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that
was like.
He jerked his head aside, and his eyes became fixed once more on
the gallipot.
That
was the real and eloquent thing. His mind had
completed its circuit. He stood up convinced.
'It's no good going on like this,' he explained lucidly, almost
cheerfully. 'This would be the very first place they would look into.
I should look in here myself. But don't you see, you needn't be
caught at all if you do what I tell you. It's something I read in a
book of mine.'
The woman lifted a mechanical head and looked at him; and as
if for the first time. She saw — a meagre boy with linnet legs and
narrow shoulders, a lean clean-cut face of a rather bilious brown,
and straight dark brown hair beneath a yachting cap; a boy in
black stockings, a nightshirt and a shiny belt; his dark eyes, nar-
rowed and intent, set steep in his head. This boy frightened her. She
pushed on her bonnet and loosened her dress about her throat.
Manifestly she was preparing to go. He spoke more decisively.
'You don't
see.
That's all,' he said. 'Really, on my word of honour,
it would be all right. I'm not just saying so. A baby could do it.'
The woman knelt down beside him in a posture not unlike the
inmate's of the cupboard, and solemnly stared into his face. 'Tell
me, tell me quick, you silly lamb.
What
did you say? A
baby
could
do it?'
'Why, yes,' said the boy, outwardly cool, but inwardly ardent.
'It's as easy as A.B.C. You get a rope and make a noose, and you
An Ideal Craftsman
215
put it over his head and round his neck, you know, just as if he was
going to be hanged. And then you hang him up on a nail or some-
thing. He mustn't touch the ground, of course. You throttled him,
didn't you? You see there's no blood. They'll say he hanged himself,
don't you see? They'd find old Jacobs strung up in the kitchen here
and they'll say he's hanged himself. Don't you
seeV
he repeated.
'Oh, I couldn't do it,' she whimpered, 'not for worlds. I couldn't.
I'd sooner stay here beside him till they come.' She began to sob in
a stupid vacant fashion and then suddenly hiccuped.
'You
could
, I tell you. A baby could do it. You're afraid. That's
what it is! I'm going to, I tell you: whether you like it or not.' He
stamped his stockinged foot. 'Mind you, I'm not doing it for my-
self. It's nothing to do with me. You aren't taking the least trouble
to understand.' He looked at her as if he couldn't believe any
human being could by any possibility be so dense. 'It's just stupid,'
he added over his shoulder, as he sallied out to the boot cupboard
to fetch a rope.
Once more the tide of consciousness flowed in the woman's
stolid, flattened brain. Two or three words of this young hero had
at last fallen on good ground. And with consciousness, fear had
come back. She came waddling after the boy. The vagrant crawling
inmates of the cupboard had been swept carelessly from the corner,
and now he was trailing a rope behind him as he went on into the
larder for brandy. His match died down meanwhile, scorching his
fingers, and he stayed on in the dark, the woman close behind him,
rummaging gingerly among the bottles and dishes. And soon his
fingertips touched the sharp-cut stopper. He returned triumphant,
flipping from them the custard they had encountered in their
search. The woman followed close behind him, stumbling ever and
again upon his trailing rope, and thereby adding to her fears and
docility. She was coming alive again. Brandy set her tongue gab-
bling faster. It gave the boy the strength and zeal of a stage villain.
He skipped hither and thither, now on to, now off the kitchen
chair he had pushed nearer; then — having swept back the array of
pink-smeared silver candlesticks and snuffers that were in his way,
he scrambled up on to the table, and presently, after a few lasso-
like flings of it, he had run the rope and made it fast over one of a
few large hooks that curved down from the ceiling, hooks once
used, as Jacobs had told him, to hang up hams on. His mouth was
set, his face intent; his soldier grandfather's lower lip drawn in
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