The Treasure Ship/Tobys Birthday Presents

by Algernon Blackwood

Toby, aged nearly seven, had no parents, and lived with his Aunt and Uncle in the country. He loved them both, for they were very kind to him, yet they were not quite the same as the father and mother he could just remember. They had no children of their own. His Aunt Sophy was rather deaf. In his mind he always connected her with puddings, because of the way she said: “No, Toby, one helping is quite enough today. If you eat any more, you’ll turn into a pudding yourself.”

His Uncle was in the wholesale hat business and had an office and a big factory somewhere far away in London, where he went twice a week. He also hunted twice a week. On both occasions he wore a top-hat; and Toby longed for the day when he, too, could make hats and hunt, and so wear one of these tall, shiny things on the top of his head. It puzzled him why the same kind of hat was used for chasing a fox and for going to an office, but his Uncle’s explanation was not very clear. Once he put the hat on his own head; it came down over eyes and nose to his mouth and his voice sounded queer inside it. It was difficult to get off again. He hadn’t improved its looks when he got it off. The only other times a top-hat was worn seemed to be a funeral or a wedding. But that had no interest for Toby. It was a queer business altogether. Hats, anyhow, brought in a lot of money. His real trouble, however, was that he had no brothers or sisters to play with. What he wanted even more than a top-hat was a playmate.

His seventh birthday was now near, and he knew his Uncle would snatch him up, set him on his knee with a jerk, and say in his loud, booming voice:

“Now, Toby, my little man, what d’you want for your birthday, eh?”

He hated being called a Little Man; otherwise the question was all right. Last year he had no answer ready. It seemed silly to say: “I want a top-hat,” and his Uncle’s suggestion of a cob⁠—well, the only cob he knew had kicked, and he wasn’t sure of staying on its back for very long. Besides, he couldn’t play with a cob. This year, anyhow, he had his answer ready, and when the thing happened, and he found himself perched on his Uncle’s knee, and heard the big voice asking the expected question, he answered promptly:

“A cat, please.”

“What?” (In a loud voice.)

“And a tortoise.”

“Eh?” (In a shout.)

“And a owl.”

“You mean an owl,” boomed his Uncle.

“A nowl, yes,” repeated Toby.

The man roared out then: “Bless the boy! What’s the matter with him? A cat, a tortoise and an owl, indeed! I hoped you were going to say a cob!” He jumped him about on his great knees.

Anybody else might have thought his Uncle was angry, but Toby knew better. The big voice didn’t frighten him. It was loud from the habit of talking to his deaf wife. It meant nothing.

Toby explained then: The Brown children down the road had a pet owl in a cage, the White family up the hill had a beautiful Persian cat that was always having kittens, and the Green’s boy across the lane had a tortoise. So why shouldn’t Toby Black have them too! He explained at some length his point of view.

His Uncle, however, didn’t approve of presents of this sort.

“Pets,” he declared, “are nothing but a nuisance in the house. They’re noisy and messy, and they’re always getting lost. Besides, they’re no use. My money comes from making useful things. Think of something else, my little man⁠—something useful⁠—and you shall have it.”

“Promise?” asked Toby, earnestly.

“Yes. I told you once. If it’s useful you shall have it.”

“Thank you,” said the boy, and shot off his Uncle’s knee like a cannonball before any further conditions could be made.

There was less than a week now to his birthday, and he at once set about finding out what use a cat, a tortoise and an owl might be. None, it seemed! Nannie said there were no mice in the nursery; the gardener said a tortoise ate his yellow flowers and was always getting lost; and the stable-groom, who looked after the hunters, told him that owls weren’t worth bothering about, as they only made a horrid noise at night and stared in the daytime. As for tortoises, he added, they were like some people he knew⁠—he wondered why they had ever been made at all.

Cats, owls and tortoises were evidently not much use in the world to anybody.

Aunt Sophy, in this matter of presents, was different. She didn’t ask what present he wanted; she just told him what she was going to give⁠—then watched his face to see whether he looked glum or happy. Last year it had been a football. “You want a football, Toby,” she said. “That’s what you want.” But he didn’t want a football, because he had no one to kick it to, Nannie being a bit too big to run. He got it just the same, though.

“A bicycle,” announced his Aunt now, “is what you need.” And as he did want a bicycle, he looked pleased at once, and that was easily settled. He clapped his hands and shouted “Thank you, Aunt Sophy.” Later, when he got it, he would have to shout “Thank you, Aunt Sophy” all over again, but that didn’t matter.

