"Brownsmith's Boy" (continued 5)

“Hi, Nero!” cried Mr Solomon, as I began to feel extremely nervous. “Steady, boy. This is Grant. Now, Grant, make friends.”

There was a tremendous chorus of barks here, just as if Nero was out of patience, and the other four dogs were savage because he was going to be fed with the new boy before them; but as Mr Solomon laid his hand on the great fierce-looking beast’s head it ceased barking, and the others stopped as well.

“He won’t hurt you now,” said Mr Solomon. “Come close.”

I did not like the task, for I was doubtful of the gardener’s knowledge, but I did go close up, and the great dog began to smell me from my toes upwards, and subsided into a low growl that sounded like disappointment that he was not to eat me.

“Pat him now,” said Mr Solomon.

I obeyed rather nervously, and the great dog threw up his head and began striking at me with one great paw, which I found meant that it was to be taken, and I gave it a friendly shake.

Hereupon there was a chorus of short sharp whining barks and snaps from the other dogs, all of which began to strain at their chains with renewed vigour.

“Go and pat ’em all,” said Mr Solomon; “they’ll make friends now.”

I went to the great shaggy Newfoundland, who smelt me, and then threw himself up on his hind legs, and hanging against his chain put out his tongue in the most rollicking fashion, and offered me both his hands—I mean paws—in token of friendship. Then the retriever literally danced, and yelped, and jumped over his chain, favouring me with a lick or two on the hand, while the two spotted coach-dogs cowered down, licked my boots, and yelped as I patted them in turn.

Only so many dogs, who barked again as I left them, but it seemed to do me good, and I felt better and readier to help Mr Solomon when he called me to aid in unharnessing the horse, which trotted of its own free-will into its stable, while we ran the cart back into the shed, and lifted my box out on to the stones.

“That’ll be all right till we fetch it,” said Mr Solomon in his quiet dry way, and he led the way into the stable, where, as I was thinking how hard and unfriendly he seemed, he went up to the horse, patted it kindly, and ended by going to a bin, filling a large measure with oats; and taking them to the horse, which gave a snort of satisfaction as they were turned into its manger.

“Shall I get a pail of water for him, sir?” I said.

He looked at me and nodded, and I went out to a great pump in the middle of the yard with a hook on its spout, upon which I was able to hang the stable pail as I worked hard to throw the long handle up and down.

“Wages!” said Mr Solomon, taking the pail from me and holding it for the horse to drink.

For the moment I felt confused, not knowing whether he meant that as a question about what wages I required, but he turned his back, and by degrees I found that he meant that the corn and water were the horse’s wages.

He busied himself about the horse for some minutes in a quiet punctilious way, for the sour-looking man had gone, and as I waited about, the great yard seemed with its big wall and gates, and dog-kennels, such a cold cheerless place that the trees had all turned the shabby parts of their backs to it and were looking the other way. Everything was very prim and clean and freshly painted, and only in one place could I see some short grass peeping between the stones. There was a patch of moss, too, like a dark green velvet pin-cushion on the top of the little penthouse where the big bell lived on the end of a great curly spring, otherwise everything was carefully painted, and the row of stabling buildings with rooms over looked like prisons for horses and their warders, who must, I felt, live very unhappy lives.

There was one door up in a corner of the great yard, right in the wall, and down towards this, from where it had grown on the other side, there hung a few strands of ivy in a very untidy fashion, and it struck me that this ivy did not belong to the yard, or else it would have been clipped or cut away.

In summer, with the warm glow of the setting sun in the sky, the place looked shivery and depressing, and as I waited for Mr Solomon I found myself thinking what a place it must be in the winter when the snow had fallen and drifted into the corners, and how miserable the poor dogs must be.

Then as I stood looking at my box and wondering what Shock was doing, and whether he had gone to his home or was sleeping in the loft, and why Ike was so surly to me, and what a miserable piece of business it was that I should have to leave that pleasant old garden and Old Brownsmith, I suddenly felt a hand laid upon my shoulder.

