Mr. Bliss Page 2

  Mr. Day is telling a story, and Mrs. Knight is pretending not to listen. Bruno and Fattie are too full to do anything except sit quiet. It was very late before they finished, and very late indeed when they had washed up. Of course it was too late to go home. So the bears invited them to stay the night.

  Imagine staying all night in the Bears’ House – but they all felt quite friendly at this time, and no one mentioned either cabbages or bananas, nor did anyone ask the bears where they got their excellent food (the bears were generally supposed not to pay for anything, but to get it by ‘prowling’ – in fact they were rascals, though they could be very jolly at supper).

  The bears had quite a large house, long and low, with no upstairs. Herbert and Egbert slept in the double spare-bed and everyone found some sort of bed – except Fattie. None of the beds would bear him. So he slept by the fire, on a mattress and cushions, and snored happily all night. Perhaps he dreamed he was a kettle on the hob. The ponies and donkey were fetched too, and put in one of the bears’ big outhouses. So everyone was comfortable.

  And they woke early next morning, and then the story went on.

  What happened to Mr. Bliss? He ran all night without knowing where he was running to, jumping over hedges, falling into ditches, tearing his clothes on barbed wire. When dawn came he was dead tired, and he found himself sitting on the top of a hill. He ought to have been miles and miles away, but he was looking down into his own village and could see his own house in the distance on a further hill.

  “There is either a flag flying from my chimney or else the sweep has got in – though I never ordered him to come,” he said to himself.

  “Well, I am blessed!” said Mr. Bliss aloud, and he got up and staggered down hill, over fields and fences, till he struck the road through the village. He went to Binks’s, but no one was up. So he pushed into the yard at the side of the shop, and there was his bicycle just inside a shed. He wheeled it out, and started home.

  Of course he meant to come sailing down the hill again with his purse as soon as he had changed his clothes and put on his shopping hat (and had some breakfast). But you will agree it looked most suspicious. So thought Mr. Binks peeping through his bedroom window. He began to dress in a great rage, long before his usual time. “All right, my lad,” said he, “I’ll go straight to

  This is a lifelike portrait of Sergeant Boffin without his helmet.

  Sergeant Boffin at the police station, and he’ll learn you to go off with my motor-cars, and never bring ‘em back.” All the same he did not put off breakfast, nor did he hurry over it. While he was munching a sausage, and wondering how Mr. Bliss would like to spend his summer holidays in prison, away in the Bears’ House there was a lot of talking.

  The bears were in a very good temper that morning. They gave back Mrs. Knight her bananas (or most of them); they gave Mr. Day some fresh cabbages (and he did not ask where they got them).

  But Mrs. Knight wanted a new cart, and Mr, Day wanted a new barrow, and the Dorkinses wanted a new soup-tureen, and the bears wanted some fun; and each of them thought Mr. Bliss was the man to get it from. Also the Dorkinses suddenly thought they might charge Mr. Bliss for hire of ponies – which was not nice of them, as they were disgustingly rich.

  Anyway after an early breakfast they all started off again together. It was a great squash of course, because although Mr. B. had run goodness knows where, and the dogs had run home, the bears and the Dorkinses and the other two made nine. Bruno sat on Mrs. Knight’s lap, and Archie and Teddy took up as much room as they could – but Fattie did not leave much.

  When they got to the village, they found a row going on – or just beginning. Mr. Binks was trying to make Sergeant Boffin believe that Mr. Bliss was a thief, and that he ought to run straight up the hill and bring him back to prison. In the picture Sergeant Boffin is just saying: “Wot! ‘im ‘as lives up the ‘ill”; and Binks is shouting, and people are coming out. You can see Sam, Sergeant Boffin’s eldest boy, calling to his friends to come and see his dad knock old Binks down. The barber and the butcher are there; the cobbler (next door) is peeping; Uncle Joe is at the door with his specs on, Mrs. Golightly is standing with a parcel in her arm, and has stopped talking to Mrs. Simkins, old Gaffer Gamgee is trying hard to hear, elegant Alfred is taking a superior interest; there is somebody else’s face at another window, and there are one or two kids.

  But this is absolutely nothing to the excitement a minute later, when up rolled Mr. Binks’ car, full of bears and Dorkinses and others, drawn by three ponies and a donkey. All the village was there in a minute. And they laughed. And they said things about Mr. Binks’ tin-cars that made him angrier than he was before.

  “He ought to be in prison he ought,” said he, “sending home a nice car bent and all, and full of a parcel of bears and strange folk.”

