By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War, G. A. Henty [100 books to read in a lifetime .TXT] 📗

“Ah! you know it is a macaw!” the old man said.

“Of course,” Frank said simply; “it has a tail.”

The old man then furnished Frank with two or three sharp knives and scissors. Taking the bird and cat, he went out into the yard and in the course of an hour had skinned them both. Then he returned to the shop and set to work in the room behind.

“May I make a group of them?” he asked.

“Do them just as you like,” the old man said.

After settling upon his subject, Frank set to work, and, except that he went out for five minutes to buy and eat a penny loaf, continued his work till nightfall. The old man came in several times to look at him, but each time went out again without making a remark. At six o'clock Frank laid down his tools.

“I will come again tomorrow, sir,” he said.

The old man nodded, and Frank went home in high spirits. There was a prospect at last of getting something to do, and that in a line most congenial to his own tastes.

The old man looked up when he entered next morning.

“I shall not come in today,” he remarked. “I will wait to see them finished.”

Working without interruption till the evening, Frank finished them to his satisfaction, and enveloped them with many wrappings of thread to keep them in precisely the attitudes in which he had placed them.

“They are ready for drying now, sir,” he said. “If I might place them in an oven they would be dried by morning.”

The old man led the way to the kitchen, where a small fire was burning.

“I shall put no more coals on the fire,” he said, “and it will be out in a quarter of an hour. Put them in there and leave the door open. I will close it in an hour when the oven cools.”

The next day Frank was again at work. It took him all day to get fur and feather to lie exactly as he wished them. In the afternoon he asked the naturalist for a piece of flat board, three feet long, and a perch, but said that instead of the piece of board he should prefer mounting them in a case at once. The old man had not one in the shop large enough, and therefore Frank arranged his group temporarily on the table. On the board lay the cat. At first sight she seemed asleep, but it was clearly only seeming. Her eyes were half open, the upper lip was curled up, and the sharp teeth showed. The hind feet were drawn somewhat under her as in readiness for an instant spring. Her front paws were before her, the talons were somewhat stretched, and one paw was curved. Her ears lay slightly back. She was evidently on the point of springing. The macaw perch, which had been cut down to a height of two feet, stood behind her. The bird hung by its feet, and, head downwards, stretched with open beak towards the tip of the cat's tail, which was slightly uplifted. On a piece of paper Frank wrote, “Dangerous Play.”

It was evening before he had finished perfectly to his satisfaction. Then he called the naturalist in. The old man stopped at the door, surveying the group. Then he entered and examined it carefully.

“Wonderful!” he said. “Wonderful! I should have thought them alive. There is not a shop in the West End where it could have been turned out better, if so well.

“Lad, you are a wonder! Tell me now who and what are you? I saw when you first addressed me that you were not what you seemed to be, a working lad.”

“I have been well educated,” Frank said, “and was taught to preserve and stuff by my father, who was a great naturalist. My parents died suddenly, and I was left on my own resources, which,” he said, smiling faintly, “have hitherto proved of very small avail. I am glad you are pleased. If you will take me into your service I will work hard and make myself useful in every way. If you require references I can refer you to the doctor who attended us in the country; but I have not a single friend in London except a railway porter, who has most kindly and generously taken me in and sheltered me for the last two months.”

“I need no references,” the old man said; “your work speaks for itself as to your skill, and your face for your character. But I can offer you nothing fit for you. With such a genius as you have for setting up animals, you ought to be able to earn a good income. Not one man in a thousand can make a dead animal look like a live one. You have the knack or the art.”

“I shall be very content with anything you can give me,” Frank said; “for the present I only ask to earn my living. If later on I can, as you say, do more, all the better.”

The old man stood for some time thinking, and presently said, “I do but little except in live stock. When I had my daughter with me I did a good deal of stuffing, for there is a considerable trade hereabout. The sailors bring home skins of foreign birds, and want them stuffed and put in cases, as presents for their wives and sweethearts. You work fast as well as skillfully. I have known men who would take a fortnight to do such a group as that, and then it would be a failure. It will be quite a new branch for my trade. I do not know how it will act yet, but to begin with I will give you twelve shillings a week, and a room upstairs. If it succeeds we will make other arrangements. I am an old man, and a very lonely one. I shall be glad to have such a companion.”

Frank joyfully embraced the offer, and ran all the way home to tell his friend, the porter, of the engagement.

“I am very glad,” the man said; “heartily glad. I shall miss you sorely. I do not know what I should have done without you when I first lost poor Jane and the kids. But now I can go back to my old ways again.”

“Perhaps,” Frank suggested, “you might arrange to have a room also in the house. It would not be a very long walk, not above twenty or five and twenty minutes, and I should be so glad to have you with me.”

The man sat silent for a time. “No,” he said at last, “I thank you all the same. I should like it too, but I don't think it would be best in the end. Here all my mates live near, and I shall get on in time. The Christmas holiday season will soon be coming on and we shall be up working late. If you were always going to stop at the place you are going to, it would be different; but you will rise, never fear. I shall be seeing you in gentleman's clothes again some of these days. I've heard you say you were longing to get your books and to be studying again, and you'll soon fall into your own ways; but if you will let me, I'll come over sometimes and have a cup