I started and stared as I saw Mr Solomon’s cold, stern face.

“Come along,” he said; and he led the way to that door in the corner that seemed to me as if it led into an inner prison.

I shivered and felt depressed and cold as we went towards the door, and, to make matters worse, the dogs rattled their chains and howled in chorus as if, having made friends, they were very sorry for me. The big hound, Nero, seemed the most sorrowful of all, and putting his head as high as he could reach he uttered a deep hollow howl, that to my excited fancy sounded like “Poooooor boooooy!” just as Mr Solomon, with a face as stern as an executioner’s might have been as he led someone to the Tower block, threw open the great door in the wall and said shortly:

“Go on!”

I went on before him, passed through in a wretched, despairing way, wishing I had been a boy like Shock, who was not ashamed to run away, and then, as I took a few steps forward, I uttered a loud “Oh!”

Chapter Twenty One.

I Look Round.

My ejaculation made Mr Solomon look completely changed, for, as I glanced back at him, I could see that there was a twinkle in his eyes and a little dent or two about the corners of his lips, but as he saw me looking wonderingly at him he became cold and stern of aspect again.

“Well,” he said shortly, “will that do?”

“Do, sir!” I cried excitedly; “is this your garden?”

“Master’s,” he said, shortly.

“Your master’s garden?”

“And your master’s, too,” he said. “Well, will it do?”

“Do!” I cried; “it’s lovely. I never saw such a beautiful garden in my life. What a lawn! what paths! what flowers!”

“What a lot o’ work, eh? What a lot to do?”

“Yes,” I said; “but what a place!”

After that cold cheerless yard I seemed to have stepped into a perfect paradise of flowers and ornamental evergreens. A lawn like green velvet led up to a vast, closely-clipped yew hedge, and down to a glistening pool, full of great broad lily leaves, and with the silver cups floating on the golden surface, for the water reflected the tints in the skies. Here and there were grey-looking statues in nooks among the evergreens, and the great beauty of all to me was that there was no regularity about the place; it was all up and down, and fresh beauties struck the eye at every glance. Paths wandered here and there, great clumps of ornamental trees hid other clumps, and patches of soft velvet turf were everywhere showing up beds in which were masses of flowers of every hue. There were cedars, too, that seemed to be laying their great broad boughs upon the grass in utter weariness—they were so heavy and thick; slopes that were masses of rhododendrons, and when I had feasted my eyes for a time on one part Mr Solomon led me on in his serious way to another, where fresh points of beauty struck the eye.

“It’s lovely,” I cried. “Oh! Mr Solomon, what a garden!”

“Mr Brownsmith, not Mr Solomon,” he said rather gruffly; and I apologised and remembered; but I must go on calling him Mr Solomon to distinguish him from my older friend.

“I never saw such a place,” I added; “and it’s kept so well.”

“Tidyish—pretty tidy,” he said coldly. “Not enough hands. Only nine and me—and you—but we do our best.”

“Why, it’s perfection!” I cried.

“No it ain’t,” he said gruffly. “Too much glass. Takes a deal o’ time. I shall make you a glass boy mostly.”

“Make me—a what, sir?”

“Glass boy. You’ll see.”

I said “Oh,” and began to understand.

“Was it like this when you came?” I said.

I was very glad I said it, for Mr Solomon’s mouth twitched, then his eyes closed, and there were pleasant wrinkles all over his face, while he shook himself all over, and made a sound, or series of sounds, as if he were trying to bray like a donkey. I thought he was at first, but it was his way of laughing, and he pulled himself up short directly and looked quite severe as he smoothed the wrinkles out of his face as if it were a bed, and he had been using a rake.

“Not a bit,” he said. “Twenty years ago. Bit of garden to the house with the big trees and cedars. All the rest fields and a great up-and-down gravel pit.”

“And you made it like this?” I cried with animation.

He nodded.

“Like it?” he asked.

“Like it!” I cried. “Oh!”

“Come along,” he said. “This is the ornamental. Useful along here.”

