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The boy waded forward between some white anemone-stems which were so high they reached to his chin when he felt that someone caught hold of him from behind, and tried to lift him up. He turned round and saw that a crow had grabbed him by the shirt-band. He tried to break loose, but before this was possible, another crow ran up, gripped him by the stocking, and knocked him over.
And for the first time in his life he was grateful for the roominess of Barber's old clothes. Half an hour, and Johnnie was, as he himself expressed it, "stuffed like a sausage." The orange, he dropped into his shirt-band to find a place with the books, there being no space for it internally.
He watched them for a moment before turning his attention to the heavy-lidded, flabby-jowled person who leaned ponderously against the sober side of the bar. "Who owns this joint?" he asked truculently, as he eyed with disfavour the filthy shirt-sleeves rolled back from thick forearms, the sagging vest, and the collarless shirt-band that buried itself in a fold of the fat neck.
When the boy had his arms full of dried grass, the goosey-gander grabbed him by the shirt-band, lifted him, and flew out on the ice, where the wild geese were already fast asleep, with their bills tucked under their wings. "Now spread out the grass on the ice, so there'll be something to stand on, to keep me from freezing fast. You help me and I'll help you," said the goosey-gander.
This the boy did. And when he had finished, the goosey-gander picked him up, once again, by the shirt-band, and tucked him under his wing. "I think you'll lie snug and warm there," said the goosey-gander as he covered him with his wing. The boy was so imbedded in down that he couldn't answer, and he was nice and comfy. Oh, but he was tired! And in less than two winks he was fast asleep.
She was not gone, indeed, much longer than that, but when she came back from her kitchenette he had dropped like a log upon her divan, submerged beyond all soundings. So she tugged him around into a more comfortable position, managed to divest him of his dinner-jacket and his waistcoat, unbuttoned his collar and shirt-band, took off his shoes, and covered him up with an eiderdown quilt.
A moment later the crows gave the signal to break up; and since it was still their intention, apparently, to carry him along in such a way that one held on to his shirt-band, and one to a stocking, the boy said: "Is there not one among you so strong that he can carry me on his back? You have already travelled so badly with me that I feel as if I were in pieces. Only let me ride!
His beard had a diameter of a foot, and obviated any need of collar or shirt-band, for it grew from his shoulder-blades up, so that his forehead, eyes, nose, and lips were white islands in a black sea, and even his nose was not bare, for he had been debited by Lovaina for his champagne as "Hair on nose." He was reading a novel, and asked gruffly what we were there for.
Everything was just as he had left it. There on the floor was still Ben Price's collar-button that had been torn from that eminent detective's shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy to arrest him. Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suit-case.
They were maladorous children; and the young clergyman, grasping woollen jersey-neck and shirt-band, the backs of his hands in contact with the backs of their moist, warm, dirty little necks, suffered disgust, yet held them the more firmly. "I am convinced you have no right to that fruit or to those vegetables. You are stealing. Give an account of yourselves at once."
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