missing. Here!” He scrabbled among his rags, drew two chocolates from under his collar, and offered one to the Monkey.
But the little creature turned its back. School – he hadn’t bargained for that. Better, any day of the week, to be a moth-eaten monkey. He felt a sudden rush of love for his old fur coat and his glass eyes and his wrinkled jungle tail.
“You take it, Corambo!” The Tramp grinned. “Pirates are always hungry.” He handed one chocolate to the Boy and ate the other himself.
“Well,” he said, licking his lips, “time flies and so must I!” He glanced round at the little group and gave a cheerful nod.
“So long!” He smiled at them rosily. And thrusting his hands among his rags, he brought out a piece of bread and butter, and sauntered away across the bridge.
The Boy gazed after him thoughtfully, with a line across his brow. Then suddenly he threw up his hand.
“Hey!” he cried.
The Tramp paused.
“What is your name? You never told us! Who are you?” said the Boy.
“Yes, indeed!” came a score of voices. “Who are you?” the Goose-girl asked; and the Swineherd, the geese, the swine and the Ass echoed the eager question. Even the Toad put out his head and demanded: “Who are you?”
“Me?” cried the Tramp, with an innocent smile. “If you really want to know,” he said, “I’m an angel in disguise.”
He bowed to them amid his tatters and waved as he turned away.
“Ha, ha, ha! A jolly good joke!”
The Boy burst into a peal of laughter. Jug-jug-jug! in his throat it went. That tattered old thing an angel!
But suddenly the laugh ceased. The Boy screwed up his eyes, looked again and stared.
The Tramp was skipping along the road, hopping for joy, it seemed. Each time he skipped his feet went higher, and the earth – could it really be true? the Boy wondered – was falling away beneath him. Now he was skimming the tops of the daisies and presently he was over the hedge, skipping higher and higher. Up, up he went and cleared the woodland, plumbing the depths of the sky. Then he spread himself on the sunny air and stretched his arms and legs.
And as he did so the tattered rags fluttered along his back. Something, the watchers clearly saw, was pushing them aside.
Then, feather by feather, from under each shoulder, a broad grey pinion showed. Out and out the big plumes stretched, on either side of the Tramp, until he was only a tattered scrap between his lifting wings. They flapped for a moment above the trees, balancing strongly against the air, then with a sweeping sea-gull movement they bore him up and away.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” the Goose-girl sighed, knitting her brows in a frown. For the Tramp had put her in an awkward predicament. She was almost – if not quite – convinced she was not the daughter of a King, and now – well look at him! All those feathers under his rags! If he was an angel, what was she? A goose-girl – or something grander?
Her mind was whirling. Which was true? Shaking her head in bewilderment, she glanced across the stream at the Swineherd, and the sight of him made her burst out laughing. Really, she couldn’t help it.
There he sat, gazing up at the sky, with his curls standing on end with surprise, and his eyes as round as soup-plates.
“Ahem!” She gave a delicate cough. “Perhaps it will not be necessary to fight the Dragon now!”
He turned to her with a startled look. Then he saw that she was smiling gently and his face suddenly cleared. He laughed and leapt across the stream.
“You shall have your golden crown,” he cried. “I’ll make it for you myself!”
“Gold is too heavy,” she said demurely, behind her ferny fan.
“Not my kind of gold.” The Swineherd smiled. He gathered a handful of buttercups, wove them into a little wreath and set it on her head.
And from that moment the question that was once so grave – were they goose-girl and swineherd, or prince and princess? – seemed to them not to matter. They sat there gazing at each other, forgetting everything else.
The geese, who were also quite amazed, glanced from the fading speck in the sky to their neighbours in the meadow.
“Poor pigs!” they murmured mockingly. “Roast mutton with onion sauce!”
“You’ll look pretty foolish,” the swine retorted, “on an ornamental lake!”
But though they spoke harshly to each other, they could not help feeling, privately, that the Tramp had put them in a very tight corner.
Then an old goose gave a high-pitched giggle.
“What does it matter?” he cackled gaily. “Whatever we are within ourselves, at least we look like geese!”
“True!” agreed an elderly pig. “And we have the shape of swine!”
And at that, as though released from a burden, they all began to laugh. The field rang with their mingled cries and the larks looked down in wonder.
“What does it matter – cackle, cackle! What does it matter – ker-onk, ker-onk!”
“Hee-haw!” said the Ass, as he flung up his head and joined in the merry noise.
“Thinking about your fine oasis?” the Toad enquired sarcastically.
“Hee-haw! Hee-haw! I am indeed! What an ass I was, not to see it before. I’ve only just realised, Natterjack, that my oasis is not in the desert. Hee-haw! Hee-haw! It’s under my hoof – here in this very field.”
“Then you’re not an Arab steed after all?” the Toad enquired, with a jeer.
“Ah,” said the Ass, “I wouldn’t say that. But now –” he glanced at the flying figure – “I’m content with my disguise!”
He snatched at a buttercup hungrily as though he had galloped a long distance through a leafless, sandy land.
The Toad looked up with a wondering eye.
“Could I be content with my disguise?” He pondered the question gravely. And as he did so a hazel nut fell from a branch above him. It hit his head and bounced off lightly, bobbing away on the stream.
“That would have stunned a frog,” thought the Toad, “but I, in my horny coat, felt nothing.” A gratified smile, very large and toothy, split his face in the middle. He thrust out his head and craned it upwards.
“Come on with your pebbles, boy!” he croaked. “I’ve got my armour on!”
But the Boy did not hear the puddocky challenge. He was leaning back against the bridge, watching the Tramp on his broad wings flying into the sunset. Not with surprise – perhaps he was not yet old enough to be surprised at things – but his eyes had a look of lively interest.
He watched and watched till the sky grew dusky and the first stars twinkled out. And when the little flying speck was no longer even a speck, he drew a long, contented sigh and turned again to the earth.
That he was Corambo, he did not doubt. He had never doubted it. But now he knew he was other things, as well as a one-eyed pirate. And far above all – he rejoiced at it – he was just a barefoot boy. And, moreover, a boy who was feeling peckish and ready for his supper.
“Come on!” he called to the Toy Monkey. He tucked it comfortably under his arm, with its tail around his wrist. And the two of them kept each other warm as they wandered home together.
The long day fell away behind him to join his other days. All he could think of now was the night. He could sense already the warmth of the kitchen, the sizzling pancakes on the stove and his mother bending above them.