I followed him down a curving path, and at a turn he gave his head a jerk over his right shoulder.

“House!” he said.

I looked in the indicated direction, and could see the very handsome long, low, white house, with a broad green verandah in the front, and a great range of conservatories at one end, whose glass glistened in the evening light. The house stood on a kind of terrace, and lawn, and patches of flowers and shrubs sloped away from it down into quite a dell.

“Old gravel, pits,” said Mr Solomon, noticing the way I gazed about the place. “Come along.”

He walked up to a great thick yew hedge with an archway of deep green in it, and as soon as we were through he said shortly:

“Useful.”

I stared with wonder, for though I was now in a fruit and vegetable garden it was wonderfully different to Old Brownsmith’s, for here, in addition to exquisite neatness, there was some attempt at ornamentation. As soon as we had passed under the green arch we were on a great grass walk, beautifully soft and velvety, with here and there stone seats, and a group of stone figures at the farther end. Right and left were abundance of old-fashioned flowers, but in addition there were neatly trained and trimmed fruit-trees by the hundred, not allowed to grow high like ours, but tied down as espaliers, and full of the promise of fruit.

Away right and left I could see great red brick walls covered with more fruit-trees spread out like fans, or with one big stem going straight up and the branches trained right and left in straight lines.

Everywhere the garden was a scene of abundance: great asparagus beds, trim and well-kept rows of peas laden with pods, scarlet-runners running at a tremendous rate up sticks; and lower down, quite an orchard of big pyramid pear and apple trees.

“Like it?” said Mr Solomon, watching me narrowly.

“I can’t tell you how much, sir!” I cried excitedly. “I never thought to see such a garden as this.”

“Ain’t half seen it yet,” he replied. “Come and see the glass.”

He led me towards where I could see ranges of glass houses, looking white and shining amongst the trees, and as we went on he pointed to different plots of vegetables and other objects of interest.

“Pump and well,” he said. “Deep. ’Nother at the bottom. Dry in summer; plenty in the pools. Frames and pits yonder. Nobody at home but the young gents. Wish they weren’t,” he added in a growl. “Limbs, both of them. Like to know where you are to live?” he said.

“Yes, sir. Is it at the house?”

“No. Yonder.”

He pointed to a low cottage covered with a large wisteria, and built almost in the middle of the great fruit and vegetable garden, while between it and the great yew hedge lay the range of glass houses.

“You can find your way?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, feeling damped again by his cold manner. “Are you going?”

“Yes, now.”

“Shall I fetch my box, sir?”

“No; I told Tom to take it to the cottage. You would like to look round and see where you’ll work? Don’t want to begin to-night, eh?”

“Yes, sir, I’m ready, if you like,” I said.

“Humph!” he ejaculated. “Well, perhaps we’ll go and look at the fires by and by. You’re my apprentice now, you know.”

“Am I, sir?”

“Yes; didn’t Brother Ezra tell you?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t matter. Come to learn glass. There’s the houses; go and look round. I’ll call you when supper’s ready.”

I don’t know whether I felt in good spirits or bad; but soon ceased to think of everything but what I was seeing, as, being about to become a glass boy, I entered one of the great hothouses belonging to the large range of glass buildings.

A warm sweet-scented puff of air saluted me as I raised the copper latch of the door, and found myself in a great red-tiled vinery, with long canes trained from the rich soil at the roots straight up to the very ridge, while, with wonderful regularity, large bunches like inverted cones of great black grapes hung suspended from the tied-in twigs. There were rows of black iron pipes along the sides from which rose a soft heat, and the effect of this was visible in the rich juicy-looking berries covered with a pearly bloom, while from succulent shoot, leaf, and tendril rose the delicious scent that had saluted me as soon as I entered the place.

From this glass palace of a house, as it seemed to me, I went down into a far hotter place, where the walls were whitewashed and the glass roof very low. There was a peculiar odour of tan here, and as I closed the door after me the atmosphere felt hot and steamy.

