He again held up his foot, which had a gouty appearance owing to its being contained in a dumpy little worsted sock, and I thought he proposed to repeat his first performance, but in this I did him an injustice, for, unlike Porthos, he was one who scorned to do the same feat twice; perhaps, like the conjurors, he knew that the audience were more on the alert the second time.
I discovered that he wanted me to take off his sock!
Remembering Irene's dread warnings on this subject I must say that I felt uneasy. Had he heard her, and was he daring me? And what dire thing could happen if the sock was removed? I sought to reason with him, but he signed to me to look sharp, and Iremoved the sock. The part of him thus revealed gave David considerable pleasure, but I noticed, as a curious thing, that he seemed to have no interest in the other foot.
However, it was not there merely to be looked at, for after giving me a glance which said "Now observe!" he raised his bare foot and ran his mouth along the toes, like one playing on a barbaric instrument. He then tossed his foot aside, smiled his long triumphant smile and intimated that it was now my turn to do something. I thought the best thing I could do would be to put his sock on him again, but as soon as I tried to do so Idiscovered why Irene had warned me so portentously against taking it off. I should say that she had trouble in socking him every morning.
Nevertheless I managed to slip it on while he was debating what to do with my watch. I bitterly regretted that I could do nothing with it myself, put it under a wine-glass, for instance, and make it turn into a rabbit, which so many people can do. In the meantime David, occupied with similar thoughts, very nearly made it disappear altogether, and I was thankful to be able to pull it back by the chain.
"Haw-haw-haw!"
Thus he commented on his new feat, but it was also a reminder to me, a trifle cruel, that he was not my boy. After all, you see, Mary had not given him the whole of his laugh. The watch said that five and twenty minutes had passed, and looking out I saw Irene at one end of the street staring up at my window, and at the other end Mary's husband staring up at my window, and beneath me Mary staring up at my window. They had all broken their promise.
I returned to David, and asked him in a low voice whether he would give me a kiss. He shook his head about six times, and Iwas in despair. Then the smile came, and I knew that he was teasing me only. He now nodded his head about six times.
This was the prettiest of all his exploits. It was so pretty that, contrary to his rule, he repeated it. I had held out my arms to him, and first he shook his head, and then after a long pause (to frighten me), he nodded it.
But no sooner was he in my arms than I seemed to see Mary and her husband and Irene bearing down upon my chambers to take him from me, and acting under an impulse I whipped him into the perambulator and was off with it without a license down the back staircase. To the Kensington Gardens we went; it may have been Manitoba we started for, but we arrived at the Kensington Gardens, and it had all been so unpremeditated and smartly carried out that I remember clapping my hand to my head in the street, to make sure that I was wearing a hat.
I watched David to see what he thought of it, and he had not yet made up his mind. Strange to say, I no longer felt shy. I was grown suddenly indifferent to public comment, and my elation increased when I discovered that I was being pursued. They drew a cordon round me near Margot Meredith's tree, but I broke through it by a strategic movement to the south, and was next heard of in the Baby's Walk. They held both ends of this passage, and then thought to close on me, but I slipped through their fingers by doubling up Bunting's Thumb into Picnic Street.
Cowering at St. Govor's Well, we saw them rush distractedly up the Hump, and when they had crossed to the Round Pond we paraded gaily in the Broad Walk, not feeling the tiniest bit sorry for anybody.
Here, however, it gradually came into David's eyes that, after all, I was a strange man, and they opened wider and wider, until they were the size of my medals, and then, with the deliberation that distinguishes his smile, he slowly prepared to howl. I saw all his forces gathering in his face, and I had nothing to oppose to them; it was an unarmed man against a regiment.
Even then I did not chide him. He could not know that it was Iwho had dropped the letter.
