Slaves Of Freedom

Nother bucket o’ mortar, Mr. Ooze.”

The excessively thin man glanced up from the puddle of lime that he was stirring and regarded the excessively fat man with a smile of meek interrogation.

“’Nother bucket o’ mortar, Willie Ooze, and don’t you put your ’ead on one side at me like a bloomin’ cockatoo.”

Mr. William Hughes stuttered an apology. “I was thin-thinking.”

“Thin-thinking!” The fat man laughed good-naturedly. Turning his back on his helper, he gave the brick which he had just laid an extra tap to emphasize his incredulity. “’Tisn’t like you.”

The thin man’s feelings were wounded. To the little boy who looked on this was evident from the way he swallowed. His Adam’s-apple took a run up his throat and, at the last moment, thought better of it. “But I was thinking,” he persisted; “thinking that I’d learnt something from stirring up this gray muck. If ever I was to kill somebody—you, for instance, or that boy—I’d know better than to bury you in slaked lime.”

“Uml Urn!” The fat man gulped with surprise. He puckered his vast chin against his collar so that his voice came deep and strangled. “It’s scraps o’ knowledge like that as saves men from the gallers. If ’alf the murderers that is ’anged ’ad come to me first, they wouldn’t be ’anging. But—but——” He seemed at last to realize the unkind implication of Mr. Hughes’s naive confession. “But I’d make four o’ you, Willyum! You couldn’t kill me, however you tried.”

In the face of contradiction Mr. Hughes forgot his nervousness. “I could.” he pleaded earnestly. “I’ve often thought about it. I’d put off till you was stooping, and then jump. What with you being so short of breath and me being so long in the arms and legs, why——! I’ve planned it out many times, you and me being such good friends and so much alone together.”

The face of the fat man grew serious with disapproval. “You? ’ave, ’ave you! You’ve got as far as that! You’re a nice domestic pet, I must say, to keep unchained to play with the children.” He attempted to go on with his bricklaying, but the memory of Mr. Hughes’s long arms and legs so immediately behind him was disturbing. He swung round holding his trowel like a weapon. “Don’t like your way of talking; don’t like it. O’ course you’ve ‘ad your troubles; for them I make allowances. But I don’t like it, and I don’t mind telling you. Um! Um!”

The thin man was crestfallen; he had hoped to give pleasure. “But I thought you liked murders.”

“Like ’em! I enjoy them—so I do.” The fat man spoke tartly. “But when you make me the corpse of your conversations, you presoom, Mr. Ooze, and I don’t mind telling you—you really do. Let that boy be the corpse next time; leave me out of it—— ’Nother bucket o’ mortar.”

That boy, who was sole witness to this quarrel, was very small—far smaller than his age. In the big walled garden of Orchid Lodge he felt smaller than usual. Everything was strange; even the whispered sigh of dead leaves was different as they swam up and swirled in eddies. In his own garden, only six walls distant, their sigh was gentle as Dearie’s footstep—but something had happened to Dearie; Jimmie Boy had told him so that morning. “Teddy, little man, it’s happened again”—the information had left Teddy none the wiser. All he knew was that Jane had told the milkman that something was expected, and that the milkman had told the cook at Orchid Lodge. The result had been the intrusion at breakfast of the remarkable Mrs. Sheerug.

For a long while Mrs. Sheerug had been a staple topic of conversation between Dearie and Jimmie Boy. They had wondered who she was. They had made up the most preposterous tales about her and had told them to Teddy. They would watch for her to come out of her house six doors away, so that as she passed their window in Eden Row Jimmie Boy might make rapid sketches of her trotting balloon-like figure. He had used her more than once already in books which he had been commissioned to illustrate. She was the faery-godmother in his Cinderella and Other Ancient Tales: With!6 Plates in color by James Gurney. She was Mother Santa Claus in his Christmas Up to Date. They had rather wanted to get to know her, this child-man and woman who seemed no older than their little son and at times, even to their little son, not half as sensible. They had wanted to get to know her because she was always smiling, and because she was always upholstered in such hideously clashing colors, and because she was always setting out burdened on errands from which she returned empty-handed. The attraction of Mrs. Sheerug was heightened by Jane’s, the maid-of-all-work’s, discoveries: Orchid Lodge was heavily in debt to the local tradesmen and yet (it was Dearie who said “And yet.” with a sigh of envy), and yet its mistress was always smiling.

When Mrs. Sheerug had invaded Teddy’s father that morning, she had come arrayed for conquest. She had worn a green plush mantle, a blue bonnet and, waving defiance from the blue bonnet, a yellow feather.

“I’m a total stranger,” she had said. “Go on with your breakfast, Mr. Gurney, I’ve had mine. I’ll watch you. Well, I’ve heard, and so I’ve dropped in to see what I can do. You mustn’t mind me; trying to be a mother to everyone’s my foible. Now, first of all, you can’t have that boy in the house—boys are nice, but a nuisance. They’re noisy.”

“But Teddy, I mean Theo, isn’t.”

It was just like Jimmie Boy to call him Theo before a stranger and to assume the r