The Black Poodle Part 15

The wooden magician himself was bolting his sausage a minute on the top of the clock just as usual, only the jester fancied his cunning eyes rolled round at them with a peculiar leer as a cheerful whistle was heard on the stairs outside.

A moment afterwards a lively brown-faced boy in sailor dress put his head in at the door. 'Hullo, Winnie,' he said, 'are you all alone?'

'Nurse has gone downstairs,' said Winnie, plaintively; 'I've got the dolls, but it's dull here somehow. Can't you come and help me to play, Archie?'

Archie had been skating all the morning, and could not settle down just then to any of his favourite books, so he had come up to see Winnie with the idea of finding something to amuse him there--for though he was a boy, he did unbend at times, so far as to help her in her games, out of which he managed to get a good deal of amus.e.m.e.nt in his own peculiar way.

But of course he had to make a favour of it, and must not let Winifred see that it was anything but a sacrifice for him to consent.

'I've got other things to do,' he said; 'and you know you always make a fuss when I do play with you. Look at last time!'

'Ah, but then you played at being a slave-driver, Archie, and you made me sell you my old black Dinah for a slave, and then you tied her up and whipped her. I didn't like _that_ game! But if you'll stay this time, I won't mind what else you do!'

For Archie had a way of making the dolls go through exciting adventures, at which Winifred a.s.sisted with a fearful wonder that had a fascination about it.

'Girls don't know how to play with dolls, and that's a fact,' said Archie. 'I could get more fun out of that dolls' house than a dozen girls could' (he would have set fire to it); 'but I tell you what: if you'll let me do exactly what I like, and don't go interfering, except when I tell you to, perhaps I will stay a little while--not long, you know.'

'I promise,' said Winifred, 'if you won't break anything. I'll do just what you tell me.'

'Very well then, here goes; let's see who you've got. I say, who's this in the swell dress?'

He was pointing to Ethelinda, whose brain began to tingle at once with a delicious excitement. 'He has noticed me at last,' she thought; 'I wonder if I could make him fall desperately in love with me!' and she turned her big blue eyes full upon him. 'Ah, if I could only speak--but perhaps I shall presently. I'm quite sure the romance is going to begin!'

'That's Ethelinda, Archie--isn't she pretty?'

'I've seen them uglier,' he said; 'she's like that Eve de Something we saw at Drury Lane--we'll have her, and there's that chap in the fool's dress, we may want him. Now we're ready.'

'What are you going to do with them, Archie?'

'You leave that to me. I've an idea, something much better than your silly tea-parties.'

'Why doesn't he tell that child to go?' thought Ethelinda, 'we don't want _her_!'

'Now listen, Winifred,' said Archie: 'this is the game. You're a beautiful queen (only do sit up and take that finger out of your mouth--queens don't do that). Well, and I'm the king, and this is your maid of honour, the beautiful Lady Ethelinda, see?'

'Go on, Archie; I see,' cried Winifred; 'and I like it so far.'

'I think _I_ ought to have been the queen!' said Ethelinda to herself.

'Well, now,' said the boy, 'I'll tell you something. This maid of honour of yours doesn't like you (don't say she does, now; I'm telling this, and I know). You watch her carefully. Can't you see a sort of look in her face as if she didn't think much of you?'

'How clever he is,' thought Ethelinda; 'he knows exactly how I feel!'

'Do you really think it's that, Archie?' said Winifred; 'it's just what I was afraid of before you came in.'

'That's it. Look out for a kind of glare in her eye when I pay you any attention. (How does Your Majesty do? Well, I hope.) There, didn't you see it? Well, that's jealousy, that is. She hates you like anything!'

'I'm sure she doesn't, then,' protested Winifred.

'Oh, well, if you know better than I do, you can finish it for yourself.

I'm going.'

'No, no; do stay. I like it. I'll be good after this!'

'Don't you interrupt again, then. Now the real truth is that she'd like to be queen instead of you; she's ambitious, you know--that's what's the matter with her. And so she's got it into her head that if you were only out of the way, I should ask _her_ to be the next queen!'

