How the Firstborn got two Christmas Dinners.

Otago Witness, Issue 2397, 8 February 1900, Page 66

How the Firstborn got two Christmas Dinners.

By H. B.

There 'was consternation at No. 10 Park road. My wife and I liad approached a i quarrel as closely as such is possible between j husband and wife in these days of sweetness and light. It all came about in this way. The Christmas midday dinner was preparing, and. in deforenee to popular custom, the house was up- | side down, I was strolling around, encouraging the workers with well-meant criticism. My wife suggested, with somewhat acrid point, that matters domestic would progress much more satisfactorily if I played with the children outside. I never argue — argument with one's wife lacks finality. I went outside. The children were playing around, misusing things in their usual rollicking way. The elder, a venturesome young pirate aged 7, with curly hair and a saucy smile, was hammering the water tap with a croquet mallet. The tap had been screwed tight with a wrench to discourage juvenile persistency, and the young man evidently regarded a croquet mallet as an instrument fashioned by Providence for circumventing maternal interference. The younger, aged 5, was busy with a shoe horn, transferring the garden bed on to the lawn. It seemed useless to put an end to thef-e miscreant activities. The extraordinary vitality of infants would have promptly suggested other villainies possiblymore mischievous still. So I betook myself to the hammock under the trees, lit a cigar, and pondered on the servitude of parents, and then I must have slept the sleep of the just. J was awakened by Nemesis, in the shape of my wife, irately demanding to know where "Davie" was. David, by the way^ is the name of the pirate aged 7. I remarked, I admit somewhat feebly: "Where is he?" My wife turned on her heel, with that slight shrug of the shoulder expressive of infinite contempt, and proceeded to hunt the premises for the truant. I also hunted — meekly — and at a strategic distance from my wife. To maintain an appearance of calm I relit my extinct cigar. Finally, it became apparent that the small David was not on the premi&es, and a very casual glance across the so-called park opposite sufficed to show he was not there either. The Christmas feast was waiting, but it was clearly impossible to sit down to it in the absence of the firstborn — not to mention the hopeless impracticability of eating with the domestic thermometer at a tension of 130deg. in the shade. At this stage my Avife asked me what I proposed to do ; why I was taking things so calmly ; why didn't Ido something. Even a worm will turn. I inquired mildly whether it would improve matters if I tore out my hair, or rushed around the block in an effort to get " under evens," or covered myself with sackcloth and ashes. She was impervious to satire, and favoured me with a concise lecturette upon the various sensible and useful things she would do if she were a man. Of course, my wife has no real faults. Tf she approximates to a small one, it is a tendency- to infallibility. Her suggestions, critically considered, were not worth a row of pins. I did not, however, tell her so. lam naturally fearless, but on this occasion I preferred discretion. One of her many suggestions was to scour the district in a cab. This was the opening I wanted, and I seized it, taking a cab as far as the police station round the corner. I dismissed the cabby, interviewed the police, put their collective intelligence on the track, and then quartered the vicinity with a wary eye upon spots likely lo prove attractive to runaway small boys. I was not greatly alarmed — as yet — because I concluded that in. broad daylight an active child of seven was not likely to come to much harm about the streets. All the same I was prepared to feel immensely relieved on finding him, partly because home appeared to be no place for me unleas I returned with him. In any case I determined to remain away until the domestic thermometer had time to cool down to something seasonable. After an hour's walk I thought of the Botanical Gardens. Like most youths, my hopeful has a passion for water. We live not very far from the gardens ; lie had often been there; and, all things considered, I decided to turn my energies in that direction. A rapid survey of the sylvan beauties of the gardens disclosed no boy. I had taken special care to examine the various grottoes, summer houses, and other enticing nooks of that particularly charming resort — with a blind eye, however, for their natural and artificial beauties — and was beginning to feel a certain uncomfortable tightness at the heart. A feeling of internal emptiness, no doubt, added materially to my distress — so closely are the menial and physical allied. The water — I did not altogether appreciate the notion of the water, and, do what I would, gruesome images of pallid small boys, lifeless and dripping, kept forcing themselves upon the background of my mind. [n desperation I made one more long hazard into the extreme north-eastern corner of the gardens. Approaching an overhanging rock, shaded by some native shrubs, I heard voices. One was evidently that of a small denizen of the slums, strident and nasal ; the other was unmistakably that of — Davie ! I peered cautiously round the. corner, anxious to observe without being observed, and this is what I saw. Iv tho centre of p smnll species of cave, on a flat stone, evidently imported with great effort, lay spread a series of dainties dear to the hearts of small boys — tarts, cakes, apples, oranges, tvio ginger beer bottles, 9 ml lollies of many varieties, but uniform indigostibility. On one side my young man, halle«~, and exceedingly happy ; on the other a genuine gannis, aged about 8, also hatless, unconscionably dirty, and doing the host witli a regally lavish air. A face pale, but tsinncd, a roguish eye, a ragged shirt, a pair of " &horts," patched, not wisely, but too well, and mysteriously held in place by

