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Page 9
"What's this?" said she, stirring the helmet disdainfully with her toe.
"Relic of the Great War. The Crown Prince used to wear it in wet weather to
keep the crown dry."
Aunt Angela sniffed and picked up the sock with the fire-tongs. "And this?"
"A sock, of course," I explained. "An emergency sock of my own invention.
It has three exits, you will observe, very handy in case of fire."
"Hump!" said Aunt Angela.
Edward returned bearing his offerings, a gent's rimless boater, a doorknob,
six inches of lead-piping and half a bottle of cod-liver oil.
"Hump!" said Aunt Angela.
No more was said of it that night. Aunt Angela resumed her sewing, Edward
his _Gertie_, I my slumb--, my meditations. Nor indeed was the jumble sale
again mentioned, a fact which in itself should have aroused my suspicions;
but I am like that, innocent as a sucking-dove. I had put the matter out of
my mind altogether until yesterday evening, when, hearing the sound of
laboured breathing and the frantic clanking of a bicycle pump proceeding
from the shed, I went thither to investigate, and was nearly capsized by
Edward charging out.
"It's gone," he cried--"gone!" and pawed wildly for his stirrup.
"What has?" I inquired.
"'The Limit,'" he wailed. "She's picked ... lock ... muck-room with a
hairpin, sent ... Limit ... jumble sale!"
He sprang aboard his cycle and disappeared down the high road to St.
Gwithian, pedalling like a squirrel on a treadmill, the tails of his new
mackintosh spread like wings on the breeze. So Aunt Angela with serpentine
guile had deferred her raid until the last moment and then bagged "The
Limit," the pride of the muck-room.
"The Limit," I should tell you, is (or was) a waterproof. It is a faithful
record of Edward's artistic activities during the last thirty years, being
decorated all down the front with smears of red, white and green paint.
Here and there it has been repaired with puncture patches and strips of
surgical plaster, but more often it has not. As Edward is incapable of
replacing a button and Aunt Angela refuses to touch the "Limit," he knots
himself into it with odds and ends of string and has to be liberated by his
ally, the cook, with a kitchen knife. Edward calls it his "garden coat,"
and swears he only wears it on dirty jobs, to save his new mackintosh, but
nevertheless he is sincerely attached to the rag, and once attempted to
travel to London to a Royal Society beano in it, and was only frustrated in
the nick of time.
So the oft-threatened "Limit" had been reached at last. I laughed heartily
for a moment, then a sudden cold dread gripped me, and I raced upstairs and
tore open my wardrobe. Gregory, the glory of Gopherville, had gone too!
A word as to Gregory. If you look at a map of Montana and follow a line due
North through from Fort Custer you will not find Gopherville, because a
cyclone removed it some eight years ago. Nine years ago, however, Gregory
and I first met in the "Bon Ton Parisian Clothing Store," in the main (and
only) street of Gopherville, and I secured him for ten dollars cash. He is
a mauve satin waistcoat, embroidered with a chaste design of anchors and
forget-me-nots, subtly suggesting perennial fidelity. The combination of
Gregory and me proved irresistible at all Gopherville's social events.
Wishing to create a favourable atmosphere, I wore Gregory at my first party
in England. I learn that Aunt Angela disclaimed all knowledge of me during
that evening.
Subsequently she made several determined attempts to present Gregory to the
gardener, the butcher's boy and to an itinerant musician as an overcoat for
his simian colleague. Had I foiled her in all of these to be beaten in the
end? No, not without a struggle. I scampered downstairs again and, wresting
Harriet's bicycle from its owner's hands (Harriet is the housemaid and it
was her night out), was soon pedalling furiously after Edward.
The jumble sale was being held in the schools and all St. Gwithian was
there, fighting tooth and nail over the bargains. A jumble sale is to _rus_
what remnant sales are to _urbs_. I battled my way round to each table in
turn, but nowhere could I find my poor dear old Gregory. Then I saw Etta,
the presiding genius, and butted my way towards her.
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