Me and Myn

Front matter

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Contents

1. " Snub Nose ! " .

II. "Him that waits for You! '

III. "You, Sam Brown ! "

Chapter I " Snub Nose ! "

Myn and I began our collections in old written copybooks, mixed small-hand and half-text. The small-hand pages informed us that " Honesty is the best Policy," while the half-text suggested " Honour among Thieves," a maxim certainly worthy of the attention of stamp-collectors. It was chiefly "in the breach," however, that those time-worn dicta were honoured at East Dene High School. It was generally called Old Currycomb's — Curry, LL.D., being the name and style of our revered preceptor. So far as us boys were concerned. Old Currycomb's Spartan methods made no mistake as to the appropriate seat of penitential observance.

This was a good while ago, you know, before many people made collections of stamps, and when the boy who collected crests or hair-oil bottle capsules was thought just as much of a scientist as Phillips — or even Me and Myn.

But now I must tell you who we are, Myn and I. We called ourselves "Me and Myn," because — well, I won't tell you that just yet, but it wasn't because we couldn't speak grammatically. For Myn

A took the first prize in Grammar in the Sixth at Old Currycomb's, which would have been mine if I hadn't let her. I got second, though.

You see, our High School was one of the nice new patent sort, where both boys and girls, over fourteen, go to the same school and have the same lessons. Of course, we had different playgrounds, the boys and the girls. And we sat, one lot on one side of the schoolroom and t'other lot at the other, with the master's desk bang in the middle. A fat lot of good that did.

We communicated with paper pellets or darts, winged V-shaped. And when old Currycomb's back was turned, my ! it was like a nice snow-storm — pretty thick, I bet you. Once the Inspector poked in his nose and he got it — warm. So did we — next day.

Myn and me got on all right after a while, but at first I hated her. I said she had a snub nose, and was stuck up, both of which were true. She remarked that I was a "horrid freckled boy," and that she " abhorred me." So I told her she couldn't spell "abhorred," and that shut her up pretty quick. She threw a golf ball at me (a miss, of course). Then when I annexed the ball, she went and told her dearest friend (for that week), a girl named Eva Dacre, that I was the nastiest, horridest, most insufferable boy in the school.

I didn't go about abusing her. I'm not a girl. But I did say to Jo Turner, who likes running messages for me, that if he as much as winked at Millicent Sykes or Eva Dacre, I would put his head under the pump. He said, " / don't want to speak to girls ! " — with a sort of sneer, which showed he meant me. So I licked him for his cheek, and to teach him his place. Jo's business was not to be " smarty," but to keep his head shut and run errands, also to agree with me.

You see I was the biggest boy in school — at least I could lick any other — for old Peter Sillars, whose other name was " Hippo," did not count. My name is Sam Brown, and I learnt fighting by having to lick boys who called me " Sammy," and " Samivil," and especially one Scotch draper's boy who called me "Sammle." That was a lovely fight behind the gym, and the senior pupil teacher called time. They had pupil teachers then. I was afterwards one myself. I think Scotty really won, but he was so mauled that he never called me anything but "Sam" after that, which was O.K. And he sneaked a lot of quite good stamps off his father's old letters for me — early Danish and lovely Oldenburgs. In addition to his regular trade, " swatches" of gay dress-goods, old Scotty sold butter and things that came from these parts. Pa Scotty was a regular Jew, but the stamps were all right, and it was very decent of Sandy, considering the time it took for his nose to grow straight again.

My father was just head porter at East Dene station, and because of that I got lovely rides on shunting engines on the sly. But father couldn't do much in the way of getting me stamps, which was what I mainly cared about.

Lessons — oh, gravy ! Lessons ! — Old Currycomb gave us loads of lessons, but as I had a good memory (and could see an open book farther than any boy in the Sixth) they were never any particular trouble to me. But stamps ! — my, that warmed my heart. I hope you won't tell anybody, but I went into our backyard behind the coal-house and cried when I got my first three-cornered Cape. " Molly Coddle," says you — and that shows you know nothing about it. It was kind of holy.