Winifred could not say a word, she was so overcome by the idea of her doll's unkindness; and Archie took Ethelinda by the waist and brought her near her royal mistress as he said: 'Now you'll see how artful she is; she's coming to ask you if she may go out. Listen. "Please, Your Gracious Majesty, may I go out for a little while?"'

'This is even better than if I spoke myself,' Ethelinda thought; 'he can talk for me, and I do believe I'm going to be quite wicked presently.'

'Am I to speak to her, Archie?' Winifred asked, feeling a little nervous.

'Of course you are. Go on; don't be silly; give her leave.'

'Certainly, Ethelinda, if you wish it,' replied Winifred, with a happy recollection of her mother's manner on somewhat similar occasions, 'but I should like you to be in to prayers.'

'A maid of honour isn't the same as a _housemaid_, you know,' said Archie; 'but never mind--she's off. _You_ don't see where she goes, of course.'

'Yes I do,' said Winifred.

'Ah, but not in the game; n.o.body does. She goes to the apothecary's--here's the apothecary.' And he caught hold of the jester, who thought helplessly, '_I'm_ being brought into it now; I wish he'd let me alone--I don't like it!' 'Well, so she says, "Oh, if you please, Mr. Apothecary, I want some a.r.s.enic to kill the royal blackbeetles with; not much--a pound or two will be plenty." So he takes down a jar (here Archie got up and fetched a big bottle of citrate of magnesia from a cupboard), 'and he weighs it out, and wraps it up, and gives it to her.

And he says, "You'll mind and be very careful with it, my lady. The dose is one pinch in a teaspoonful of treacle to each blackbeetle, the last thing at night; but it oughtn't to be left about in places." And so Lady Ethelinda takes it home and hides it.'

'I've bought some poison now,' thought Ethelinda, immensely delighted, 'I _am_ a wicked doll! How convenient it is to have it all done for one like this! I do hope he's going to make me give Winifred some of that stuff, to get her out of the way, and have the romance all to our two selves.'

'Now you and I,' Archie continued, 'haven't the least idea of all this.

But one day, the Court jester ('I was an apothecary just now,' thought the jester; 'it's really very confusing!')--the Court jester comes up, looking very grave, and sneaks of her. The reason of that is that he's angry with her because she never will have anything to do with him, and he says that he's seen her folding up a powder in paper and writing on it, and he thought I ought to be told about it.' ('This is awful,'

thought the jester. 'What will Ethelinda think of me for telling tales?

and what has come to Ethelinda? It's all that miserable Sausage-Glutton's doing--and I can't help myself!')

'Well, I'm very much surprised of course,' said Archie; '_any_ king would be--but I wait, and one day, when she has gone out for a holiday, the jester and I go to her desk and break it open.'

'Oh, Archie,' objected the poor little Queen in despair, 'isn't that rather _mean_ of you?'

'Now look here, Winnie, I can't have this sort of thing every minute.

For a gentleman, it might be rather mean, perhaps, but then I'm a king, and I've got a right to do it, and it's all for your sake, too--so you can't say anything. Besides, it's the jester does it; I only look on.

Well, and by-and-by,' said Archie, as he scribbled something laboriously on a piece of paper, 'by-and-by he finds _this_!'

And with imposing gravity he handed Winifred a folded paper, on which she read with real terror and grief the alarming words--'_Poisin for the Queen_!'

'There, what do you think of that?' he asked triumphantly; 'looks bad, doesn't it?'

'Perhaps,' suggested the Queen feebly, 'perhaps it was only in fun?'

'Fun--there's not much fun about her! Now the guard' (here he used the bewildered jester once more) 'arrests her. Do you want to ask the prisoner any questions?--you can if you like.'

'You--you didn't mean to poison me really, did you, Ethelinda dear?'

said Winifred, who was taking it all very seriously, as she took most things. 'Archie, do make her say something!'