“Humphrey,” at last, said my mother, “I’ll write to Julia.”
“Do, Molly:” assented my father, rolling out a volume of smoke, which this time only obscured Asia, Africa, and America. “Molly, write to the Honourable Mrs. Cackle.”
The elevated personage alluded to, was always spoken of in our house as my aunt. I have never been able to clear up that relationship. Also, as long as I can remember, there was an expectation that she would call upon us; but up to the time of writing this memoir that visit has not come off. Keeping up some tradition of affectionate familiarity, my mother always named this great person “Julia;” whilst my father invariably persevered in her full length name and title. With him she was the Honourable Mrs. Cackle. To me she has ever been an unsolved myth.
Of the trio in our front parlour, I was the person least elevated by my own growth. Either the news was too good to be true, or I had habituated myself to the painful idea of a long life of shortness and sausageism. At any rate my heart didn’t leap up as it ought to have done when it beheld that rainbow in the sky. When you are thoroughly in for a good fit of depression and bad spirits, relief when it first comes is spurned as an impertinence. You would not, for the world, be gay. Besides, my elongation might be only apparent; due, not to my growth, but to the shrinking of my trousers, for I had been standing fishing in the morning, with the water over my ankles.
The letter to Julia was written the next morning, however, and sent. I never saw the answer, though one must have been received, as several evenings afterwards, my father, having blotted out Greece and Turkey in Europe, said reflectively to my mother:
“That was a very thoughtful letter, Molly, from the Honourable Mrs. Cackle.”
My mother replied:
“His Aunt always writes feelingly.”
Another fortnight convinced even my scepticism as to my growth. Certain buttons and button-holes would not come-to: and this quite independent of fishing and other shrinkages. The first time afterwards at school that I was called “Sausage,” I smiled derisively at the inapplicability of the term. Do sausages grow? Reductio ad absurdum.
Within a month the insufficiency of my clothing in length was so apparent, that it struck my father whilst at breakfast. When my father was not smoking, he was usually whistling “The Soldier Tired.” He whistled that air now, as he marked the hiatus between my waistcoat and my trousers; and having given the flourish at “war’s alarms,” he said: “Bob, you must go to the tailor’s and order some new clothes.” He then went on with his third cup of tea and his “Times.”
I accordingly visited the family tailor, when the following conversation took place; a conversation carried on by one speaker.
“You’re decided grown, Master Bob; you are, really, Mister Robert, grown remarkable. Mr. Bones, be so good as to take down. You’re shooting up rapid. Hextend your harm, sir, if you please. Twenty-eight one quarter, Mr. Bones. Now, sir, hinflate your breath, so as to fill the ’ole buzzum with hair; thirty-three, three, Mr. Bones. I’ll take that measure again. It’s quite remarkable. Have you that figure, Mr. Bones? Now, sir, stand heasy, with the ’ip free; thirty half, Mr. Bones. Will you have the border to the trousers neat, or a swelled seam? Why, sir, you’re taking your trousers three-eighths longer than last measure. I’ll leave something for letting out, you’re growing so rapid. Vests are wore a shade shorter, so is tails. Silk facings, sir? Well, I’m very much astonished. Friday evening, sir, without fail, Mr. Robert. Forty-two one quarter. Shall I send by carrier, or per Parcels Delivery? Thank you, Mr. Bones, that’ll do.”
All that my tailor said was quite true. I was growing, and faster than he reckoned upon. Within three months I had outgrown trousers, vest, and coat, and I looked like a crab beginning to change its shell, with the sutures parting in all directions. In fact I was elongating at the rate of an inch in six weeks, an inconvenient rate of increase as far as clothing was concerned; and not to be carried on without great demands upon the stomach. I ate, drank, and slept in a prodigious manner; but, at first, my altering height was so gratifying to my parents, that they would, I think, have cheerfully paid their butcher’s bill, if I had consumed a sheep a-day. “Growing boys want a good deal of keeping up,” my father would remark, as Japan and the Aleutian Archipelago slowly loomed back into view from smoky obscurity. “Growing boys require a good deal of lying down,” my mother would suggest, at the end of a hem of her duster.
In all ways I found myself much considered. “Aide toi,” &c., says the French proverb; and just in proportion as I grew bigger, I was the more made of. On the first day of the year it was the custom in our family for all the children to be measured. Our heights, and dates, and names, were recorded in lead pencil on the moulding of the door of what was called my father’s den. Latterly I had walked up to that moulding with a heavy sigh, as if I were going to a mitigated form of execution. This time I approached it triumphantly; and after careful verifying, the measure showed an addition of six inches over the last scratch. As I continued to shoot up the subject of my growth became quite a matter of conversation in our little neighbourhood. It gave rise to many witticisms. “Ill weeds grow apace, eh, Mr. Robert?” That was our medical man’s bon mot; and by the law of association, he never met me, saw me, or heard of me without mechanically uttering the same aphorism with the same emphasis, and the same good-tempered look, and apparently with the same erroneous idea that he emitted the pleasantry for the first time. I got to have quite a loathing at the words, not-complimentary in themselves, and only saved from being offensive by the intimacy of the person employing them, and the certainty that they were intended to be received in a flattering sense. Indeed, I heard so much and so constantly about my growth; I saw such surprise depicted on the faces of friends who had seen me only a few