Then she inquired: “And what have you asked your Uncle for?”

The smiles left his face as he told her:

“A tortoise, a cat, and a nowl,” he shouted.

“A porpoise, a top-hat, and a cow!” she exclaimed, not hearing clearly. She looked amazed. “What on earth do you want such odd things for?” she asked in bewilderment, and when Toby had repeated more distinctly, she shook her head. “I’m afraid you won’t get them,” she said. “Your Uncle dislikes pets in the house.” Her expression was like cook’s.

“He wants me to have a cob,” began Toby.

“A dog would be better, yes,” replied Aunt Sophy, just like the curate.

“A cob,” the boy explained more loudly. He concealed his desire to laugh.

“Ah!” cried the other. “Yes, that would be a useful present indeed. We could use it in the pony-cart.” He thought of bread-and-butter pudding.

“I suppose so,” agreed Toby, his face falling. He sighed. Oh, dear, why weren’t cats and nowls and tortoises useful, he wondered? And that night, on his knees beside the bed, after praying as usual that Aunty’s deaf ears might be cured, he added another Special Request, but added it indirectly, because he had been told he was never to ask for things he wanted for himself. That was just begging.

“And please make a tortoise, a cat, and a nowl useful,” he prayed, with all the energy in his body, then went to sleep with a comfortable feeling that he had done his best⁠—all he could, at any rate. He hadn’t asked anything for himself, he decided; he certainly hadn’t “begged.” But next morning his heart sank, as he overheard his Uncle talking loudly in the hall, telling his wife that the Green’s tortoise was lost again. He was in his top-hat, ready to go to London for his meeting at the Hat Office, and Aunt Sophy, whose ears had certainly not been cured yet, was seeing him into the motor to go to the station.

“Perhaps it’s crawled into our garden,” he shouted.

“What! Dorcas crawled into our larder!” exclaimed Aunt Sophy, holding her hands up in amazement. Dorcas was one of the hunters. “That’s the third time this year,” she said, when she understood. “It’s always getting lost.” She shook her head with annoyance, just like blanc-mange, thought Toby.

“Beastly little creatures!” complained her husband. “They’re no use to anybody. Why, they can’t even squeak!” He bustled off in the car, and Toby saw him through the window polishing his tall silk hat with his hand, as though it were an animal he loved and was stroking affectionately.

Yet, though upset a little by what he had heard, Toby had a queer feeling that somehow a tortoise could be useful, and that he would get one for a birthday present after all.

Now, that night, as he was lying in bed, supposed to be asleep, an odd thing happened. It was half-past seven. He was thinking about tortoises, cats and owls, when his wakeful ears caught a strange sentence in the hall below:

“Some use after all,” his Uncle’s voice boomed downstairs. “Useful little beast, I say⁠ ⁠…”

Toby sat up and listened. The talk echoed, went lost, came back again. He crept out of bed to hear better. Thank goodness, Aunt Sophy hadn’t heard properly. His Uncle cried louder still:

“Some use, after all,” he repeated, “the silly thing. Another minute and I’d have been smashed to smithereens, I tell you.” He bawled the next words: “Anyhow, it saved my life!”

“Paid your wife!” Aunt Sophy echoed, still not catching the sentence.

“Saved my life,” his Uncle yelled across the hall. “The tortoise did!” And his jolly laugh rang out like a peal of bells.

By this time Toby, in his nightshirt, was standing in the passage, leaning across the banisters. He was listening to every word. He was shaking with excitement. He heard the whole story.

On the way back from the station the car reached the dangerous crossroads, where high hedges hid anything coming the other way, and just at this point the headlights revealed two boys on their knees in the middle of the road. The car was going fast, but the chauffeur stopped it with such a jerk that Uncle William’s top-hat fell off. At first he was rather angry, but a moment later, he was rather pleased. For, almost a second after they stopped, an enormous trolley, driven at reckless speed and without sounding its horn, came thundering down the intersecting crossroad. But for the two boys in the road, the car must have been smashed to smithereens.

“And me with it,” roared Uncle William.

“Gracious goodness!” cried Aunt Sophy, looking now like an apple dumpling.

“Yes, me with it?” shouted Uncle William. “Only that stupid tortoise saved me.”

“What tortoise?” asked Aunt Sophy, hearing for once correctly.

“The tortoise in the road, my dear,” bawled her husband. “The Green’s tortoise. Those two boys found it there and were examining it. It saved my life, I tell you, that Green tortoise did! Lucky it got lost⁠—eh?”

