MOST OF THE ACTUAL WORK WAS DONE BY MOONLIGHT
I merely held things and advised. The actual stuffing was entirely the work of Bunny. When 'Joe' was once ready for the cotton-wool, the stuffing was as simple as possible; and owing to his toughness we easily sewed up his chest afterwards; but the thing was to get him to look as if he was alive. This is evidently the great difficulty in the stuffer's art, and Mathers had not mastered it by any means from the Encyclopædia Britannica. I said—
"For a first attempt it is spiffing; but all the same, 'Joe' never looked like that in life or death. He is now, as it were, neither dead or alive."
Mathers admitted this. He said he thought it was the want of the eyes, and that all would come right when they were in.
I asked him where he was going to get the eyes, and he said he was going to write to the great Rowland Ward for them. This he did do, and they sent a pair of most lifelike parrot's eyes, and only charged three bob. The eyes did a great deal for 'Joe,' and certainly made him look alive. But it was a strange sort of unearthly life, I thought. They made him look creepy, as if he was a ghost risen from the tomb to haunt somebody who had killed him. Also about this time we had to get some Condy's fluid to steady poor old 'Joe' down a bit. I thought this was serious, but Mathers said not. He assured me that Condy's fluid is an everyday thing in stuffing parrots and suchlike; and then I had an idea, and got my 'anti-something' tooth-powder; which also helped, and so it came to be some use after all, which tooth-powder seldom is. We varnished the claws, and tried to stick back a lot of feathers that unfortunately came out in the process of stuffing. Then I got a bit of wood and a stick for a perch, and we wired 'Joe' on and put a walnut at his feet; which was a good thought of Bunny's, because walnuts were always his favourite food.
Then, from being very confident and hopeful and full Of the Doctor's joy and gladness when he should see the parrot, Mathers sank suddenly into a sort of state of despair. He couldn't get the wings right, and he said the thought of them tortured him day and night and sent him down three places in his class. At each attempt more feathers fell out, and finally I got impatient with Mathers and told him that if he messed about with the parrot any more the thing would fall to pieces and fail utterly. I also reminded him that the matron, when passing by the play-boxes the day before, had thought there must be a dead mouse behind the wainscot. Things were, in fact, coming to a climax, and I said that as he'd had the pluck to stuff 'Joe,' I hoped, after all the fearful danger and swot we'd had, that he would keep on to the end and give him to the Doctor and trust to luck that it would come off all right.
Then he lost all heart about it and said that Milly should decide; but he was not fair to her, and only showed her the head. The rest he hid from her in a bath-towel. Of course the head was the champion part, owing to the eyes from Rowland Ward.
She cried first, but in a general way she was delighted. She praised Mathers; and she also said that it would be well to present it quickly to the Doctor, so that he could get some proper professional staffer to finish it and put a glass case over it as soon as possible. Of course a glass case was beyond our power.
Still Mathers hesitated; then, urged by me, he decided to have a second opinion. He said—
"I don't like Steggles; but he is the oldest and therefore the wisest boy in the school. I will show him the work and put myself entirely into his hands."
"There's a fearful risk," I replied, "because Steggles doesn't care for man or beast, and if he sees a chance to have some frightful score off you, he will."
"No, he won't," answered Bunny. "I shall throw myself on his sportsmanlike feeling."
"He hasn't got any," I said.
But he risked it; and for once Steggles behaved less like a common or garden cad than usual. We showed him the parrot, after making him take an oath of secrecy. The oath would have been merely a matter of form with him generally, for I have known him to break a blood-oath as if it was nothing; but somehow the excited state of Mathers and the extraordinary thing that he had done took the fancy of Steggles, and he showed a great deal of interest in the parrot, and gave us some jolly good advice into the bargain.
Of course he rotted Mathers when he'd got over the shock of the surprise. He struck an attitude of horror and fear and terror, and said, "Great snakes! Is it loaded, sergeant?" Then he pretended it was a ghost, and finally he held his nose and fainted. After all this foolery Mathers asked him for his candid opinion, and Steggles very kindly gave it. He said—
"If you take my advice you'll instantly bury it again: for two reasons. Firstly, because if the Doctor sees it he'll probably expel you; and secondly, because if you don't, the whole school will jolly soon be down with a fell disease."
To show you what Mathers is, after hearing this, nothing in the world would make him bury the parrot again. He said that it was a cruel thing, after all the danger and trouble and expense of stuffing 'Joe,' that Steggles should advise him just to bury him again; he also said that the slight scent was purely medicinal; and that, as for expelling, if the Doctor could really and truly go so far as to expel a boy who had done nothing but try with all his might to give him a moment of great and sudden happiness, then the sooner he was expelled and sent to another sort of school the better.
In fact, he was so worked up by the idea of reburying the parrot that he decided he would carry 'Joe' before the Doctor the very next day—either immediately before or after prayers.
Steggles merely said that Mathers was young and headstrong, and he hoped that he should be there to see. Then he went, and Bunny and I had a long talk as to whether before or after prayers would be best. I said after prayers on a Litany morning, because the Litany always leaves the Doctor weak but in a very kind and gentle state; whereas before prayers he is sometimes rather short.
Therefore it was so, and after the next Litany morning Mathers went up, as bold as brass to the eye, and in his hand he carried 'Joe' hidden under a clean pocket handkerchief lent by me.
The Doctor had just shut his big prayer-book, and he looked down pretty kindly at Bunny.
"What have you there, Mathers minimus?" he asked, little knowing the nature of the thing that was going to burst upon his gaze.
"Please, sir," said Bunny, "it's poor old 'Joe.'"
Doctor Dunstan didn't seem to remember.
"Poor old 'Joe'! What do you mean, boy?" he asked in a changed tone of voice.
"The parrot, sir. I thought—I thought it was a pity he should be lost to you, being a beautiful object, and I—in fact—here he is, sir—stuffed by me; and the slight smell is medicinal," said Mathers.
Then he drew off the handkerchief and held the parrot up to the Doctor. Certainly it was a great effect, and at first the Doctor was evidently far too astonished to be much obliged to Mathers. He didn't take the parrot—on the contrary, he fell back a pace or two, and his astonishment seemed slowly to change to a sort of wild horror. First he looked at the parrot, then he looked at Mathers, then he regularly glared at the parrot again. Seen from a distance the effect of the parrot was not good. Evidently we had lost more feathers than we thought, and its back had got a lump between the shoulders, more really like a vulture than a parrot. Still, of course one could recognize it.
Mathers held it up; then, getting frightened, he put it down on a form, and I knew, from the trembling way he began to handle my handkerchief that if the Doctor didn't speak pretty soon, Mathers would blub in public.
These silences of the Doctor's are well known as awful. You can hear a pin drop in them; and during them his eyes roll round and round in the sockets, like Catherine wheels, but much slower.
At last he spoke.
"Am I to understand, boy Mathers, that unaided you—you dug up, or disinterred, that unfortunate fowl and then sought to impart to it this bizarre, this grotesque, this indelicate semblance of life?"
Mathers said he was to understand that. He added with a shaking voice—
"I did it to give you pleasure, sir—on my honour."
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