The Happy Warrior Part 26

He indicated the paper again. "There's a strong bit here called 'Squeezed Orindges.' Makes yer boil."

"I'm boiling already," says Percival. "It's a jolly hot day. If you don't like being what you are, I wonder you don't be something else."

"No good," Mr. Hunt tells him. "Out of one tyrang's heel and under another. We've got to suffer and endure, us orindges, until the day when they are swept away like chaff before the wind."

Percival is rather interested: "Well, who's going to sweep them? and sweep whom?"

"Ah!" says Mr. Hunt darkly. "Who? Makes yer boil."

"Well, I shouldn't worry, Hunt," says Percival, in the old "Have you got one of your poor sick yedaches?" tone. "I shouldn't, really. I feel angry sometimes, but you've only got to have a game of something, you know. There's Rollo! Come on down and help us to build that raft on Fir-Tree Pool. We'll have a jolly time. Rollo! Hunt's going to help us, so we can get that big plank down now! Come on, Hunt!"

He bounds away towards Rollo, and Mr. Hunt, watching before he starts to follow, says: "Ah, pity there's not more like you! You ought to ha'

been one of them." He scowls horribly in the direction of Lady Burdon, who is waving to the boys from the door. "One o' them, you ought to ha' been. Makes yer boil!"

CHAPTER VI

j.a.pHRA AND IMA AND SNOW-WHITE-AND-ROSE-RED

I

And there were three new friends who contributed to this happy, happy time and who came vitally to contribute to later years. There were j.a.phra and Ima, who lived in a yellow caravan that was sometimes attached to that Maddox's Monster Menagerie and Royal Circus with which Mr. Hannaford traded in little 'orses; and there was Dora, whose mother was that Mrs. Espart of Abbey Royal at Upabbot over the Ridge who--as Miss Oxford had told Lady Burdon--did not send her little girl to lessons with Miss Purdie because of the post-office little boy.

Percival first met j.a.phra and Ima on a day not long after the end of Rollo's first visit, when--his playmate gone--he was temporarily a little lonely. He came upon them by Fir-Tree Pool, stepped through the belt of trees that surround the pool and halted in much delight at the entrancing sight his eyes gave him.

Here was a yellow caravan with little curtained windows, a thing most pregnant of mysteries to eight-years-old. A big white horse, unharnessed from the van, was cropping the turf. There was an iron pot hanging above a jolly fire of sticks. On the steps of the van a girl of about Percival's own age sat knitting. She was olive of face, with long, black hair; her legs were bare and they looked very long, Percival thought. By the fire, astride of a felled tree trunk, was a little man with a very brown face that was marked like a sailor's with many puckered little lines. He had a tight-lipped mouth with a short pipe that seemed a natural part of it, and he wore a long jacket and had a high hat of some rough, brown fur. He was reading a book; and as Percival stood watching, he put a finger to mark his place and looked up slowly as though he had known Percival was there but wished to read to a certain point before interrupting himself.

He looked up and Percival noticed that his eyes, set in that brown, puckered face, were uncommonly bright. "Welcome, little master," said he. "All the luck!"

"Hullo!" said Percival. "Excuse me staring. This is funny to me, you know."

"Quiet, though," said the little man, his eyes twinkling; "and that's the best thing in life."

Percival came up to him, vastly attracted. "Do you live in that van?"

"That's where I live, little master--Ima and I."

Percival stared at the girl on the steps, who stared back at him and then smiled. "Ima? That's a funny name," he said.

"Maybe she's a funny girl," said the little man, twinkling more than ever.

Percival took it quite seriously. "Well, her legs are long," he said appraisingly.

"They can run, though, little master," said the girl. She had a curiously soft voice, Percival noticed. But he was rather puzzled with it all and remained serious. "Is your name funny, too?" he asked the little man.

The little man's tight lips were stretched in what Percival came to know for his most advanced sign of amus.e.m.e.nt. He opened his lips very slightly when he spoke, and the short pipe that seemed to grow there did not appear at all to incommode his speech. "Why, try it for thyself," said the little man,--"j.a.phra."

"Well, I've not heard it before, you know," said Percival politely.

"You don't mind my asking questions, do you?" he added. "This is rather funny to me, you know."

"Why, I'm a questioner myself, little master," the little man a.s.sured him. "I'm questioning always. I go through life seeking an answer."