But the sight that greeted my eyes made me forget all other sensations, for there all along the centre were what seemed to be beautiful, luxuriant aloes; and as I thought of the old story that they bloomed only once in a hundred years, I began to wonder how long it was since one of these spiky-leaved plants had blossomed, and then I cried excitedly:

“Pine-apples!”

True enough they were, for I had entered a large pinery where fruits were ripening and others coming on in the most beautiful manner, while what struck me most was the perfection and neatness of all the place.

Then I found myself in another grape-house where the vines bore oval white grapes, with a label to tell that they were Muscats. Then I went on into a long low house full of figs—small dumpy fig-trees in pots, with a peculiar odour rising from them through the hot moist air.

Again I was in a long low place something like the pinery, and here I was amongst melons—large netted-skinned melons of all sizes, some being quite huge, and apparently ready to cut.

I could have stayed in these various houses for hours, but I was anxious to see all I could, and I passed on over the red-tiled floor to a door which opened at once into the largest and most spacious house I had seen.

Here the air was comparatively cool, and there was quite a soft breeze from the open windows as I walked along between little trees that formed a complete grove, with cross paths and side walks, and every long leaf looking dark and clear and healthy.

I could not keep back an exclamation of delight as I stopped in one of the paths of this beautiful little grove; for all about me the trees were laden with fruit in a way that set me thinking of the garden traversed by Aladdin when in search of the wonderful lamp.

I was in no magic cave, it is true, but I was in a sort of crystal palace of great extent, with here and there beautiful creepers running along rods up the sides and across close to the roof, while my trees were not laden with what looked like bits of coloured glass, but the loveliest of fruit, some smooth and of rich, deep, fiery crimson; others yellowish or with russet gold on their smooth skins, while others again were larger and covered with a fine down, upon which lay a rich soft carmine flush.

I had seen peaches and nectarines growing before, trained up against walls; but here they were studded about beautiful little unsupported trees, and their numbers and the novelty of the sight were to me delightful.

I began to understand now why Old Brownsmith had arranged with his brother for me to come; and, full of visions of the future and of how I was going to learn how to grow fruit in this perfection, I stopped, gazing here and there at the ripe and ripening peaches, that looked so beautiful that I thought it would be a sin for them to be picked.

In fact, I had been so long amongst fruit that, though I liked it, I found so much pleasure in its production that I rarely thought of eating any, and though this sounds a strange thing for a boy to say, it is none the less perfectly true. In fact, as a rule, gardeners rather grudge themselves a taste of their own delicacies.

I must have been in this house a full quarter of an hour, and had only seen one end, and I had turned into a cross walk of red tiles looking to right and left, when, just beyond the stem of one peach-tree whose fruit was ripening and had ripened fast, I saw just as it had fallen one great juicy peach with a bruise on its side, and a crack through which its delicious essence was escaping. Pale creamy was the downy skin, with a bloom of softest crimson on the side beyond the bruise and crack, and making a soft hissing noise as I drew in my breath—a noise that I meant to express, “Oh, what a pity!”—I stooped down and reached over to pick up the damaged fruit, and to lay it upon one of the open shelves where I had seen a couple more already placed.

I heard no step, had seen no one in the place, but just as I leaned over to get the fruit there was a swishing sound as of something parting the air with great swiftness, and I uttered a cry of pain, for I felt a sensation as if a sharp knife had suddenly fallen upon my back, and that knife was red hot, and, after it had divided it, had seared the flesh.

I had taken the peach in my hand when the pain made me involuntarily crush it before it fell from my fingers upon the rich earth; and, grinding my teeth with rage and agony, I started round to face whoever it was that had struck me so cruel a blow.

Chapter Twenty Two.

Master Philip.

“What! I caught you then, did I?” cried a sharp unpleasant voice. “Just dropped upon you, did I, my fine fellow? You scoundrel, how dare you steal our peaches!”

The speaker was a boy of somewhere about my own age, and as I faced him I saw that he was thin, and had black hair, a yellowish skin, and dark eyes. He was showing his rather irregular teeth in a sneering smile that made his hooked nose seem to hang over his mouth, while his high-pitched, harsh, girlish voice rang and buzzed in my ears in a discordant way.

