Boarding school students -- Fiction; College students -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Love stories
The Freak apologised and suggested Mary Ann, which so pleased his
patroness that she immediately lodged an order for twelve more cows.
The artist executed the commission with unflagging zeal and care, Miss
Welwyn following every stroke of the pencil with critical interest and
numbering off the animals as they were created.
About this time Master Percy Welwyn, who had fallen into a fitful
slumber, woke up and loudly expressed a desire for a commodity which he
described as "kike." His mother supplied his needs from a string-bag.
Refreshed and appeased, he slept anew.
Meanwhile the herd of cows had been completed, and The Freak was,
immediately set to work to find names for each. The appellation Mary
Ann had established a fatal precedent, for The Freak’s employer
ruthlessly demanded a double title for each of Mary Ann’s successors.
Appealed to for a personal contribution, she shook her small head
firmly: to her, evidently, in common with the rest of her sex,
destructive criticism of male endeavour was woman’s true sphere in life.
But when the despairing Freak, after submitting Mabel-Maud, Emily-Kate,
Elizabeth-Jane, and Maria-Theresa, made a second pathetic appeal for
assistance, the lady so far relented as to suggest "Seener Angler"--a
form of address which, though neither bovine nor feminine, seemed to me
to come naturally enough from the daughter of a Don, but caused Mr. and
Mrs. Welwyn to exchange glances.
At last the tale was completed,--I think the last cow was christened
"Bishop’s Stortford," through which station we were passing at the
moment,--and the exhausted Freak smilingly laid down his pencil. But no
one who has ever embarked upon that most comprehensive and interminable
of enterprises, the entertainment of a child, will be surprised to hear
that Miss Welwyn now laid a pudgy fore-finger upon the first cow, and
enquired:--
"Where _that_ cow going?"
"Cambridge," answered The Freak after consideration.
"Next one?"
"London."
"Next one?"
Freak thought again.
"Grandwich," he said.
The round face puckered.
"Not like it. Anuvver place!"
"You think of one," said The Freak boldly.
The small despot promptly named a locality which sounded like
"Tumpiton," and passed on pitilessly to the next cow.
"Where _that_ one going?" she enquired.
"It is n’t going: it’s coming back," replied The Freak, rather
ingeniously.
Strange to say, this answer appeared to satisfy the hitherto insatiable
infant, and the game was abruptly abandoned. Picking up The Freak’s
pencil, Miss Welwyn projected a seraphic smile upon its owner.
"You give this to Tilly?" she enquired, in a voice which most men know.
"Rather."
"Tilly, ducky, don’t act so greedy," came the inevitable maternal
correction. "Give back the young gentleman--"
"It’s all right," said The Freak awkwardly. "I don’t want it, really."
"But--"
There came a shriek from the engine, and the train slowed down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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