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They were stumped for a moment. "Why you," said Keno. "Didn't you find little Skeezucks?" "Kerrect," said Bone. "Jim kin talk like a steam fire-engine squirtin' languages." "If only I had the application," said Jim, modestly, "I might git up somethin' passable. Where could we have it?" This was a stumper again. No building in the camp had ever been consecrated to the uses of religious worship.
They crowded round to examine a small object that lay between two smears of earth in the centre of the upturned palm. It was round and had a neat little opening on its under side. It was pretty, certainly. Their heads pressed forward in a bunch, like cabbages heaped for market. But no one spoke. "See it?" said Stumper impatiently; "see what it is?"
It had a dainty, slender stalk of ebony black, and its hundred tiny leaves quivered like a shower of green water-drops in the air. There was actual joy in every trembling bit of it. "That's my sign," announced Aunt Emily with pride: "Maidenhair! It'll grow again. I've got the roots." And she said it as triumphantly as Stumper had said "snail-shell." "Of course, Aunty," Judy cried, yet doubtfully.
Dan shall be judge, and the one who gets most marks shall have a prize." "What prize?" That was a stumper. Darsie could suggest nothing better than a general subscription. "If we each paid a penny entrance " "Oh, be bothered the pennies! I'll give a prize!" cried Dan loftily.
They watched the retreating soles of his heavy shooting-boots. Slowly the feet were dragged in after him. They disappeared from sight. Stumper was gone. "He'll come back, though," mentioned Judy. The performance had been so interesting that she almost forgot its object, however. Tim reminded her. "But he won't find anything in a smelly place like that," he declared.
"I'm looking still." "So am I," the Tramp answered, also in three words. "I'm very warm," growled Stumper; "I'm getting on," Aunt Emily piped; and while Judy was for ever shouting out "I've found him!" Uncle Felix, puffing and panting, could only repeat with rapture each time he met another seeker: "A lovely day! A lovely day!" They said so little experienced and felt so much!
They hunted high and low, from attic to cellar, in gun- room, scullery, and pantry, even climbing up the ladder from the box- room to the roof, but without result. Colonel Stumper had disappeared. He was K.C.B. "D'you think he's offended?" suggested Judy, as they met at length in the hall to consider the situation. "Of course not," said Tim emphatically, "a man like that!
"Then what's an orgully occasion?" somebody asked. "This!" replied Stumper. But he uttered it so savagely that no one cared to press for further details. Clearly it was a secret and confidential moment, and "inaugural occasion" had something to do with the glory of wearing an incipient tail. Glory and mystery clothed Stumper from that moment with Indian splendour. At least, he thought so....
India with its tigers, elephants, and jungles, was in his heated atmosphere deliciously, and his yellow tint, as of an unripe orange, was due to something they had learned from hearsay to describe as "curried liver trouble." All this, and especially his dead or wooden leg, was distinctly in his favour. Come-Back Stumper was real.
To Judy it occurred that he might be suffocated, to Tim that he might have been eaten by some animal, to Uncle Felix that he might have slipped out at the other side and made his escape. But no one expressed these idle thoughts in words. They believed in Stumper really. He invariably came back. This time would be no exception to the rule. And, presently, as usual, Stumper did come back.
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