FullReads

On the afternoon of the twenty-third of the month, Mr. Watson, taking a meditative stroll through the wood which formed part of his property, was infuriated by the sight of a boy.

He was not a man who was fond of boys even in their proper place, and the sight of one in the middle of his wood, prancing lightly about among the nesting pheasants, stirred his never too placid mind to its depths.

He shouted.

The apparition paused.

“Here! Hi! you boy!”

“Sir?” said the stripling, with a winning smile, lifting his cap with the air of a D’Orsay.

“What business have you in my wood?”

“Not business,” corrected the visitor, “pleasure.”

“Come here!” shrilled the novelist.

The stranger receded coyly.

Mr. Watson advanced at the double.

His quarry dodged behind a tree.

For five minutes the great man devoted his powerful mind solely to the task of catching his visitor.

The latter, however, proved as elusive as the point of a half-formed epigram, and at the end of the five minutes he was no longer within sight.

Mr. Watson went off and addressed his keeper in terms which made that worthy envious for a week.

“It’s eddication,” he said subsequently to a friend at the “Cowslip Inn.” “You and me couldn’t talk like that. It wants eddication.”

For the next few days the keeper’s existence was enlivened by visits from what appeared to be a most enthusiastic bird’s-nester. By no other theory could he account for it. Only a boy with a collection to support would run such risks.

To the keeper’s mind the human boy up to the age of twenty or so had no object in life except to collect eggs. After twenty, of course, he took to poaching. This was a boy of about seventeen.

On the fifth day he caught him, and conducted him into the presence of Mr. Montagu Watson.

Mr. Watson was brief and to the point. He recognised his visitor as the boy for whose benefit he had made himself stiff for two days.

The keeper added further damaging facts.

“Bin here every day, he ‘as, sir, for the last week. Well, I says to myself, supposition is he’ll come once too often. He’ll come once too often, I says. And then, I says, I’ll cotch him. And I cotched him.”

The keeper’s narrative style had something of the classic simplicity of Julius Caesar’s.

Mr. Watson bit his pen.

“What you boys come for I can’t understand,” he said irritably. “You’re from the school, of course?”

“Yes,” said the captive.

“Well, I shall report you to your house-master. What is your name?”

“Dunstable.”

“Your house?”

“Day’s.”

“Very good. That is all.”

Dunstable retired.

His next appearance in public life was in Mr. Day’s study. Mr. Day had sent for him after preparation. He held a letter in his hand, and he looked annoyed.

“Come in, Dunstable. I have just received a letter complaining of you. It seems that you have been trespassing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am surprised, Dunstable, that a sensible boy like you should have done such a foolish thing. It seems so objectless. You know how greatly the head-master dislikes any sort of friction between the school and the neighbours, and yet you deliberately trespass in Mr. Watson’s wood.”

“I’m very sorry, sir.”

“I have had a most indignant letter from him–you may see what he says. You do not deny it?”

Dunstable ran his eye over the straggling, untidy sentences.

“No, sir. It’s quite true.”

“In that case I shall have to punish you severely. You will write me out the Greek numerals ten times, and show them up to me on Tuesday.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That will do.”

At the door Dunstable paused.

“Well, Dunstable?” said Mr. Day.

“Er–I’m glad you’ve got his autograph after all, sir,” he said.

Then he closed the door.

As he was going to bed that night, Dunstable met the house-master on the stairs.

“Dunstable,” said Mr. Day.

“Yes, sir.”

“On second thoughts, it would be better if, instead of the Greek numerals ten times, you wrote me the first ode of the first book of Horace. The numerals would be a little long, perhaps.”