For you see stamps are not like anything else — except (but this I found out ever so long after) making love to a girl you are awfully fond of. Stamps make your heart go ker-flump just the same way. Once I saw a " Reunion " with the right curls and as black as sin. And I looked about for a hammer to slay the man that had it. He was not worthy of such a treasure — a big fellow with a black beard. It was like your very nicest girl marrying somebody that was just beastly rich. I wanted to kill him for quite a while. But that time I couldn't, for we were not in a thick wood. And besides, you always get found out any way. And hanging's not nice. Jo and I tried it one day on an awful swell drop in a new house his father (who is a contractor) was building up Ash Lane. I was the hangman, and the tr juble I had to bring that fool Jo round again, nobody would believe. He went black in the face. And I had warned him beforehand that it was only fun. Jo is so inconsiderate. After he was well I licked him for frightening me.

But of course all this was when I was young and silly, and before I knew about stamps. Still, I remembered that hanging frost, and so didn't kill the man who had the black " Reunion." I thought how Jo had kicked about and gasped, though the ass had his hands free all the time. No, I shan't get hung for keeps if I can help it— at least, not unless for a whopping big collection — squares of four, maybe, all in mint condition. Then— well, I hope nobody will go tempting a fellow.

But anyway, that's the way you feel about stamps — that is, if you care at all.

And Myn ! Well, Millicent Sykes was her name, and her father no end of a swell. He did all the foreign correspondence for old Caleb Grandison & Co.— the biggest and the richest firm in East Dene — ship-owners, ship-brokers, ship -builders— everything about ships, and as rich as sin.

But he was a Radical, you see— that is, Myn's dad —and because of that he had quarrelled with his brother, who was no end of a big pot down in Yorkshire, and as proud as our tom-cat with a Union Jack hoisted at its mizzen,as we did on Pretoria Day. His name was Philip Hallamshire Sykes -no less 1 I know, because I have had pecks of envelopes addressed to him, all with "personal" or « Private or something on the corner.

Now though I told Jo not to speak to Myn, and though I knew she went about abusing me, somehow ^I couldn't help watching her too, more than a bit She had a green dress with fluffy stuff" at the neck and sleeves. And it took a fellow's eye, somehow. It made me mad, first off^, that I should be such an ass. But afterwards, when I came to think it all over at nights, I believe I rather liked it. At anyrate, it was something to watch/or. Also I was a good dart-thrower, and made up a lot with flat white sweets in them-what they called « conversation lozenges," with mottoes printed across them— stuff silly enough to make you cry — ^but we knew girls liked it. So I pelted Myn with these till she said she would tell Old Currycomb.

" Tell away ! " 1 put on the next. I licked it clean and then wrote in pencil, and she answered the same way. And that is how we got acquainted — me and Myn.

She was a nice girl — nice to look at, you know with the ripply glancing kind of hair, that never seems tidy and never untidy. And her turn-up nose (it wasn't very much turn-up, you know) gave her a nice, funny, pretty, impudent look that was almost as jolly to look at as a stamp. It gave you the same feeling, you know. At least it did me — only of course not so much so.

But it was when I first heard that her father got wads and wads of foreign stamps every day of his life, up at his office in Caleb Grandison's, that I made up my mind about Myn. After that there was only one girl in the school worth speaking to, and that was Myn Sykes ! So. I made up to her, giving her flowers — sneaked out of the public gardens (my father being a ratepayer, they were as much his as anybody's) — and candy, which I had to buy — worse luck ! So I did not often give her candy. But I did difficult gym tricks and tripped up boys, so that she could admire me.

After a while of this I worked it round so that I could hint about the stamps, and I tell you I got a facer. Well, rather !

I suggested meek as a cat looking in a milk-house door, that Myn might get me some of the stamps her father had on his letters.

"Don't you wish you may get them?" she said. "I collect myself!"

And that, mind you, after I had dodged the park bobby twenty times for her old roses, and once got heaved bodily over the railings by a beast of a gardener, besides spending as much as fivepence-halfpenny on candy. That's girls for you. Gratitude ! A Junguloo tiger is more grateful. I called her that, and then I turned my back and walked away, very haughty. I had done with girls, for ever and ever. I said so to Jo. But he was jealous, and only said that it served me right ! So I batted him for that, which made me feel some better.

Still, after a bit I began rather to respect Myn. Come to think of it, it was just like a boy, cheeking me like that. And for a girl to care about stamps — well, I never thought they had enough sense. Evidently, however, Myn was not going shares in her father's booty as easy as saying " Good-day 1 " So I had to set to work and think up something better than just asking.

