He had an hour to wait in the study for his father, who was away at the county town. During this time Hugh John suffered strange qualms, not of apprehension, which presently issued in yet keener and more definitely located agony. At last Mr. Picton Smith entered.
"Well, sir, and what is this I hear?" he said severely, throwing down his riding-whip on the couch as if he meant to pick it up again soon.
Hugh John was silent. He saw that his father knew all there was to know about his evil doings from Janet Sheepshanks, and he was far too wise to plead guilty.
"Did I not tell you not to go to the orchard?"
Hugh John hung his head, and made a slight grimace at the pattern on the carpet, as a severer pang than any that had gone before assailed him.
"Now, look here, sir," said his father, shaking his finger at him in a solemnising manner, "If ever I catch you again in that orchard, I'll I'll give you as sound a thrashing, sir, as ever you got in your life."
Hugh John rubbed his hand across his body just above the second lowest button of his jacket.
"Oh, father," he said plaintively, "I wish dreadfully that you had caught me before the last time I was in the orchard."
The treatment with pills and rhubarb which followed considerably retarded the operations of the army of Windy Standard. It was not the first time that the stomach of a commander-in-chief has had an appreciable effect on the conduct of a campaign.
CHAPTER XIII THE ARMY OF WINDY STANDARD
ATIt was the intention of the Commander-in-Chief to attack the citadel of the enemy with banners flying, and after due notice. He had been practising for days upon his three-key bugle in order to give the call of Childe Roland. But Private Sammy Carter, who was always sticking his oar in, put him upon wiser lines, and (what is more) did it so quietly and suggestively that General Napoleon was soon convinced that Sammy's plan was his own, and on the second day boasted of its merits to its original begetter, who did not even smile. The like has happened in greater armies with generals as distinguished.
Sammy Carter advised that the assault should be delivered between eight and nine in the morning, for the very good reasons that at that hour both the butcher's apprentice, Tommy Pratt, and the slaughterman would be busy delivering the forenoon orders, while the butcher's son, Nipper Donnan, would be at school, and the Black Sheds consequently entirely deserted.
At first Hugh John rebelled, and asserted that this was not a sportsmanlike mode of proceeding, but Sammy Carter, who always knew more about everything than was good for anybody, overwhelmed his chief with examples of strategies and surprises from the military history of thirty centuries.
"Besides," said he, somewhat pertinently, "let's get Donald back first, and then we can be chivalrous all you want. Perhaps they are keeping him to fatten him up for the Odd Coons' Bank Holiday Feast."
This, as the wily Sammy knew, was calculated to stir up the wrath of his general more than anything else he could say. For at the annual Bean Feast of the Honourable Company of Odd Coons, a benefit secret society of convivial habits, a sheep was annually roasted whole. It said an ox on the programme, but the actual result, curiously enough, was mutton and not beef.
"We attack to-morrow at daybreak," said Field-Marshal Smith grandly, as soon as Sammy Carter had
finished speaking.
This, however, had subsequently to be modified to nine o'clock, to suit the breakfast hour of the Carters. Moreover Saturday was substituted for Tuesday, both because Cissy and Sammy could most easily "shirk" their governess on that day, and because Mr. Picton Smith was known to be going up to London by the night train on Friday.
On such trivial circumstances do great events depend.
When the army was finally mustered for the assault, its armament was found to be somewhat varied, though generally efficient. But then even in larger armies the weapons of the different arms of the service are far from uniform. There are, for example, rifles and bayonets for the Line, lances for the Light Horse, carbines, sabres, and army biscuits, all deadly after their kind.
So it was in the campaigning outfit of the forces of Windy Standard. The historian can only hint at this equipment, so strange were the various kits. The Commander-in-Chief wished to insist on a red sash and a long cut-and-thrust sword, with (if possible) a kettle-drum. But this was found impracticable as a general order. For not only did the two divisional commanders decline to submit to the sash, but there were not enough kettle-drums intact to go more than half round.
So General Smith was the only soldier who carried a real sword. He had also a pistol, which, however, obstinately refused to go off, but formed a valuable weapon when held by the barrel. Cissy was furnished with a pike, constructed by Prince Michael's father, the dethroned monarch of O'Donowitch-dom, out of a leister or fish-spear which, strangely enough, he had carried away with him from his palace at the time of his exile. This constituted a really formidable armament, being at least five feet long, and so sharp that if you ran very hard against a soft wooden door with it, it made a mark which you could see quite a yard off in a good light.