Aunt Sophy, looking like a hot milk pudding, Toby thought, made queer noises under her breath. He couldn’t hear exactly what she said.

“So I’ve got that tortoise to thank for my life,” repeated Uncle William, now shouting like a man at the Circus Tent. “Useful little beast, eh? I’ve sent it over to the Greens,” he added, as he leaned back in his chair and laughed out loud. Then his voice changed suddenly. “Little rascal!” he cried out⁠—and came up the hall stairs three steps at a time!

Which made Toby so frightened that he simply couldn’t move an inch. For when his Uncle leaned back in his chair to laugh, his eyes turned up. And as his eyes turned up, he saw a little boy in his white nightshirt leaning over the banisters and listening⁠—listening to every word. And when he said “Little rascal!” he didn’t mean the tortoise; he meant this figure in white who ought to have been in bed and asleep hours ago. Two minutes later the white shivering figure had been bundled back into bed, and the big man, though in a much quieter voice, was telling him how naughty he was, while he poked him, smacked him, tickled him.

“You said it saved your life,” the smaller figure gurgled, between its giggles and wriggles.

“I did, did I?” growled the man.

“I heard you,” said the other, half beneath the sheets.

“Oh!” came the reply. “You’ve got sharp ears, haven’t your?”

There was a pause.

“Is your life⁠—useful?” asked the smaller voice.

“Very,” answered the bigger one.

“Thank you very much,” came a whisper from beneath the sheets.

And from the face by the door, as its owner put the light out, came a queer grimace that was not unlike a wink.

When Toby was alone, he decided he would call his tortoise “Bill,” because that was his Uncle’s name. Would it lay eggs? Would it be strong enough for him to stand on? It would sleep all the winter, he had heard. It couldn’t squeak, but it didn’t mind if it rained. He was thinking of all these various things, when sleep caught him, and he slipped away into the land of dreams.

Things went rather quickly after that. It was the very next afternoon that he heard a curious scream, several screams, and felt sure that the cook was hurt, or the new calf was being naughty. It sounded like one or other, he thought. Nannie was just bringing him in from his dull afternoon walk, for they had tried to play Hide-and-Seek together, but Nannie was too big to hide in any ordinary bush, so the expedition had been without much interest.

They were near the house when the screams rang out.

“Come on!” cried Toby. “Something’s up⁠—something jolly!” He began to run, and Nannie ran heavily after him, warning him to be careful.

“Well, I do declare,” she exclaimed a moment later, “if it’s not your Aunt Sophy!” They had reached the drawing-room windows now.

“Then something’s bitten her!” cried Toby. “Hurry up, Nannie!”

They ran headlong into the hall, but Toby was first to dash in at the drawing-room door, Nannie just behind him.

“She’s bitten!” he cried.

Then he stopped, for he hardly knew what to do next. He saw his Aunt standing on a sofa, her skirts pulled high, her hair untidy, her glasses fallen off her nose, and her eyes starting out of her head. A tortoiseshell comb hung over one ear and a wisp of stray hair across one eye. This time it was not a pudding he thought of. What occurred to him was Guy Fawkes.

“It’s up my dress,” she was screaming at the top of her voice. “It’ll bite me! I shall be poisoned! I can’t find it! Oh! Oh!” While one hand held her skirts up, with the other she kept feeling all over her body, as if trying to catch something. She was dancing like a doll on wires.

“What is it, ma’am?” yelled Nannie, running to her rescue.

“A mouse, a mouse!” screamed Aunt Sophy. “A huge big mouse is up me! It’s run up my skirts. Oh, catch it, catch it for me! Quick!” She danced and wriggled in her terror. Nannie instantly began prodding her all over, trying to feel the mouse inside her dress.

Then Toby had a brilliant idea.

“I’ll get my butterfly net!” he shouted, and was off like a shot out of the room. He rushed upstairs. But on the way upstairs he remembered that a mousetrap would be more use than a butterfly-net, and then that a mousetrap without a bit of cheese was no good, so he dashed down to see the cook. But when he got into the kitchen, he found the cook sound asleep in a chair with a newspaper over her face. And when he waked her by yelling “A mouse is up Aunt Sophy’s dress!” the cook only opened her eyes and said, “Why, bless the boy, my kitchen’s full of mice, and that’s because we haven’t got a cat, of course,”⁠—and at once spread the newspaper over her face again and composed herself to sleep as before.