I had been reading some silly novel books, with all about girls and kissing and things in them, and never a word of a " blue Trinidad " or anything really interesting from end to end. I didn't care about those romances. But mother said I wasn't even to smell them. She was Scotch and strict. She called them "novelles," as if it were spelled the French way, and she said they were "paper-backed trash." So, of course, that made me read them every chance I got. So it would any boy. For myself, I preferred Hop Scotch Academy ; or^ How Bob Rattler gave it Hot to the Masters. Bob blew them up one by one, and filled the Head's canes with electricity, just chock-full, so that he got " what for" when he was all fixed to welt him. That's what I call a book — oh, proper. No girls in that. But, of course, my mother's saying I mustn't, set me on to the Girl Books, and certainly it worked all right. They can't be all wrong. For it was through reading that rubbish I got the idea of making up to Myn about her stamps.

I suppose all girls are soft — born that way, maybe, and the worst kind for softness are those who have no brothers to keep them in their places. Myn was that kind — not silly, I don't mean that (as you will find out), but she had no brother till she asked me to be one. She was an "o-o-o-only Cheeeild," as the entertainment reciters say. And quite enough too, her father declared.

But the green novel-book was all right in spots. I got it out of the Public Library owing to helping Will Thorburn, the librarian's son, with his "prep. " He was a duffer at Latin prose, and he certified me as over sixteen, so that I could get books on a burgess ticket, whatever that may be. And it went through all right. How was Will to know my age? I might have been sixteen for all he knew. I could lick him, any way. So if the age had been twenty. Will would have certified just the same.

It's a beautiful thing, is Friendship ! There's heaps about it in the books of those old Roman fellows, who wrote so as to make boys miserable, swotting up their stuff". Oh, beautiful sentiments, all about friendship ! Pecks and pecks I But I would take even money (in apples) that Cicero and Virgil and the other Johnnies had their ]o Turners and Will

Thorburns whom they licked and made run messages — ^just like me.

Well, these green books told a lot about how to suck up to girls, and make them "love" you. Now, I didn't want to be "loved" — not me I But on the other hand, I was dead nuts on loving those stamps that came pouring every morning into Myn's father's office up at old Caleb Grandison's. The bales of letters, and — I nearly wept on the plate-glass window, right in the street, when I saw him chucking envelopes with Sierra Leones and Uruguays and — oh, all sorts, into the big waste-paper basket, as if they were so much dirt.

Then I saw that little towsy-headed sneak Myn come in with her schoolbag, and she kissed him and said, "Can't I help you, father, just to clear away all this mess?" or something like that, for I couldn't quite catch. And she came right to the window where I was and took them right off, holding them so that I could see — half the British Colonies — nice old Perkins Bacon ones (or whatever they are called) — jolly bright ones with hardly any postmarks on them at all, and low values in strips, and squares, and sixes, till — well, I was nearly heaving a paving-stone through the plate-glass.

And all the while her silly old father went scribbling away answering his letters, as if that mattered to anybody, and Myn collaring the stamps by the dozen I Then when I begged, by making signs, for two or three, she put out her tongue at me, and pressed her nose up against the pane. After that she printed on it with her finger, writing backwards " Snub Nose," meaning that I had called her that.

lo ME AND MYN.

And I went away nearly praying she had been a boy. If she had I would have laid for her round the corner, in Paper Alley. But instead I just made up things in poetry about girls, that would make them frizzle, for I meant to be an author, so that I could make heaps of money and buy stamps with the proceeds. You see I had read in Snip-Bits how all authors were abominable rich, and you have to be, if you want to collect stamps properly. You just look at the first catalogue that comes your way, if you don't believe me.

CHAPTER II "him that waits for you!"

Myn wasn't a softy. Nor me neither, but I couldn't help myself. It was only in the green books about " love " and the things girls like, that 1 could read how you must start out. Now I didn't believe Myn would like it one bit — not the way they said. But you never can tell. At anyrate I had tried my plan, same as I would with a boy, all except thrashing her, which of course I couldn't do in the circumstances. So 1 thought 1 would give the green book way a show, and maybe it would work better than I thought. Jo Turner wouldn't say anything, because the last two times he had to express his opinion I had licked him for it. This came very nearly being cheek, but I let Jo off because it was true, especially as I wanted him to do a message for me.

Yes, a message — a very particular message !

He was to go and take a letter to Myn. I couldn't chuck things about the school any more, for you see in the time that I was turning over in my mind how to get Myn's stamps, I had been made a pupil teacher, and so had to behave more, at least when Old Currycomb was about.