I did not answer; I felt as if I could not speak. All I wanted to do was to fly at him and strike out wildly, while something seemed to hold me back as he stood vapouring before me, swishing about the thin, black, silver-handled cane he carried, and at every swish he cut some leaf or twig.

“How dare you strike me?” I cried at last furiously, and I advanced with my teeth set and my lists clenched, forgetting my position there, and not even troubling myself in my hot passion to wonder who or what this boy might be.

“How dare I, you ugly-looking dog!” he cried, retreating before me a step or two. “I’ll soon let you know that. Who are you, you thief?”

“I’m not a thief,” I shouted, wincing still with the pain.

“Yes, you are,” he cried. “How did you get in here? I’ve caught you, though, and we shall know now where our fruit goes when we get the blame. Here, out you come.”

The boy caught me by the collar, and I seized him by the arms with a fierce, vindictive feeling coming over me; but he was very light and active, and, wresting himself partly free, he gave the cane a swing in the air, raised it above his head, and struck at me with all his might.

I hardly know how it all occurred in the hurry and excitement, but I know that I gave myself a wrench round, driving him back as I did so, and making a grasp at the cane with the full intention of getting it from him and thrashing him as hard as I could in return for his blow.

He missed his aim: I missed mine. My hand did not go near the cane; the cane did not come down as he intended upon my back, but with a fierce swish struck the branch of one of the peaches, breaking it so that it hung by the bark and a few fibres, while three or four of the ripe fruit fell with heavy thuds upon the ground.

“There, now you’ve done it, you young rough!” he cried viciously. “Come out.”

His dark eyes glowed, and he showed his white teeth as he struck at me again and again; but I avoided the blows as I wrestled with him, and at last my sturdy strength, helped by the work I had had in Old Brownsmith’s garden, told, and I got hold of the cane, forced open his hand, and wrested it away.

I remember very well the triumphant feeling that came over me as I raised the cane and was in the act of bringing it down with all my might, when there was a strong hand from behind upon my shoulder, and another caught my arm, ran down it to the wrist and hand, wrested the cane away, and swung me round.

It was Mr Solomon, looking very red in the face, and frowning at me severely.

“What are you doing?” he cried. “Do you know who that is?”

“He struck me with the cane.”

“He was stealing peaches.”

“I was not; I was picking one up.”

“He was stealing them. Just look what he has done.”

“I did not do it, Mr Solomon,” I cried. “It was he.”

“Oh, what a cracker, Brownie! I came and caught him at it; and because I said he was a thief he hit at me with that cane.”

“How did he get the cane? Why, it’s yours,” said Mr Solomon; “and I believe you broke that young peach.”

“Get out! It was he. Take him to the police. I caught him at it.”

Mr Solomon stooped and picked up the bruised and fallen peaches, laid them on a shelf, and then took out his knife and cut away the broken bough neatly.

Then he stood and looked at it for a moment, and the sight of the damage roused up a feeling of anger in him, for he turned sharply.

“Here, you be off!” he said, advancing on the boy with the cane under his arm.

For answer the boy snatched the cane away. “What do you say?” he cried haughtily.

“I say you be off out of my glass-houses, Master Philip. I won’t have you here, and so I tell you.”

“How dare you talk to me like that?” cried the boy.

“Dare! I’ll dare a deal more than that, young fellow, if you are not off,” cried Mr Solomon, who was a great deal more excited and animated than I should have imagined possible. “I’m not going to have my fruit spoiled like this.”

“Your fruit indeed! I like that,” cried the boy. “Yours?”

“See what you’ve done to my Royal George!”

“See what I’ve done to your Royal George!”—mockingly.

“Now be off,” cried Mr Solomon. “Serves me right for not keeping the houses locked up. Now, then, you be off out.”

“Sha’n’t,” said the boy. “I shall stop here as long as I like. You touch me if you dare. If you do I’ll tell papa.”