This remark changed the whole current of Toby’s thoughts. There were mice in the house after all! One had run up Aunt Sophy’s legs and bitten her; and the kitchen was full of them, for the cook said so. Then a cat would be useful!

He tore back into the hall again, then into the drawing-room. His Aunt was in an armchair now, with her feet on a footstool, well off the ground; she was fanning herself, while Nannie stood beside her, half out of breath, and half laughing. Aunt Sophy, too, was panting, but half crying. No mouse was visible anywhere.

Toby went over and snuggled into the armchair beside his Aunt.

“Has it come down yet?” he asked, trying to comfort her. But she didn’t hear him properly.

“Done brown,” she said breathlessly, “I should think I am indeed!” And for once she forgot to correct his slang. “It got away,” she added. “It’s back in its hole by now, I suppose.” She leaned back exhausted.

“Auntie,” began Toby, as soothingly as he could, “you know, a cat would be rather useful, wouldn’t it?”

Aunt Sophy nodded her head. He wasn’t sure if she had heard or not. He repeated it. “Yes,” she agreed, “it would.”

“Will you tell Uncle?” asked Toby, quick as a flash.

“Yes,” she agreed, “I will. I certainly will.”

“A Persian,” suggested Toby, “is best for mice.” But Aunt Sophy thought he said something about her “pet aversion were mice,” and this took a long time to explain and straighten out.

Nannie had to help, for Toby was now too excited to bother about long words like “aversion,” which he didn’t understand. He was wondering all the time what to call his pet when he got it. He felt sure now he would get it. In the end he decided he would call it “Sophy.”

Things had gone pretty quickly before, but now, thought Toby, they went quicker still. His prayers to make a cat and a tortoise useful had been marvellously answered, but what about a nowl? Having, as he believed, made sure of the first two, the third now seemed far more desirable and valuable than all three put together. But how on earth could an owl prove itself useful to anything or anybody?

Only two days were left till his birthday dawned. Nothing happened. He didn’t know what to do. His Uncle was away most of the time. Once or twice they met in the hall or in the garden, but Toby knew better than to say anything. He believed in his Uncle as he believed in his prayers. He had made sure of his cat and tortoise. The less said now the better. His Uncle looked solemnly at him, and he looked solemnly back. Owls and nowls were not mentioned.

The last day came. It passed. Nothing had happened. Toby went to bed, feeling rather despondent. He curled up. Nannie lit the night-light and went out. He lay thinking, wondering, questioning. Corncrakes were calling in the distance. He heard the owls, too, hooting in the woods beyond the back lawn where the gypsies camped. He remembered that his Uncle disliked these gypsies, because they were what he called a “nuisance,” but it was the owls he listened to now. Such wonderful, mysterious birds they were! He often heard them hooting in this way after sunset. He knew the screaming noise they made when they were on the hunt, and the other, quieter cry when mate called to mate as they sat in the ivy towers of the barn. Once he had seen one flying in the daytime, uncertain of its way. It made no sound. It was a beautiful, magnificent creature. Its beak and claws had no terror for him. Its feathers were soft, its great wings whirred marvellously. It travelled about the world in the darkness when everybody slept. Oh, to have one for his very own! To watch its great eyes blinking!

He lay in bed listening for a long time; then sleep came over him, and he dropped into dreamland, and the sound of wings and hooting seemed to follow him into his dreams. The hooting especially went on and on and on: “To whit, To whoo⁠ ⁠…” on and on and on, now louder, now softer, but always echoing through his dreams of mice and cats and tortoises and deaf aunts who looked like female Guy Fawkeses⁠—on and on the soft sound of hooting came through the open window into his very room⁠ ⁠…

Then, suddenly, it became very loud indeed. Much closer it sounded. But it was no longer “To whit, To whoo,” it was the other cry⁠—the wild, hunting scream. Shrill and fierce, this high shriek went whistling past the open window. And Toby woke.

He sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes, opened his ears, and ]istened. The room was dark, for the night-light had burnt out. But he did not feel frightened, as sometimes when he woke suddenly like this. He only wondered what had made him wake. A queer, shrill noise seemed still sounding in his ears, What was it? Also he wondered what time it was; and just at that moment, far away in the depths of the hall below, he heard the great clock strike.

“One⁠ ⁠… two⁠ ⁠…”

He counted the strokes. So it was two o’clock in the morning, and still many long hours from sunrise. Then, hardly had the echo of the strokes died away, than another sound broke the stillness of the night, as a wild, shrill cry, half scream, half yell, tore whistling through the air outside his open window. It made him start and pull the bedclothes about him.