a half-brace attached diagonally. One of that extraordinary brigade of street children who are never young— babes in point of booklearning, men in point of self-dependence. This " Sir Oracle" of the gutter was at the moment endeavouring to persuade Davie to " 'aye another tart" — but Davie's cubic capacity had reached its limit, . for he politely, but firmly, declined. This seemed to amuse the oracle, who expostulated with — " Strike me, young un, YER can't eat; jess look 'ere." A tramp steamer taking in cargo under conditions of overtime would be a fool to that infant, his capacity for rapid absorption was something amazing. The regularly led Davie ■uas natmally greatly impressed. Ai this interesting- stage I made my entry, to the consternation of my son, but without in the least upsetting the imperturbability of the oracle. I endeavoured to impress my young man with a proper sense of his criminal enormities in silently ste.ilino- away from hearth and home, leaving alarmed parent? to scour the metropolis for him, not to mention the indefinitely postponed Chri-tmas dinner. Nothing of this kind had occr.ived to him, and though he said little in reply, he evidently thought I uas making mountains out of microscopic mole hills. Then I inquired of the oracle how they cam© to be just there, and whence the feast. I will not attempt to reproduce the quaint language of the infant's narrative. Briefly, it appeared that David, after leaving home, meandered aimlessly into the next street.-. Failing to find Sputa Glaus there, or a dragon, or any thingelse appropriate to the season, he became busy in the gutter, making a pie out of the accumulations of sand left by the rains. Here the oracle encountered him ; they chummed up; made a joint and several mud pies, and thenceforward became fast friend". "When interest in mud pies bepan to flag they appear to have cruised around in a more or less casual way, and the oracle finally suggested a " right-down reg'lar royal " feast in the gardens. An examination into ways and means disclosed 3d in the joint exchequer, which clearly would not provide anything- on a regal Fcale ; and the oracle had, therefore, accosted the first well-to-do "fat cove" they met with a request for a " shillin' to buy a Chrismus feed." The stout one had remarked slily upon the incongruity between David's clothes and street begging. This slab had not upset the oracle in the least. I gathered from him that he had unblushingly referred to Davie's garments as special Christmas apparel, and had enlarged (in a purely imaginative strain) upon the inferiority of his customery week-day clothes. Whether impressed by the argument, or by a sense of indiscriminating peace and good-will to small men, the fat man yielded up two shillings, and a two-and-threepenny feast resulted. I took the oracle's address for future reference, and I took the firttborn straight home. The prodigal's return was the occasion of such mental relief to my weary wife that punishment was never so nuich as mentioned ; and in the general amnesty even I shared. In point of fact, my detective acumen came m for conjugal praise, which rather surprised me, all things considered, as my wif& and the police had spent several fruitless hours in a house-to-house canvass of the surrounding district. Christmas dinner that day commenced at the unusual hour of 6 p.m. Secretly I remain convinced that the firstborn enjoyed his al fresco dinner in the gardens far better than the statelier affair at home in the evening. You pee, he had a hand in compiling the menu fur the first, but was not consulted about the second. The oracle is now a reputable member of society. He is handy boy at No. 10 Park road, on the large salary of 2s 6d per week, plus keep and cast-off clothes. He puts in a certain lirae daily in a frenzied struggle with the subleties of the alphabet and in defiling copy books with pothooks and hangei-3 of grotesque designs ; and he has given up smoking stub ends of cigarettes. — Australian Pastoralists' Review.