  “G-r-r-r-r,” said Archie; and Mr. Binks stepped back sudden[ly] and fell in the gutter.

  “Now stand up and be polite, and say ‘thank you’!” said Archie. “You ought to be very pleased we have bothered to bring your car back. Mr Bliss left it in our wood, and ran away, and hasn’t been seen since.”

  “O yes, ‘e ‘as,” said Binks. “I seen him sneaking ‘ome, early this morning, as I was a-telling the sergeant ‘ere.”

  “Then we must follow him,” said Teddy; “he owes money to everybody. Mr. Day wants a new barrow, Mrs. Knight wants a new cart, the Dorkinses want a new soup-tureen, Mr. Binks wants his money; and we want to see him too. We will all call together.”

  And that’s what they decided to do. Poor Mr. Bliss knew nothing of all this. He was having fresh troubles. As soon as he got to the top of the hill (very tired) he looked up at his chimney. Then he stood still in the road.

  “I am blessed and bothered,” he said, “if it isn’t the Girabbit’s head sticking out of my chimney; and he seems to be munching carpet” (that’s why he looked like a flag from far away).

  It was the Girabbit’s head! Mr. B. had gone off and forgotten to feed it, so it had burst open the back-door, squeezed in finally into the dining-room, and eaten its way through the ceiling into the best bedroom – and through the next ceiling into the attic, and up the attic chimney, knocking off the pots. There he was blinking in the morning sun with a large piece of the best-bedroom hearthrug in his mouth.

  This will give you some idea of what Mr. Bliss saw when he got inside. Though he had had the Girabbit for some years, he was very surprised. He did not know that its neck was quite so telescopic.

  Mr. Bliss was also really and truly angry; but the Girabbit would not come down again, not though Mr. B. pulled hard at his tail in the dining-room.

  All he would do was to keep on saying “It’s going to be a wet day! – leave me alone!”

  Mr. B. was so tired that he left it alone, changed his clothes, took some food on the lawn, and had a kind of breakfast-lunch (or brunch).

  Then he fell fast asleep, under a tree, and forgot even to dream.

  Just after eleven he was waked up by the Girabbit speaking. “There’s a powerful lot of people coming up the hill, Mr. Bliss,” said he. “I can hear Sergeant Boffin’s voice, and Binks’s, and the voices of those Dorkinses you had to tea last Tuesday; and other folk; and bears growling.”

  (The Girabbit may be practically blind, but it can hear mighty sharp). “And they all seem dreadfully angry with you, Mr. Bliss,” added the Girabbit.

  “Lawks!” said Mr. Bliss; “What are they saying?”

  “They are saying: we are going to take it out of old Bliss, and twice over, we are.”

  “Save us!” said Mr. Bliss, and darted indoors and shot all the bolts and turned all the keys. Then he peeped out of a bedroom window, but the Girabbit pulled in his head.

  Soon up came Boffin, and Binks, and the Dorkinses, and the bears, and Mrs. Knight, and Mr. Day, and lots of the people of the village.

  There was no sign of the wet day the Girabbit spoke of.

  It was hot, and they mopped their fac
es.

  Then they all shouted: “Mr BLISS!”

  No answer.

  So Mr. Binks shouted: “I wants my money.” And they all shouted in chorus: “‘E wants ‘is money, and ‘e means to ‘ave it.”

  No answer.

  “Why don’t you arrest him?” said Archie, who was standing by the gate.

  “I will!“said Boffin.

  “Ha! ha! I see you,” said the Girabbit at the second, popping his neck a yard or two out of the chimney. He heard them, not saw them, but they did not know that. They looked up and saw him, and that was enough. They were astonished. Indeed most of them fell flat on the spot. (You see Mr. Bliss had so far kept the Girabbit quite secret, because he did not want to pay Sergeant Boffin for a licence for keeping him, as he was sure it would be double price – quite 15/- a year. The Girabbit was trained to dive down a hole when strangers came up the hill and up to now no one else had seen more than his head. This day was an exception – because the Girabbit had quite forgotten where it was, and thought it was in its own hole!).

  “Get up, get up!” squeaked the Girabbit. “Get up, and go away, or I shall come out of my hole and jump on you”; and in popped his head. Then they got up and went (you can see them on the last page) – very quickly. All except the bears who are not particularly frightened. They went behind a hedge.

  The others fell over one another in their hurry. Fattie and Sergeant Boffin rolled over and over like barrels, quite a long way down hill before they stopped in the ditch.