“A nowl!” he exclaimed under his breath, shaking with excitement. “That’s a nowl on the hunt! And that’s what made me wake too!”

Some little boys of Toby’s age, waking at two in the morning and hearing such strange noises, alone in their room, would have been frightened, and probably have screamed themselves. But Toby had his Uncle’s common sense, and his father had been a soldier. Besides, he knew an owl’s cry when he heard it. It was no new sound to him. Also he knew that, as it could see in the dark, it would not dash into his room. But his main thought at this exciting moment, to tell the truth, had to do with another matter altogether. He thought of his birthday presents. This was undoubtedly a nowl. It might be a useful nowl. It might even be an answer to his prayer!

Into his brain, which may have been little but was certainly wide-awake, came a curious notion then. “Perhaps,” he thought, “if I show myself, it will do something useful! If it could see me, it might⁠—” Well, he hardly knew what it could do to prove itself useful, but anyhow it might do something. So he crept out of bed and tiptoed over to the window. He pulled the cord and the green blind shot up with a loud rattle; then he opened the lower sash⁠—the upper one was already open⁠—and leaned out.

Nothing happened. The stars were shining brightly. It was very still. There was no wind to stir the bushes. The owl’s cry was not repeated; it had caught its prey, probably, and was now gobbling it up in a tree. It could see his white figure standing by the open window, at any rate, for nowls, of course, could see everything in the dark, he knew. Below him lay the flowerbeds, dark blotches on the lawn. The cold air crept inside his nightgown and made him shiver a little, but he was too excited to mind that.

“The nowl can see me,” he thought. “If I wave my arms, it will see me better still.”

He waved his white arms, trying to attract its attention; and he was just going to get a towel and wave that too, when he saw something that suddenly made his heart stand still. Two of the flowerbeds were moving⁠—moving slowly across the lawn!

Toby held his breath and stared. He couldn’t believe his eyes. His heart was thumping now. He was frightened, too frightened to turn back into the room, or sink down and hide himself below the level of the windowsill. The flowerbeds went on moving. Yet flowerbeds, he knew, could not really move. It was impossible. And then the truth flashed into him. These dark blotches were not flowerbeds at all. There were no flowerbeds on the back lawn, but only on the front one. These dark blotches were living things. They were creatures. That’s why they moved. They were very big too, as big as elephants. Bigger even than elephants! What in the world were they? He gasped. He began to shake all over.

Toby was terrified, too terrified to scream or move, almost too terrified to breathe. He just stood motionless and stared clutching the windowsill with two cold hands. He tried to make himself as small as possible, so as not to be seen. He let his head sink down into his shoulders, but he was too big to hide. Indeed, he felt himself bigger than ever before. The whole night saw him easily. And, as he stared, all the fairytales he had ever heard swarmed into his mind⁠—monsters, giants, ogres, goblins, with most of the animals from the Zoo into the bargain.

The big, dark things, meanwhile, kept moving slowly and quietly to and fro over the lawn. They made no noise. He believed they were watching him. The starlight was not bright enough for him to see exactly how they were shaped, but it was enough for him to see, a moment later, two smaller outlines that were now moving very swiftly towards the bigger ones. These two new shapes darted from side to side. They, too, made no noise. He had decided that the bigger ones were elephants or monsters. The two smaller ones, he knew at once, were human beings. They were men. And that very instant they began to speak. He heard one say in a very low voice to the other:

“The gate’s open, Bill. Drive ’em out that way⁠—”

The two men immediately ran swiftly towards the big, dark creatures, and a noise followed that seemed to shake the lawn and ought to have wakened the entire household. It was a regular stampede. The big creatures moved suddenly at a tremendous speed, the two men after them.

But Toby saw no more. At this moment he just plopped down upon the floor in a heap and screamed and screamed and screamed at the top of his voice. It seemed to him that he screamed for a long time, but, actually, it was only a minute later when Nannie, who slept across the passage, came bouncing into the room with a lighted candle and found him there.

“There’s elephants on the lawn!” he shrieked, “men and elephants trying to catch me!” while Nannie, greatly surprised and only just out of dreamland herself, popped him back into bed, shut the window with a bang, but without looking out, and did her best to soothe and calm his frightened little soul.