“I shall tell him myself, my lad,” cried Mr Solomon.

“You forget who I am,” cried the boy.

“I don’t know anything about who you are when my show of fruit’s being spoiled,” replied Mr Solomon. “A mischievous boy’s a boy doing mischief to me when I catch him, and I won’t have him here.”

“Turn him out, then,” cried the boy; “turn out that rough young blackguard. I came in and caught him picking and stealing, and I gave him such a one.”

He switched his cane as he spoke, and looked at me so maliciously that I took a step forward, but Mr Solomon caught me sharply by the shoulder and uttered a low warning growl.

“I don’t believe he was stealing the fruit,” said Mr Solomon slowly. “He has got a good character, Master Philip, and that’s what you haven’t been able to show.”

“If you talk to me like that I’ll tell papa everything, and have you discharged.”

“Do!” said Mr Solomon.

“And I’ll tell papa that you are always having in your friends, and showing ’em round the garden. What’s that beggar doing in our hothouses?”

“I’m not a beggar,” I cried hotly.

“Hold your tongue, Grant,” said Mr Solomon in a low growl as he trimmed off a broken twig that had escaped him at first.

“It was lucky I came in,” continued the boy, looking at me tauntingly. “If I hadn’t come I don’t know how many he wouldn’t have had.”

“Mr Brownsmith,” I said, as I smarted with pain, rage, and the desire to get hold of that cane once more, and use it, “I found a peach lying on the ground, and I was going to pick it up.”

“And eat it?” said the gardener without looking at me.

“Eat it! No,” I said hotly, “I can go amongst fruit without wanting to eat it like a little child.”

I looked at him indignantly, for he seemed to be suspecting me, he was so cold and hard, and distant in his manner.

“Mr Brownsmith always trusted me amongst his fruit,” I said angrily.

“Humph!” said Mr Solomon, “and so you weren’t going to eat the peach?”

“He was; I saw him. It was close up to his mouth.”

“It is not true,” I cried.

“He isn’t fit to be trusted in here, and I shall tell papa how I saved the peaches. He won’t like it when he hears.”

“I won’t stop a day in the place,” I said to myself in the heat of my indignation, for Mr Solomon seemed to be doubting me, and I felt as if I couldn’t bear to be suspected of being a thief.

My attention was taken from myself to the boy and Mr Solomon the next moment, for there was a scene.

“Now,” said Mr Solomon, “I want to lock up this house, young gentleman, so out you go.”

“You can come when I’ve done,” said the boy, poking at first one fruit and then another with the cane, as he strutted about. “I’m not going yet.”

He was in the act of touching a ripe nectarine when Mr Solomon looked as if he could bear it no longer, and he snatched the cane away.

“Here, you give me my cane,” cried the boy. “You be off out, sir.”

“Sha’n’t!”

“Will you go?”

“No. Don’t you push me!”

“Walk out then.”

“Sha’n’t. It’s our place, and I sha’n’t go for you.”

“Will you go out quietly?”

“No, I shall stop as long as I like.”

“Once more, Master Philip, will you go?”

“No!” yelled the boy; “and you give me back my cane.”

“Will you go, sir? Once more.”

“Send that beggar away, and not me,” cried the boy.

“I shall stop till I choose to go, and I shall pick the peaches if I like.”

Mr Solomon looked down at him aghast for a few moments, and then, as the boy made a snatch at his cane, he caught him up, tucked him under his arm, and carried him out, kicking and struggling with all his might.

I followed close behind, thoroughly enjoying the discomfiture of my enemy, and was the better satisfied for seeing the boy thrown down pretty heavily upon a heap of mowings of the lawn.

“I’ll pay you for this,” cried the boy, who had recovered his cane; and, giving it a swish through the air, he raised it as if about to strike Mr Solomon across the face.

I saw Mr Solomon colour up of a deeper red as he looked at the boy very hard; and then he said softly, but in a curious hissing way:

“I shouldn’t advise you to do that, young sir. If you did I might forget you were Sir Francis’ boy, and take and pitch you into the gold-fish pond. I feel just as if I should like to do it without.”