  It was now Br. Bliss’s turn to laugh; and as he had not laughed since the day before yesterday, with nothing but bother in between, he laughed a lot. He came out and stood in the road, and waved to his friends.

  “Good morning!” said the bears, popping their heads over the hedge.

  “Lawks!” said Mr. Bliss, jumping into the air.

  “Anything we can do for you?” said they.

  “No thank you!” said he. “Well – yes, that is not unless you can help me to get my Girabbit out of the house?”

  “Certainly!” they said. “Delighted – but not for nothing!”

  “Certainly not,” said he, “I will remember you.”

  So they came in and shouted up to the Girabbit that they were going to start eating at his tail and work upwards, if he didn’t come down and out immediate.

  Of course he drew in his neck immediate – in a fine flurry of soot and plaster – but when he looked into the dining-room and saw (he could see very close to) what looked like bears, and what smelt like bears he took such a fright that he jumped bang through the window.

  In two more jumps he was over the hedge and in the road.

  When the people saw him coming they yelled ‘murder!’ all together, and ran and rolled faster than before, and every house in the village slammed its doors. As for the Girabbit it never stopped jumping till it was quite lost in the distance; and Mr. Bliss wept big tears at losing it.

  After lunch the bears made out a bill for helping; and Mr. Bliss went and got his purse and his money-box, for he thought the time had come to settle up. I thought you would like to see what all these adventures cost him, by the time everything was paid for. It was a very expensive time.

  This is a copy of a note Mr. Bliss made in his diary when it was all over.

  It quite emptied his money-box (except for one or two foreign coins he kept for collections); so he did not go away for a holiday that summer.

  That afternoon, as soon as he had said goodbye to the bears, he took all his money, got on his bicycle, and went down to the village. He paid Mr. Binks and Mr. Day and Mrs. Knight on the spot (and set postal orders to the Dorkinses and the Innkeeper). They said they knew he was a gentleman all the time.

  As a matter of fact Mr. Bliss never used the motor-car again – he had taken a great dislike to it. So he gave it to Mr. Day as a wedding-present. Yes, wedding-present. Very soon after this Mr. Day became Mrs. Knight’s third husband. She said it seemed suitable, seeing how they were both in the same line of business, and had had a lot of adventures together. So they set up a green-grocers shop in the village, and called it “Day and Knight’s.”

  They are very friendly with Mr. Bliss now, and they always let him have bananas and cabbages very cheap.

  There were great doings at the wedding. Mr. Bliss played his concertina. Fattie Dorkins sang a comic song, but as it was all about policemen with large feet, Sergeant Boffin did not laugh. The bears drank everybody’s health several times, and did not go home till next morning. But best of all, in the middle of it the Girabbit put his head in through the window!

  “Ha! Ha!” he said. “Here we all are again.”

  And everybody choked.

  “Where have you been?” said Mr. Bliss.

  “Ha! Ha!” said he, “wouldn’t you like to know! Ask the Dorkinses and the bears!”

  That’s why the Dorkinses left early. They did not like the sound of it. But just then the bears did not care what happened, though they changed their minds when they did get home.

  The Girabbit had eaten every bit of food in their house, and broken the pantry window.

  As for the Dorkinses, they found he had bitten the tops off every tree in their orchard, and made an enormous hole in the night right in the middle of their best lawn.

  The bears said: “Well we’re blowed! Old Bliss has got the best of it after all”, and they left it at that. But the Dorkinses sent in a bill again, and while they were about it they added on a charge for the bears’ cabbages, which they had forgotten about: total £1.9.8.

  But Mr. Bliss had got no money at the moment, and he was getting rather tired of the Dorkinses, so sent the fourpence in stamps, and a bill of his own.

  This is how he made it out.

  When the Dorkinses got this they were very annoyed, and Mr. B. and they have not been particularly friendly since.

  But Mr. Bliss is quite happy, though the village children are always trespassing in his garden, to catch a glimpse of the Girabbit. He drives a little donkey cart now, not a motor, and Sergeant Boffin salutes him every time he appears in the village.

  “‘Ow’s yer little pet, sir?” says he.

  “Nicely, thank you,” says Mr. B., “but hard on cabbages. And how are all the Boffinses?”

  “Nicely, thank you,” says he, “but cruel hard on shoe-leather.”

  And that is the end of the story – except that Mr. Bliss threw the green hat away (and the Girabbit found it on the dustheap), and he wears a white hat now in summer, and a brown in winter. And that is all.

  There is just one more picture, over the page.