So Jo took a letter to Myn. It was written out very carefully, and was just like one in the Green Book series that was called Love\ Rosy Petals^ which

II was, to my mind, the sickest of the lot. This is what I wrote, and I cribbed like fun — Myn would never know : —

" Beautiful Millicent, — Day by day I have watched you pass. Your tread is like the light dandelion down (a whacker — she was nearer ten stone ! But no matter). I have lived my life, all unknown and humble, in the sparkle of your eyes, the silken softness of your tresses, and — and {four meals a day would have been the truth, but I had to think of something else) the — the sweet tremulous accents of your tongue (which Myn mostly put out at me, very tremulously !). Will you meet mc at moonlight alone ? Friday night would suit just special — the sacred place to be the seat beneath the fragrant hawthorn at the head of your father's garden, and nine o'clock the time.

" I am drawn to write thus to you, fair Millicent, not only by the beauty of your person, but by the intellectual power which I discern in you — especially in the fact that you collect stamps. Let that be the bond and first pledge of our affection. Bring your 'exchanges' with you, and while the may-blossom rains down on our youthful heads, let us exchange our vows — and stamps. I will bring some nobby ones. Honour, I will ! You do the same.

" Your affectionate lover till death do us part — or your father finds out —

" (Signed) Him that waits for You."

I read that to Jo, for I thought it no end clever. And indeed I don't think it bad yet for fifteen past, and stealing a razor, jagged like a hand-saw to shave with ! Jo would have liked to laugh, but thought better of it. Which was the more comfy for him. He said it was prime, a ripping letter, and he knew he would never be able to write the like. He muttered something to himself after the last words, but I did not catch it. Neither did he.

Well, Jo was to give the letter to Myn just when she was coming out of the playground — Skippingrope Yard we called it, Myn came last as she was the biggest there, and then Jo's biz was to slide up and slip the note, folded in a newspaper like a little ship, into her hand. And if spotted doing it, it was of course only a paper boat or a cocked hat, just as you liked. Oh, we were up to a thing or two at East Dene High School.

Jo objected that she would scream blue murder or open it before the other girls — anyway make a fool of him. But I knew better — at least the man that wrote Love's Rosy Petals said it would be all right, and you had better believe he knew.

He did too. It went through all right. Girls take to having notes shoved at them like truant boys to an orchard of ripe damsons. Her fist shut like a rattrap on the little ship, and Jo dropped behind with a sigh of relief. His work was over and he had been neither laughed at nor made a fool of. Moreover, I said he had done pretty fair and would not lick him. So Jo was very grateful.

It was Wednesday then and I had two days to wait for Friday night. I had mentioned Friday because I knew Myn's dad would be working late at his special foreign mail that night, and that she would have cadged a rare loot out of the waste-paper basket. So, of course, I hoped she would bring it along.

Now you couldn't really "exchange" properly in the moonlight — stamps, I mean — other things you may. But it was stamps I was after that journey, particularly some Lagos she had — ^just plummy they were.

But all the same I determined to do the square thing by Myn, — that is, if she came. Of course she mightn't, after all. She might think it a plant. But then again, Myn was a plucky girl, grit right through, almost like the best sort of boy, yet chock-full of curiosity as only a girl can be.

So I judged on the whole that she would come, if it were a fine night. But would she fetch her exchanges ? To be or not to be — that was the question. I could hardly wait. I was all tingly and prickly. I fidgeted hours before. It was a bore having to do the Green Book business with a girl, but after I had had a good squint at her father's mail that day — Colonials and small state Continentals by the bale — well, I felt that what they called " Love's Young Dream " might have something in it after all. I hoped there would be a "Canada twelvepence" in it. Then I would not object to its being " Love's Young Reality." I loved Myn. I felt my pulse — and was sure of it. [f it hadn't been for the bother of the rhymes I would have written poetry. But instead I hunted up an old Byron and cribbed some. It began, "Maid of Athens," which was no good, being the wrong address, but I changed it to the name of Myn's father's house, " Maid of Seaview, ere

we part ," which went all right. However, I did

not send it. And that, as the clergyman says, was all for the best, because I found out afterwards that it was a song, and that Myn herself sang it at church social evenings, which would have been a rare giveaway for me. Jo told me and never grinned. I was watching him.

Friday night came, and it should have been moonlight— " Luna riding in her highest heaven," and all the rest of it. Only she wasn't, so far as we could see. It was a raw, damp, foggy sort of night, and Jo and me waited behind the cowshed about two hundred yards from the top of Pa Sykes's garden. Jo had sneaked up there in the daytime, pretending he was hunting for a lost ball in Old Maid Easton's garden, and had found out that there was a place through which you could crawl without getting very much scratched.