It was only after some time she began to grasp that it was not an ordinary nightmare that had frightened him, and that he had not merely been walking in his sleep. But the moment she did realise that he had seen something real, and that this “something” might possibly be burglars, she acted promptly. First putting Toby into a maid’s room down the passage, she went forthwith to wake the butler, who went forthwith and woke the master, who went forthwith himself to wake the groom over the stables. So that, twenty minutes later, though Toby did not know this at the time, these three big men, armed with two shot guns and a pistol, and carrying a couple of hurricane lanterns, sallied forth to search the grounds for the two mysterious figures and strange big creatures, while the chauffeur raced away on his bicycle to get the local policeman from the village six miles off.

Long before the policeman, however, had dragged himself out of his warm sheets and squeezed himself into his blue uniform, Toby had fallen peacefully asleep again in Nannie’s room, and the mystery of the moving flowerbeds had been all explained. Someone had left the gate open into the back garden, and two of the horses belonging to the gypsies camped on the common beyond, had strayed in. Two of the gypsy men had come to drive them back again before the daylight came. It was this that Toby saw and heard. But the horses had made deep holes on the soft ce and on their way out had ruined vegetable beds in the kitchen garden, trampling down the asparagus, which Uncle William particularly loved.

Next day, to his great surprise, Toby found himself rather a hero; he had expected to be scolded, but instead he was patted on the back and praised. His Uncle disliked the gypsies, because they came at night to steal wood and water, they had fierce dogs tied up by their tents, they were dirty, and made what he called “a filthy mess of the whole Common.” But he had never been able to get any real evidence against them to prove that they were a nuisance. Now, at last, he could prove it. Toby, rather, had proved it for him. Uncle William was delighted.

“But what in the world made you wake up at that hour?” he asked in his booming voice.

“A nowl,” replied Toby quietly, feeling sure of his ground.

“What d’you mean, boy? How could an owl wake you?”

“Because it did,” returned Toby. “I heard it, you see.”

“But I don’t see,” roared his Uncle. “How could you hear it in your bedroom? Weren’t you asleep at two o’clock in the morning? And if not, why not?”

“It woke me. It went hunting past the window. When it hunts, it shrieks, you know, Uncle, like⁠—oh, like anything.”

Uncle William caught him on to his knee. “Now, my little man, tell me all about it. Out with it. And no nonsense, mind!”

Toby was only too pleased. He told his whole story. He told more than Nannie ever knew, more than Aunt Sophy ever heard. He was not a scrap afraid of his roaring Uncle.

“Well, well, I never did!” was the man’s exclamation when the tale was ended. “I never, never did!” He poked him in the ribs and gazed at him. “Plucky youngster,” he added, and then poked him again.

Toby kept silent for a little time. Then he began to fidget. He drew a long, deep breath. He was preparing for something, evidently. At last, looking his Uncle straight in the eye, he said calmly:

“A useful bird, wasn’t it, Uncle?”

“Eh? What d’you mean by that?” came the gruff question.

“The nowl, I mean, was useful. It woke me, you see.”

His Uncle stared hard at him. Toby returned the stare. Then his Uncle began to fidget in his turn. He also drew a long, deep breath. After that, he spoke:

“You’re as clever as a Cat,” he said, “as plucky as a Tortoise, and as wise as⁠—as a nowl. You’ve proved that all three are useful, and you shall have all three for your birthday⁠—tomorrow. Because⁠—I promised.”

And next day, sure enough, Toby got them all three, though how his Uncle managed it he never knew. He called the cat Sophy, the tortoise Percy, and the owl Gypsy; and all three were what Uncle William called a “perfect nuisance about the place, and quite useless into the bargain.” For Sophy spoilt all the best chairs with her claws and never caught a single mouse; and Percy got lost regularly once a week and had to be hunted for; and Gypsy did nothing but sit in its cage and blink its great eyes open and shut, and pretend to be so wise that⁠—well, it never could have been half as wise as it pretended to be, and so it was just a humbug. But Toby loved them all three, in spite of their wickedness, and so their wickedness didn’t really matter.

Within six months, however, he was tired of them all, deadly tired: of Percy, because he hardly ever saw him and he had no voice anyhow; of Sophy, because she wouldn’t really play and never had any kittens, being actually a Tom; and of Gypsy, because he never hooted even once, and Toby grew tired of those great, wise eyes.

So it was that, the following year, when his birthday came round again, and Uncle William caught him up on to his knee and roared at him: “What d’you want, my little man?” he replied without a moment’s hesitation:

“A top-hat and a cob, please, Uncle.”

He got both. And from Aunt Sophy he got a fox terrier that really would play. And the best of it all was that he hadn’t got to prove first of all that either of them was useful!