HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. BY WILLIAM BENNETT.

THE boy home for the holidays is always suspected of all manner of mischief.

I know that I, Charley Mitford, found it so when I was home for my last Christmas holidays. Everything that went wrong was sure to be my fault; sometimes I was blamed justly, but generally, I thought, unjustly. I will tell you about one scrape of mine.

My father had invited a middle-aged gentleman, who was a learned professor, and a terrible book-worm, to spend a week or two at our house.

I didn’t like Dr. Millbank, and he hated me and all other boys. I generally kept out of his way; but one day, the doctor being in a more friendly and talkative mood than ordinary, I ventured to accompany him into the library, taking care only to speak to him when he condescended to speak to me.

The doctor, however, soon became lost in a book, and altogether forgot my presence. I accordingly retired into the recess of a window, and also engaged myself260 with a book on old sports and pastimes. Dr. Millbank’s back was turned upon me, and he was thoroughly lost in his studies.

Now, learned as was the doctor in his special subjects—mostly of the dry-as-dust order—he knew but little of the natural history of magpies; and at the present moment my interest and the interest of my story is with one of those birds, Jack by name.

He was a tame magpie, a clever talker, and a great pet in our household, though he was as mischievous, almost, as they said I was.

He came hopping into the library, unseen by the doctor, but watched by my observant eyes. He stealthily posted himself on a chair; it seemed that there was something on his mind.

While he was ensconced in his citadel of the chair, he kept his cunning, twinkling eyes fixed on the doctor’s silver spectacles on his nose. Magpies are fond of pilfering bright or glittering articles, and with secret joy I saw that Jack was meditating a theft.

Perched, however, in his elevated position, and seeing no hope for the present of purloining the spectacles, he stealthily took the leather case which the doctor had laid upon the table after taking the glasses therefrom. Then he stealthily hopped out of the room.

A few minutes later, the doctor, weary of his book, took his spectacles from his nose, and naturally enough, sought the case to place them in. The case was not to be found.

“This is most mysterious. I know I placed it on the261 table. Dear me! dear me! always something to annoy me!”

It was very wrong, no doubt, to laugh at the misfortunes or annoyances of other people, but I was home for the holidays, you know, and I really couldn’t help it. He laid down his spectacles on the table, while he took a walk round the room, frowning in his displeasure and mystification. Then he espied me lounging with outstretched legs in the recess with my book of sports.

“Ah, ah, Master Charles, and so you are the culprit, are you?”

“Sir!” I exclaimed, affecting to be ignorant of his meaning.

“My spectacle-case—where is it?”

“Spectacle-case? I have not got it.”

“What! Why, I laid it beside me on the table, and now it is gone! You should not take such liberties with your elders.”

“Why, sir, I have not moved from the spot where I am sitting, and it is a very hard case for me to be accused of removing it.”

“Your joke is impertinent at a time like this. You are the only person, as I said before, who has been in the library since I have been reading here——”

“Excuse me, doctor——”

“Do not interrupt me, Master Charles. I must ring the bell for your father. Boys home for the holidays take so much license nowadays that really they have become an intolerable nuisance. There should be no school holidays if I could have my way.”

262

As he spoke, the doctor advanced to the bell-rope. He walked with his back toward the door, and as he did so my old friend Jack, the magpie, came hop-hop-hopping in, and his thievish eye at once fell upon the silver specs, which the enraged man had laid down on the very spot on the table where before he had laid the case which had so disgraced me in his eyes.

Jack quietly hopped upon his old quarters in the armchair and as quickly possessed himself of the envied trophy, and I became the innocent witness of another theft much greater than the last.

Deeper disgrace to me, I thought; but as the doctor was evidently sure I was the culprit, and was not likely to accept any explanation from me, I thought it best to keep quiet, though by this I no doubt made myself Jack’s accessory.

A servant answered the bell, and he was requested to send my father hither, and, of course, my father came.

“Well, doctor, what can I have the pleasure of doing for you?” he inquired. “You appear agitated—what is the matter?”

“Look here, sir, if you please,” said the doctor to my father. “I laid my spectacle-case on the table where you see my glasses,” and here he pointed to the table, and my father looked on the spot indicated, and said:

“Where, doctor, where? I see no glasses.”

We were all standing some distance from the table, and the doctor could not see what was on it; he only spoke from the knowledge that he had placed his spectacles on the table, to which he now drew near,263 when, to his great surprise, and to my greater amusement, he made the same discovery that my father had done, that there were no glasses there.

“Why, sir, not five minutes ago I laid my glasses on this spot!” he exclaimed, giving the table rather a loud rap with his knuckles, which did not harm the table, though it did the knuckles, as the doctor’s screwed-up face indicated. “There, sir, exactly there—and now you see with your own eyes that both case and spectacles are gone!”

“It is a very mysterious occurrence, Dr. Millbank,” remarked my father.

“I cannot say that I see any mystery about it, sir; I am no believer in spiritualism, but I am in logic. I laid the spectacles and case there on that table. They are now gone—no one has been in the room but Master Charles.”

“Ergo, Master Charles must have them,” interrupted my father. “That is the true inference of your logic.”

Just then, another visitor came hopping into the room—no less than my father’s favorite, Jack, the magpie. My father was now seated by the side of the doctor, and the bird, as was his custom, hopped and flew to his shoulder, which was his favorite perch when he had the opportunity.

“Well pa,” said the cunning bird, bending his head and beak to my parent’s face.

“And what do you want, Master Jack?”

