Burr Junior Part 19

"What do you want to come here for?" I said, as we ascended the rough ladder, and stood in the dimly lighted place.

"I'll show you directly," he said. "Don't you know what I've got up here?"

"No."

"My museum."

I looked around, but nothing was visible but some willow chips, and a half-formed cricket bat which d.i.c.ksee was making, by the help of a spokeshave he had borrowed at the wheelwright's, and which promised to be as clumsy a stump defender as ever was held in two hands.

"Well," I said, "where is it?"

"Here," said Mercer triumphantly, as he led the way to where an old corn-bin stood beneath one of the windows, the lid securely held down by a padlock whose key my companion brought out of his pocket.

"Never mind the old Latin and Euclid. I'll let you come and help me here sometimes, and if old Burr major or d.i.c.ksee interferes, you'll have to help me, for I wouldn't have my things spoiled for ever so much."

"Oh, I'll help you," I said, and I waited with some curiosity while he opened the lock, and, after hanging it on a nail, slowly raised the lid, and I looked in to see a strange a.s.sortment of odds and ends. What seemed to be dead birds were mixed up with tow, feathers, wire, a file, a pair of cutting pincers, and a flat pomatum pot, on which was printed the word "poison."

"What's that for?" I said wonderingly.

"Oh, that's soap," he said.

"No, no, that--the poison."

"Soap, I tell you. Take off the lid."

I hesitated for a moment, and then raised the lid, to see that the box was half full of a creamy-looking paste, which exhaled an aromatic odour.

"Is that soap?" I said.

"Yes, to brush over the skins of things I want to preserve. Don't touch it. You have to wash your hands ever so many times when you've been using it. Look, that's a starling I began to stuff, but it don't look much like a bird, does it?"

"Looks more like a pincus.h.i.+on," I said. "What's the cotton for?"

"Oh, that's to keep the wings in their places till they're dry. You wind cotton over them, and that holds their feathers down, but I didn't get this one right."

"He's too big and fat," I said.

"Yes, I stuffed him too much; but I'm going to try and do another."

The starling was laid down, and a jay picked up.

"That's another one I tried," he said sadly, "but it never would look like a bird. They're ever so much handsomer than that out in the woods."

"I suppose,"--I said, and then quickly--"Are they?"

"Yes, you know they are," said Mercer dolefully. "These are horrid. I know exactly how I want them to look, but they will not come so."

"They will in time," I said, to cheer him, for his failures seemed to make him despondent.

"No," he said, "I'm afraid not. Birds are beautiful things,--starlings are and jays,--and n.o.body can say that those are beautiful. Regular old Guy Fawkes's of birds, aren't they?"

"You mustn't ask me," I replied evasively. "I'm no judge. But what's this horrid thing?"

"Frog. Better not touch it. I never could get on with that. It's more like a toad than a frog. It's too full of sand."

"Sand! Why, it's quite light."

"I mean, was too full of sand; it's emptied out now. I told you that's how you stuff reptiles, skin 'em, and fill 'em full of sand till they're dry, and then pour it out."

"Oh yes, I remember; but that one is too stout."

"Yes," said Mercer, "that's the worst of it; they will come so if you don't mind. The skins stretch so, and then they come humpy."

"And what's that?" I asked. "Looks like a fur sausage."

"You get out with your fur sausages. See if you could do it better.

That's a stoat."

I burst out laughing now, and he looked at me in a disconsolate way, and then smiled sadly.

"Yes, it is a beast after all," he said. "My father has got a book about anatomy, but I never thought anything about that sort of thing till I tried to stuff little animals. You see they haven't got any feathers to hide their shape, and they've got so much shape. A bird's only like an egg, with a head, and two wings on the side, so that if you make up a ball of tow like an egg, and pull the skin over it, you can't be so very far wrong; but an animal wants curves here and hollows there, and nicely rounded hind legs, and his head lifted up gracefully, and that--Ugh! the wretch! I'll burn it first chance. I won't try any more animals."

"A squirrel looks nice stuffed," I observed, as I recalled one I had seen in a gla.s.s case, having a nut in its fore paws, and with its tail curved up over its back.

"Does it?" said Mercer dolefully; "mine don't."

"You have stuffed squirrels?" I said.

He nodded sadly.

"Two," he replied. "I didn't skin the first properly, and it smelt so horrid that I buried it."

"And the second one?"

"Oh, that didn't look anything like a squirrel. It was more like a short, fat puppy when I had finished, only you knew it was a squirrel by its tail.--What say?"

"I didn't speak," I said, as he looked up sharply from where he had been leaning down into the old corn-bin.

"I thought you said something. There, that's all I shall show you to-day," he went on disconsolately. "I never knew they were so bad till I brought you up to see them."

"Oh, they're not so very bad," I said, trying to console him by my interest in his works.

"Yes, they are. Horrible! I did mean to have a gla.s.s case for some of them, and ornament them with dried moss and gra.s.s, but I'm afraid that the more you tried to ornament these, the worse they'd look."

This sounded so perfectly true that I could not say a word in contradiction; and I stood staring at him, quite at a loss for words, and he was staring at me, when there was a shout and a rush along the loft floor, and I saw Burr major and d.i.c.ksee coming toward us fast, and half a dozen more boys crowding up through the trap-door into the place.

"Caught you then!" cried Burr major. "Come along, boys, old Senna's going to show us his museum and his doctor's shop."

Mercer banged down the lid of the corn-bin, and was struggling hard to get the hasp over the staple and the padlock on, when Burr major seized him and dragged him away.