Penelope and the Others - Amy Walton (best book club books .txt) 📗

and curiosities to bear him company.

Just as he was turning this over in his mind, there came a sudden and angry cawing noise from the garden. Ambrose looked up and met the doctor's eye; without a word they both started up and made for the garden.

There was such a noise that the medlar-tree seemed to be full of jackdaws engaged in angry dispute, but when they got close under it, they found that there were only two. Ambrose's bird stood in the wicker cage, making himself as tall and upright as he could, with all the feathers on his head proudly fluffed up. He was uttering short self-satisfied croaks, which seemed to add to the rage of the other bird perched on a bough immediately above him. With his wings outspread, his head flattened, and his beak wide open, he seemed beside himself with fury at finding the stranger in his house. Screaming and scolding at the top of his voice, he took no notice of Ambrose, who ran out before the doctor and jumped up on the bench under the tree.

"Isn't it splendid?" he cried, looking back at his master. "He's come back you see, and isn't he cross? Shall I try to get him down?"

In his excitement he spoke just as he would have done to David or Nancy.

"No, no," said the doctor hastily, his face redder than usual, and putting his hand on Ambrose's shoulder, "he doesn't know you, you'd scare him away. Let me come."

He mounted on the bench beside Ambrose and stretched his arm up through the boughs of the tree.

"He knows my voice," he said. "Come, then, Jack."

Jack's only reply was an angry hiss, and a peck delivered at the doctor's hand with the whole force of his body.

"You see he knows me," said the doctor smiling, "he always does that. He's a little out of temper just now."

"Hadn't you better throw a duster over his head?" said Ambrose eagerly; "that's a very good way to catch them."

"If he'd only let me scratch his poll," said the doctor, "he'd be all right directly, but I can't get at him."

They were now joined by the doctor's housekeeper, who came out with her arms folded in her apron to see what was going on. She stood looking at the doctor's vain exertions a moment, and then said:

"Best take away t'other, master, he'll never come to ye else."

"Why, I wonder we never thought of that!" said the doctor at once, lifting the cage off the bough. "I'm much obliged to you, Mrs Gill. Perhaps you'd kindly take it indoors out of sight, and then we'll try again."

Mrs Gill departed with the care, and the doctor once more reached up his hand to the jackdaw.

"Come, then, Jack," he said in a soothing tone.

The bird hesitated a moment, and then, to Ambrose's great excitement, stepped on to the offered finger, and allowed himself to be drawn down from the tree. After this, his cage being brought out with no signs of the stranger, and some choice morsels of food placed in it, he showed no more bad temper, but marched in at the door, and began to eat greedily.

The doctor breathed a sigh of relief at this happy ending, and Ambrose, with his own jackdaw in the basket again, stood by with a proud smile on his face.

"Wasn't it a good plan?" he said. "And now you'll cut his wing, won't you? else p'r'aps he'll get away again."

"We shall see, we shall see," said Dr Budge, reaching up to hang the cage on its old nail in the window. "At any rate I am very much obliged to you, and to David, and to Andrew--a friend in need is a friend indeed."

It was wonderful, Ambrose thought on his way home, that Dr Budge had remembered three names and got them all right. Nancy came running to meet him at the white gate.

"Well," she cried, "has he come back?"

"It's all right," said Ambrose, "and Dr Budge is very much obliged to us."

He spoke importantly, which was always trying to Nancy.

"Do you suppose," she continued, "that the doctor's jackdaw really heard yours call, or would he have come back anyway?"

It struck Ambrose for the first time that his own jackdaw had not made a single sound before the other one had returned. If he had called, it would certainly have been heard through the open window of the study.

"Did you _hear_ him call?" persisted Nancy. "Because if you didn't, I don't believe he had anything to do with it, and you might just as well have left him at home."

Ambrose walked on very fast into the house, but there was no escape from Nancy, who kept pace with him, insisting on a reply. The only one he had to give was a very frequent one on such occasions:

"How silly you are, Nancy!" And he began to feel the gravest doubts as to whether his jackdaw had really been of use.

Be this as it might, there was no doubt at all that Dr Budge was really grateful, and as the days went on Ambrose began to like his master more and more, and to feel quite at home with him. He seemed, since the recovery of the jackdaw, to be much less absent-minded, and looked at Ambrose now as though he were a boy and not a volume. Ambrose felt the difference in the gaze which he often found kindly fixed on him, and it made him think that he would like to ask Dr Budge's help in other matters than lessons.

