine. 'Tisn't so very horrid," said Cissy, with her hands still on his shoulder.

"Go on!" said Hugh John in a m.u.f.fled voice, nerving himself for the coming crisis.

Cissy's lips just touched his, rested a moment, and were gone.

Hugh John let out his breath with a sigh of relief like an explosion; then he stepped back, and promptly wiped off love's gage with the sleeve of his coat.

"Hold on," cried Cissy; "that isn't fair. You know it ain't!"

Hugh John knew it and submitted.

Cissy swept the tumbled hair from about her eyes. She had a very red spot on either cheek; but she had made up her mind, and was going through with it properly now.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'WASN'T IT SPLENDID?'"]

"Oh, I don't mind," she said; "I can easily do it over again--for keeps this time, mind!"

Then she kissed him once, twice, and three times. It was nicer than kissing Janet Sheepshanks, he thought; and as for Prissy--well, that was different too.

A little hammer thumped in his heart, and made it go "jumpetty-jump,"

as if it were lame, or out of breath, or had one leg shorter than the other. After all Ciss was the nicest girl there was, if she did behave stupidly and tiresomely about this. "Just once?" He would do it after all. It wasn't much to do--to give Cissy such a treat.

So he put his arms about her neck underneath her curls, pulled her close up to him, and kissed her. It felt funny, but rather nice. He did not remember doing that to any one since he was a little boy, and his mother used to come and say "Good-night" to him. Then he opened his arms and pushed Cissy away. They walked out through the orchard yards apart, as if they had just been introduced. Cissy's eyes were full of the happiness of love's achievement. As for Hugh John, he was crimson to the neck and felt infinitely degraded in his own estimation.

They came to the orchard wall, where there was a stile which led in the direction of Oaklands. Cissy ran up the rude steps, but paused on the top instead of going over. Hugh John was looking the other way.

Somehow, do what he would, his eyes could not be brought to meet hers.

"Are you not coming?" she said coaxingly.

"No," he answered, gruffly enough; "to-morrow will do for Billy."

"Good-night," she said softly. Her voice was almost a whisper.

Hugh John grunted inarticulately.

"Look here!" she said, bending down till her eyes were on a level with his chin. He could not help glancing up once. There was a mischievous smile in them. It had never struck him before that Cissy was very pretty. But somehow now he was glad that she was. Prissy was nice-looking too--but, oh! quiet different. He continued to look at Cissy Carter standing with the stile between them.

"Wasn't it splendid!" she said, still keeping her shining eyes on his.

"Oh, middling," said Hugh John, and turning on his heel he went into the stable without even saying "Good-bye." Cissy watched him with a happy smile on her face. Love was her fetish--her Sambo Soulis--and she had worshipped long in secret. Till now she had let the worm concealment prey upon her cheek. True, it had not as yet affected her appet.i.te nor kept her a moment awake.

But now all was different. Her heart sang, and the strangest thing was that all the landscape, the fields and woods, and everything seemed to be somehow painted in brighter colours. In fact, they looked just as they do when you bend down and look at them through between your legs.

You know the way.

CHAPTER XXVI.

AN IMPERIAL BIRTHDAY.

The next day was General Napoleon Smith's birthday. Outwardly it looked much like other days. There were not, as there ought to have been, great, golden imperial capital N's all over the sky. Nature indeed was more than usually calm; but, to strike a balance, there was excitement enough and to spare in and about the house of Windy Standard. Very early, when it was not yet properly light, but only sort of misty white along the wet gra.s.s and streaky combed-out grey up above in the sky, Prissy waked Sir Toady Lion, who promptly rolled over to the back of his cot, and stuck his funny head right down between the wall and the edge of the wire mattress, so that only his legs and square st.u.r.dy back could be seen.

Toady Lion always preferred to sleep in the most curious positions. In winter he usually turned right round in bed till his head was far under the bed-clothes, and his fat, twinkly, pink toes reposed peacefully on the pillow. Nothing ever mattered to Toady Lion. He could breathe through his feet just as well as through his mouth, and (as we have seen) much better than through his nose. The attention of professors of physiology is called to this fact, which can be established upon the amplest evidence and the most unimpeachable testimony. In summer he generally rolled out of bed during the first half hour, and slept comfortably all the rest of the night on the floor.

"Get up, Toady Lion," said his sister softly, so as not to waken Hugh John; "it is the birthday."

"Ow don' care!" grumbled Toady Lion, turning over and over three or four times very fast till he had all the bed-clothes wrapped about him like a coc.o.o.n; "don' care wat it is. I'se goin' to sleep some more.

Don't go 'prog' me like that!"

"Come," said Prissy gently, to tempt him; "we are going to give Hugh John a surprise, and sing a lovely hymn at his door. You can have my ivory Prayer-book----"

"For keeps?" asked Toady Lion, opening his eyes with his first gleam of interest.

"Oh, no, you know that was mother's, and father gave it to me to take care of. But you shall have it to hold in your hand while we are singing."

"Well, then, can I have the picture of the anzel Michael castin' out the baddy-baddy anzels and hittin' the Bad Black Man O-such-a-whack on the head?"

Prissy considered. The print was particularly dear to her heart, and she had spent a happy wet Sat.u.r.day colouring it. But she did want to make the birthday hymn a success, and Toady Lion had undeniably a fine voice when he liked to use it--which was not often.

"All right," she said, "you can have my 'Michael and the Bad Angels,'

but you are not to spoil it."

"Shan't play then," grumbled Toady Lion, who knew well the strength of his position, and was as troublesome as a _prima donna_ when she knows her manager cannot do without her--"shan't sing, not unless 'Michael and the Bad Angels' is mine to spoil if I like."

"But you won't--will you, dear Toady Lion?" pleaded Prissy. "You'll keep it so nice and careful, and then next Sat.u.r.day, when I have my week's money and you are poor, I'll buy it off you again."

"Shan't promise," said the Obstinate Brat--as Janet, happily inspired, had once called him after being worsted in an argument, "p'rhaps yes, and p'rhaps no."