"What for?" asked Percival.

"Why, that's the question, little master," said the little man. "What for? Who knows?"

Percival regarded him with the same puzzled air that he sometimes gave to Aunt Maggie. "Well, if you don't mind," he said, "what are you, then?"

Far from minding, j.a.phra seemed to like it. Twinkling away: "Why, that's another question I ask and cannot answer," said he. "What is any man? One thing to one man and one thing to another--a riddle to himself, little master. But I can unriddle thee this much: Wintertime I am a tinker that mends folks' pots and pans; Springtimes I am Punch-and-Judy-man that makes the children laugh; Summertimes I am a fighter that fights in the booths. I have been prize-fighter that fights with the knuckle; cattleman over the sea; jockey, and wrestler, and miner, and preacher once, and questioner since I was thy size; there's unriddling for thee."

"It's a good lot," said Percival gravely. "What are you just now, please?"

"Or a bad lot," said j.a.phra. "Who knows?--and there's the question again! No escape from it." He looked solemn for a moment and then twinkled again. "Just now a fighter, little master. To-morrow I join Boss Maddox's circus for the summer with my boxing booth."

"Boss Maddox!" cried Percival. "Why, Mr. Stingo goes with Maddox's circus. Do you know Mr. Stingo?"

"None better," said j.a.phra. "I am of Stingo's crowd, as we say. Dost thou?"

"I know him very well," Percival declared. "I know his brother best.

They call me a Pocket Marvel, you know; so I should like to know what you think of that?"

"Why, I think that's what thou art," said j.a.phra. "A rare one. There were fairies at thy christening, little master."

"What for?" asked Percival and asked it so seriously that j.a.phra twinkled anew and replied: "Why, there's the question again. What for?

Why that sunny face they have given thee? and those fine limbs? and that straight back? What for? There's some purpose in it, little master."

He looked strangely at Percival as though behind his twinkling he indeed questioned these matters and found, as he had said, a question in all he saw. But when he saw how mystified he held Percival, he stopped his searching look and asked: "Any more questions, little master?"

He had kept his finger on the open page of his book all this time; and Percival pointed and said: "Well, what are you reading, if you please?"

and was told "Robinson Crusoe."

"Why, I'm reading that!" cried Percival in much delight.

"Then thou art reading one of the only three books a man wants," said j.a.phra. "There's 'Pilgrim's Progress'--"

"I've read that too! In Mr. Amber's library--"

"And there's the Bible."

"And that as well!" cried Percival.

"Why," said j.a.phra--not twinkling now, but grave--"why, then, thou hast read the beginning and end of wisdom. Crusoe and Pilgrim and Bible--those are the books for a man. I read them and read them and always read them new. They are the books for a questioner, and thou art that amain. And they are the books for a fighter, and that is thy part. I have unriddled thee so far, little master. I know the fighting type. Mark me when the years come. A fighter, thou."

He placed a blade of gra.s.s in "Robinson Crusoe" and put the volume beneath his arm. He got up and took Percival's small hand in his h.o.r.n.y fist. "Come thou and see my van, little master," said he. "We are friends--thou and I and Ima here." And then he twinkled again. "And why? What brought thee whom the fairies attended and that has read the books and is the fighting type? What brought thee here? Why, there's the question again!"

It was the beginning of Percival's chiefest friends.h.i.+p of them all. In the rare proper seasons that followed one another through this the happy, happy time, the van came more and more frequently Lethamwards.

Summertimes it was away with Stingo's crowd in Maddox's Monster Menagerie and Royal Circus. But Wintertimes it would come tinkering, and sometimes remain a week or more snow-bound, and Springtimes Punch-and-Judying through the Burdon hamlets; and these were happy, happy times indeed. There was all j.a.phra's lore, all his dimly understood "questioning" to hear; and all his stories of his strange and varied life; and all his reading aloud from his three books, who could read them and put a meaning into them as none other could. And there was the boxing to learn, with Percival a very apt and eager pupil and j.a.phra insistent that it was a proper game--the only proper game for a man. And once every summer there was the visit of Maddox's Monster Menagerie and Royal Circus to Great Letham, where Percival,--introduced by j.a.phra, sponsored by Stingo,--was made enormously welcome by rough, odd van folk who were of "Stingo's crowd."