The Little Nugget · I · Chapter 2 2 (2/2)

“Didn’t you call your tutor ‘sir’ when you were at home?”

“Me? Don’t make me laugh. I’ve got a cracked lip.”

“I gather you haven’t an overwhelming respect for those set in authority over you.”

“If you mean my tutors, I should say nix.”

“You use the plural. Had you a tutor before Mr. Broster?”

He laughed.

“Had I? Only about ten million.”

“Poor devils!” I said.

“Who’s swearing now?”

The point was well taken. I corrected myself.

“Poor brutes! What happened to them? Did they commit suicide?”

“Oh, they quit. And I don’t blame them. I’m a pretty tough proposition, and you don’t want to forget it.”

He reached out for the cigarette-case. I pocketed it.

“You make me tired,” he said.

“The sensation’s mutual.”

“Do you think you can swell around, stopping me doing things?”

“You’ve defined my job exactly.”

“Guess again. I know all about this joint. The hot-air merchant was telling me about it on the train.”

I took the allusion to be to Mr. Arnold Abney, and thought it rather a happy one.

“He’s the boss, and nobody but him is allowed to hit the fellows. If you tried it, you’d lose your job. And he ain’t going to, because the Dad’s paying double fees, and he’s scared stiff he’ll lose me if there’s any trouble.”

“You seem to have a grasp of the position.”

“Bet your life I have.”

I looked at him as he sprawled in the chair.

“You’re a funny kid,” I said.

He stiffened, outraged. His little eyes gleamed.

“Say, it looks to me as if you wanted making a head shorter. You’re a darned sight too fresh. Who do you think you are, anyway?”

“I’m your guardian angel,” I replied. “I’m the fellow who’s going to take you in hand and make you a little ray of sunshine about the home. I know your type backwards. I’ve been in America and studied it on its native asphalt. You superfatted millionaire kids are all the same. If Dad doesn’t jerk you into the office before you’re out of knickerbockers, you just run to seed. You get to think you’re the only thing on earth, and you go on thinking it till one day somebody comes along and shows you you’re not, and then you get what’s coming to you⁠—good and hard.”

He began to speak, but I was on my favourite theme, one I had studied and brooded upon since the evening when I had received a certain letter at my club.

“I knew a man,” I said, “who started out just like you. He always had all the money he wanted: never worked: grew to think himself a sort of young prince. What happened?”

He yawned.

“I’m afraid I’m boring you,” I said.

“Go on. Enjoy yourself,” said the Little Nugget.

“Well, it’s a long story, so I’ll spare you it. But the moral of it was that a boy who is going to have money needs to be taken in hand and taught sense while he’s young.”

He stretched himself.

“You talk a lot. What do you reckon you’re going to do?”

I eyed him thoughtfully.

“Well, everything’s got to have a beginning,” I said. “What you seem to me to want most is exercise. I’ll take you for a run every day. You won’t know yourself at the end of a week.”

“Say, if you think you’re going to get me to run⁠—”

“When I grab your little hand, and start running, you’ll find you’ll soon be running too. And, years hence, when you win the Marathon at the Olympic Games, you’ll come to me with tears in your eyes, and you’ll say⁠—”

“Oh, slush!”

“I shouldn’t wonder.” I looked at my watch. “Meanwhile, you had better go to bed. It’s past your proper time.”

He stared at me in open-eyed amazement.

“Bed!”

“Bed.”

He seemed more amused than annoyed.

“Say, what time do you think I usually go to bed?”

“I know what time you go here. Nine o’clock.”

As if to support my words, the door opened, and Mrs. Attwell, the matron, entered.

“I think it’s time he came to bed, Mr. Burns.”

“Just what I was saying, Mrs. Attwell.”

“You’re crazy,” observed the Little Nugget. “Bed nothing!”

Mrs. Attwell looked at me despairingly.

“I never saw such a boy!”

The whole machinery of the school was being held up by this legal infant. Any vacillation now, and Authority would suffer a setback from which it would be hard put to it to recover. It seemed to me a situation that called for action.

I bent down, scooped the Little Nugget out of his chair like an oyster, and made for the door. Outside he screamed incessantly. He kicked me in the stomach and then on the knee. He continued to scream. He screamed all the way upstairs. He was screaming when we reached his room.

Half an hour later I sat in the study, smoking thoughtfully. Reports from the seat of war told of a sullen and probably only temporary acquiescence with Fate on the part of the enemy. He was in bed, and seemed to have made up his mind to submit to the position. An air of restrained jubilation prevailed among the elder members of the establishment. Mr. Abney was friendly and Mrs. Attwell openly congratulatory. I was something like the hero of the hour.

But was I jubilant? No, I was inclined to moodiness. Unforeseen difficulties had arisen in my path. Till now, I had regarded this kidnapping as something abstract. Personality had not entered into the matter. If I had had any picture in my mind’s eye, it was of myself stealing away softly into the night with a docile child, his little hand laid trustfully in mine. From what I had seen and heard of Ogden Ford in moments of emotion, it seemed to me that whoever wanted to kidnap him with any approach to stealth would need to use chloroform.

Things were getting very complex.