I had got the very cream and pick of my stamp collection with mc, all set out nice on a sheet of cardboard that shut up into three leaves like a fire-screen. There was a lovely "Columbus Landing" and a ninety-cent Lincoln, some proper Prince Edward Islands, and rare Newfoundland Seals — the first handsome ones, both brown and black, so different from the mean-looking seals they have nowadays.

I once asked a Newfoundland boy at our school why they had changed the pattern. And he said because really their seals didn't have forepaws like Landseer's lions in Trafalgar Square, which I had seen once on a Whit-Monday trip. I went up afterwards to the Zoo, and it was so. Only it certainly took the Newfoundlanders no end of a time to find it out. I just wish I had thought of that in time to tell him so. He was a cocky sort of cod-fish, and thought we were fools not to have wooden houses that burned down every five years, so as to get rich on the insurance.

But anyway, I had got together a prime lot, all the best I had — and I hadn't many. I was playing the game square — never trying to cheat as if Myn had been a boy, but solid and upright as a frozen pump. Jo said I was a fool. I kept this in mind — for it would be a useful thing to pound him for after, in case I wanted to pound somebody.

The clock on the town hall, away down in East Dene, struck nine. It was pretty dark, and I slunk along under the hedge, for fear of Old Maid Easton's bull-dog, which was friendly enough with me by daylight, but not to be trusted behind you after dark. I felt my breast under my waistcoat, not to still the beating of my heart — oh no — but to see if I had got my little cardboard of stamps with the elastic band round it.

Then I hunted for Jo Turner's famous hole in the hedge. It was not to be found anywhere. I searched and searched, and at last I did come on a place where a pretty lean weasel might possibly have got through. So at the expense of making myself a regular pincushion, I wormed a way into Old Sykes's garden. There was a kind of sunk fence, too, so the hole was jolly high up and difficult. But I got there at last, and took out all the thorns that had bigger prongs than a skewer. The rest I couldn't worry with at present. I was too variously prickly. Besides I had " Love's Young Dream " to think of, and also the speeches out of the Rosy Petals to run over in my mind. It was a swot.

I could see right down a long path which led to a back-door in Old Sykes's house. That was the way Myn would come. I went at it while I could.

^^ Oily heart' s dear per jume — centre round ivh'ich revolves all earth^s worthiesty how I love thee. Confound that prickle down the back of my collar. 1 can't get at it from the top. Oh, hang it, suppose she was to come now, just when I've forgotten all that rot ! It would be just like her 1

" / have watched thee from afar as the shipwrecked mariner^ upon lonely sens, catches sight of the fair star that — that — dash it, I hope to goodness she doesn't ask me to sit down. I am positively like a hedgehog with his prickles turned in ! "

Then I saw the door at the end of the walk open a bit. It went to again — very nearly but not quite — as if somebody were looking through, which was all right. I knew Myn would take every precaution.

Then dunt-dunt ! My heart, or whatever is the thing that bumps inside a fellow, nearly jolted me up in the air all of a sudden. It felt hot and sickly in Sykes's garden. If I could have found Jo's hole I would have gone through it, yes, if all the thorns had been basting needles, but I was too late. She was comingy and I might just as well never have set eyes on that beastly green novel book. Not a word could I remember. There she was quite close to me, wrapped in a cloak, and carrying something. I tried to speak, but only made a funny noise in my throat, like a trombone that somebody has poured syrup into.

But that bundle under her arm restored me. I knew what it was. Had I not seen them in old Sykes's office that very morning, as he pitched them like so much dirt into the waste-paper basket — ignorant old worm ! They were Central Americans, stamps we thought no end of them, because, you see, B hardly anybody had friends there — except old Sykes. And he only because the people who lived there wrote to him to say that owing to volcanic outbursts they could not pay Caleb Grandison's accounts at the proper time. And they put pictures of volcanoes on the stamps to show that they were speaking the truth. And there were all sorts of Portuguese Colonies and funny Spanish ones where they still used Isabella's head, and, as like as not, Sydney views from some back-block post-office where they had been lying hid up since the flood. Oh — I knew what that bundle contained. And it brought me to myself quicker than sal volatile or a can of water in the face. I began the stuff out of the green drill-book.