“Sho!” said the magpie, which was another daily264 phrase of his which he had picked up. Then he pretended to be sleepy, winking and blinking, and even yawning and crying, “Poor Jack! poor Jack!”

“A fine, rare bird, Mr. Mitford, is your magpie,” said the doctor, who would not have said so much had he known, as I did, that Jack was the author of his misery.

“By the by,” cried my father, “I wonder if the magpie has taken the things from the table!”

“Tell the truth!” I said, catching the bird up by his tail, much to his displeasure. “What have you done with the spectacles?”

“Sho!” screamed the bird, making divers pecks at my hands.

“Depend upon it, my friend,” said my father, “it is the magpie who is the thief.”

“Easier said than proved, dear sir,” replied the doctor. “I know this, however, that I would not keep a bird capable of such thefts. But I am surprised, Mr. Mitford, that you should suggest such a solution of the mystery. It is quite a vulgar error to suppose that magpies are thieves of anything but that which contributes to their sustenance. If a magpie will take one bright thing he will take another. There is a silver pencil-case,” said the incredulous doctor, placing it on the table, when, to his great surprise, the bird, that had hitherto been immovable, hopped from my father’s shoulder to the armchair. “Now, sir, if the bird took my glasses, and if it is his nature to steal, he will soon possess himself of the pencil-case.”

265 “Not when he is observed, perhaps. Jack, like human thieves, doesn’t like his evil propensities to be seen.”

“Then let us all three retire and leave the magpie with the pencil-case. What then?”

“Why, that when we return you will find the bird and the case both flown.”

“A bargain, sir!” said the doctor, quite pleased that he should soon have the satisfaction of proving my father in the wrong.

We all retired to the dining-room, and had a little agreeable talk about magpies, and the plot that had been laid to discover whether Jack was a thief or not.

An hour later I asked whether I should go and look after the bird and the case.

“No, thanks, Master Charles,” said the doctor, “I object to that; you are home for the holidays. We will all go together when your father is prepared.”

“I am quite ready, sir.”

So we all three went to the library and to the table. Bird and pencil-case had vanished! The doctor was astonished; I and my father were not, but laughed to each other at the doctor’s expression of surprise.

“What do you say now, doctor?” quizzed my delighted parent.

“That they are gone!” he replied.

“It could not be by ‘the boy home for the holidays,’ now, could it?”

“But the bird, sir—where is the bird?” exclaimed the doctor, who fairly felt himself in a dilemma.

266 “Gone to his storehouse,” replied my father.

“And where is that?”

“I have not been able to discover.”

“Have you taken any means to do so?”

“I have not. Can you suggest any?” inquired my father.

“Watch him,” was the laconic but sensible reply.

“But the cunning fellow has committed his depredations when he has not been seen.”

“Plant some temptation for him, as now, and then place three or four persons to watch where he takes it.”

“A very good idea, and I will follow it out now, if you please.

“I should like very much, for my curiosity is now deeply excited. Ah! Master Charles, you are a boy of an excellent temper to bear so well as you have done with my petulance and hasty conclusions.”

“Now,” said my father, “I will place my gold pencil-case on the spot where you placed your silver one, and then wait the return of the sly old bird.”

This was done, and it was not many minutes before the bird entered, no doubt to see if there were any more bright things to be taken away. What! another pencil-case for Jack! No one was in the room but the doctor, who this time pretended to be deeply engaged in a book, as I had before done, while I and my father planted ourselves in unseen places outside the room. The bird was not slow in accomplishing his theft, and as quickly hopped out of the library with the pencil-case.

“Seeing is believing!” exclaimed the doctor, closing267 the book with a loud bang. “I wouldn’t keep a magpie for the world.”

Then he made his way to the courtyard, where I and my father had stationed ourselves. We had not been long here before the bird came hopping along with the pencil-case in his beak, and he flew to the top of a loft.

The doctor’s countenance expressed indescribable surprise, while I and my father laughed heartily as Jack flew up to his hiding place.

We all ascended the ladder, and when we had got to the roof, there, in a leaden valley between two angles, we discovered a hoard of bright things, among others the cases and spectacles belonging to Dr. Millbank!

“What do you say now, doctor?” triumphantly asked my father, extending his hands over the magpie’s storehouse and handing him back his property.

“That I will never keep a magpie,” he returned, shaking his head, placing his hands behind the tail of his long clerical-cut coat, and blushing and laughing.

During a little conversation between us on the top of the loft the saucy bird returned, looking unutterable things and screaming when he saw us there and his hoard disturbed.

When the doctor held up his glasses, and was about to admonish him, the bird turned tail upon us and flew off, croaking “Sho! Sho!” and we did not see him for two days afterward. He was evidently deeply offended; indeed, Jack was not the same bird afterward, and was even cold and indifferent to the caress of my father; as for “Master Charles,” he dare not touch Jack’s tail.

268 On taking his departure, the doctor, smiling good-naturedly, remarked:

“I assure you, Mr. Mitford, until now I set down all these wonderful stories of animals that we meet with as fabulous. But your bird, sir, has taught me a wholesome lesson, that things may nevertheless be true, whether we believe them or not; and, further, I have had a warning not to be too hasty in coming to conclusions with boys home for the holidays upon circumstantial evidence; and still further, that as long as I wear spectacles I will never keep a magpie.”

We each and all had a hearty laugh, a shake of the hand, and the doctor took his departure. When he next loses his spectacles he will inquire if there is a magpie around.