THE boy home for the holidays is always suspected of all manner of mischief.

I know that I, Charley Mitford, found it so when I was home for my last Christmas holidays. Everything that went wrong was sure to be my fault; sometimes I was blamed justly, but generally, I thought, unjustly. I will tell you about one scrape of mine.

My father had invited a middle-aged gentleman, who was a learned professor, and a terrible book-worm, to spend a week or two at our house.

I didn’t like Dr. Millbank, and he hated me and all other boys. I generally kept out of his way; but one day, the doctor being in a more friendly and talkative mood than ordinary, I ventured to accompany him into the library, taking care only to speak to him when he condescended to speak to me.

The doctor, however, soon became lost in a book, and altogether forgot my presence. I accordingly retired into the recess of a window, and also engaged myself260 with a book on old sports and pastimes. Dr. Millbank’s back was turned upon me, and he was thoroughly lost in his studies.

Now, learned as was the doctor in his special subjects—mostly of the dry-as-dust order—he knew but little of the natural history of magpies; and at the present moment my interest and the interest of my story is with one of those birds, Jack by name.

He was a tame magpie, a clever talker, and a great pet in our household, though he was as mischievous, almost, as they said I was.

He came hopping into the library, unseen by the doctor, but watched by my observant eyes. He stealthily posted himself on a chair; it seemed that there was something on his mind.

While he was ensconced in his citadel of the chair, he kept his cunning, twinkling eyes fixed on the doctor’s silver spectacles on his nose. Magpies are fond of pilfering bright or glittering articles, and with secret joy I saw that Jack was meditating a theft.

Perched, however, in his elevated position, and seeing no hope for the present of purloining the spectacles, he stealthily took the leather case which the doctor had laid upon the table after taking the glasses therefrom. Then he stealthily hopped out of the room.

A few minutes later, the doctor, weary of his book, took his spectacles from his nose, and naturally enough, sought the case to place them in. The case was not to be found.

“This is most mysterious. I know I placed it on the261 table. Dear me! dear me! always something to annoy me!”

It was very wrong, no doubt, to laugh at the misfortunes or annoyances of other people, but I was home for the holidays, you know, and I really couldn’t help it. He laid down his spectacles on the table, while he took a walk round the room, frowning in his displeasure and mystification. Then he espied me lounging with outstretched legs in the recess with my book of sports.

“Ah, ah, Master Charles, and so you are the culprit, are you?”

“Sir!” I exclaimed, affecting to be ignorant of his meaning.

“My spectacle-case—where is it?”

“Spectacle-case? I have not got it.”

“What! Why, I laid it beside me on the table, and now it is gone! You should not take such liberties with your elders.”

“Why, sir, I have not moved from the spot where I am sitting, and it is a very hard case for me to be accused of removing it.”

“Your joke is impertinent at a time like this. You are the only person, as I said before, who has been in the library since I have been reading here——”

“Excuse me, doctor——”

“Do not interrupt me, Master Charles. I must ring the bell for your father. Boys home for the holidays take so much license nowadays that really they have become an intolerable nuisance. There should be no school holidays if I could have my way.”

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As he spoke, the doctor advanced to the bell-rope. He walked with his back toward the door, and as he did so my old friend Jack, the magpie, came hop-hop-hopping in, and his thievish eye at once fell upon the silver specs, which the enraged man had laid down on the very spot on the table where before he had laid the case which had so disgraced me in his eyes.

Jack quietly hopped upon his old quarters in the armchair and as quickly possessed himself of the envied trophy, and I became the innocent witness of another theft much greater than the last.

Deeper disgrace to me, I thought; but as the doctor was evidently sure I was the culprit, and was not likely to accept any explanation from me, I thought it best to keep quiet, though by this I no doubt made myself Jack’s accessory.

A servant answered the bell, and he was requested to send my father hither, and, of course, my father came.

“Well, doctor, what can I have the pleasure of doing for you?” he inquired. “You appear agitated—what is the matter?”

“Look here, sir, if you please,” said the doctor to my father. “I laid my spectacle-case on the table where you see my glasses,” and here he pointed to the table, and my father looked on the spot indicated, and said:

“Where, doctor, where? I see no glasses.”

We were all standing some distance from the table, and the doctor could not see what was on it; he only spoke from the knowledge that he had placed his spectacles on the table, to which he now drew near,263 when, to his great surprise, and to my greater amusement, he made the same discovery that my father had done, that there were no glasses there.

“Why, sir, not five minutes ago I laid my glasses on this spot!” he exclaimed, giving the table rather a loud rap with his knuckles, which did not harm the table, though it did the knuckles, as the doctor’s screwed-up face indicated. “There, sir, exactly there—and now you see with your own eyes that both case and spectacles are gone!”

“It is a very mysterious occurrence, Dr. Millbank,” remarked my father.

“I cannot say that I see any mystery about it, sir; I am no believer in spiritualism, but I am in logic. I laid the spectacles and case there on that table. They are now gone—no one has been in the room but Master Charles.”

“Ergo, Master Charles must have them,” interrupted my father. “That is the true inference of your logic.”

Just then, another visitor came hopping into the room—no less than my father’s favorite, Jack, the magpie. My father was now seated by the side of the doctor, and the bird, as was his custom, hopped and flew to his shoulder, which was his favorite perch when he had the opportunity.

“Well pa,” said the cunning bird, bending his head and beak to my parent’s face.

“And what do you want, Master Jack?”

“Sho!” said the magpie, which was another daily264 phrase of his which h............