This was on his mind more strongly than usual one particular morning when he had been to Dr Budge for about three weeks. Instead of opening his books at once and setting to work as usual, he rested his elbow on the top of the pile, gazed earnestly at his master, and presently gave a deep sigh. Dr Budge was writing busily, and at first was quite ignorant of the gaze, but at the sigh he looked up.

"Anything the matter, Ambrose?" he asked. "N-no," answered Ambrose. "There's nothing the matter exactly, only to-day's mother's birthday."

"Well, there's nothing to look mournful about in that, is there?" asked the doctor kindly. "Your mother will be home again soon, won't she?"

Ambrose looked down at his Latin grammar and got rather red.

"I was thinking," he said, "that we meant to open the museum to-day, and now it can't ever be opened."

"How's that?" asked the doctor.

This question was hard to answer all at once, but it led to others until the whole unlucky history of the crock and Miss Barnicroft's money, and the failure of the museum, was unfolded. It took a very long time, but as he went on Ambrose found it easier to talk about than he could have supposed. The doctor was an admirable listener. He said almost nothing, but you could see by his face, and the way in which he nodded at the right places, that he was taking it all in. He did not seem surprised either at anything in the affair, and treated it all with great gravity, though from time to time his eyes twinkled very kindly.

"And so," he said when Ambrose had finished, "the museum's never been opened?"

"Never really opened," said Ambrose, "and we wanted mother to do it on her birthday. The worst of it is," he added more shyly, "that father said he couldn't trust me any more. I mind that more than anything. It doesn't so much matter for David, because he's such a little boy, but I'm the eldest next to Pennie."

"But all this was some time ago," said the doctor. "Have you been careful to be quite obedient ever since it happened?"

Ambrose thought a moment.

"I think so," he said. "You see there hasn't been much to be obedient about, only just little everyday things which don't make any difference."

"You want something hard to do, eh?" asked the doctor.

Ambrose nodded.

"There's nothing much harder to learn than obedience, my boy," said the doctor, looking kindly at him. "It takes most of us all our lives to learn it. Latin's much easier."

"But," said Ambrose with an uneasy wriggle, "being obedient doesn't show. I want something to show father."

Dr Budge looked absently out of the window a moment, and Ambrose began to be afraid that he had forgotten all about the subject. But he suddenly looked round and said:

"_Better is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city_."

Seeing Ambrose's puzzled stare he continued:

"You see we must remember that the best and most useful things do not always make the most noise in the world. The man who rules his spirit to obedience does not do anything that `shows' at all. Very often no one knows what he has done. The man who takes the city does it with noise and tumult, and gets fame and praise. Yet of those two the first perhaps does the harder thing, and may be more useful to his fellow-creatures. And it is just the little common things which come every day and don't show that we must be careful about, because they keep us ready to obey in a great thing if we are called to do it. So if I were you, Ambrose," said the doctor, smiling very kindly as he ended this speech, "I would be careful about the things that don't show. Your father will know then that he can trust you, though you may think they are too little and common to make any difference."

Ambrose had never heard Dr Budge say so much before on any subject, and indeed he was generally rather sparing of his words. It was all the more flattering, therefore, that he should take all this trouble, and he had looked so very kind while he was talking that Ambrose said to himself, "I'm very glad we got his jackdaw back."

He went home full of the best resolutions possible, which he carried out so well for the next few days that Nancy asked in surprise: "Why are you so good?" feeling sure that something must have happened.

Dr Budge said nothing more about the museum or anything approaching it for some days, and Ambrose thought he had forgotten all about it. He was quite startled, therefore, when his master, suddenly leaning forward over his desk, said one morning:

"I suppose you and David still want to fill the museum?"

"Oh, yes," he replied, "of course we do!"

"Well, then," said Dr Budge, "I want to go to the chalk-pit beyond Rumborough to-morrow, and if you were both to go with me we might find something that would do for it."

Ambrose was speechless. He stared at the doctor's kind red face almost as though he was frightened at the proposal.

"I could give you some fossils of my own," said the doctor, glancing round at his dusty treasures, "but it would be better to find something for yourselves. You could learn a little by doing that."

"Would you really