The boy quailed before his stern look, and uttered a nasty sniggering laugh.

“I can get in any of the houses when I like, and I can take the fruit when I like, and I’ll let papa know about your beggars of friends meddling with the peaches.”

“There, you be off,” said the gardener. “I’ll tell Sir Francis too, as sure as my name’s Brownsmith.”

“Ha—ha—ha! There’s a name!” cried the boy jeeringly. “Brownsmith. What a name for a cabbage-builder, who pretends to be a gardener, and is only an old woman about the place! Roberts’s gardener is worth a hundred Sol Brownsmiths. He grows finer fruit and better flowers, and you’ll soon be kicked out. Perhaps papa will send you away now.”

Mr Solomon bit his lips as he locked the door, for he was touched in a tender place, for, as I found out afterwards, he was very jealous of the success of General Roberts’s gardener.

His back was turned, and, taking advantage of this, the boy made a dash at me with his cane.

This was too much in my frame of mind, and I went at him, when the head gardener turned sharply and stood between us.

“That’ll do,” he cried sternly to us both.

“All right!” said the boy in a cool disdainful manner. “I’ll watch for him, and if ever he comes in our garden again I’ll let him know. I’ll pay the beggar out. He is a beggar, isn’t he, old Solomon?”

“Well, if I was asked which of you was the young gentleman, and which the ill-bred young beggar, I should be able to say pretty right,” replied the gardener slowly.

“Oh! should you? Well, don’t you bring him here again, or I’ll let him know.”

“You’d better let him know now, boy, for he’s going to stop.”

“What’s he, the new boy?” said the lad, as if asking a very innocent question. “Where did you get him, Brownsmith? Is he out of the workhouse?”

Mr Solomon smiled at the boy’s malice, but he saw me wince, and he drew me to his side in an instant. I had been thinking what a cold, hard man he was, and how different to his brother, who had been quite fatherly to me of late; but I found out now that he was, under his stern outward seeming, as good-hearted as Old Brownsmith himself.

He did not speak, but he laid one hand upon my shoulder and pressed it, and that hand seemed to say to me:

“Don’t take any notice of the little-minded, contemptible, spoiled cub;” and I drew a deep breath and began to feel that perhaps after all I should not want to go away.

“I thought so,” cried the boy with a snigger—“he’s a pauper then. Ha, ha, ha! a pauper! I’ll tell Courtenay. We’ll call him pauper if he stops here.”

“And that’s just what he is going to do, Master Philip,” said the head gardener, who seemed to have recovered his temper; “and that’s what, thank goodness, you are not going to do. And the sooner you are off back to school to be licked into shape the better for you, that is if ever you expect to grow into a man. Come along, my lad, it’s getting late.”

“Yes, take him away,” shouted the boy as I went off with Mr Solomon, my blood seeming to tingle in my veins as I heard a jeering burst of laughter behind me, and directly after the boy shouted:

“Here, hi! Courtenay. Here’s a game. We’ve got a new pauper in the place.”

Mr Solomon heard it, but he said nothing as we went on, while I felt very low-spirited again, and was thinking whether I had not better give up learning how to grow fruit and go back to Old Brownsmith, and Ike, and Shock, and Mrs Dodley, when my new guide said to me kindly:

“Don’t you take any notice of them, my lad.”

“Them?” I said in dismay.

“Yes, there’s a pair of ’em—nice pair too. But they’re often away at school, and Sir Francis is a thorough gentleman. They’re not his boys, but her ladyship’s, and she has spoiled ’em, I suppose. Let ’em grow wild, Grant. I say, my lad,” he continued, looking at me with a droll twinkle in his eye, “they want us to train them, and prune them, and take off some of their straggling growths, eh? I think we could make a difference in them, don’t you?”

I smiled and nodded.

“Only schoolboys. Say anything, but it won’t hurt us. Here we are. Come in.”

He led the way into a plainly furnished room, where everything seemed to have been scoured till it glistened or turned white; and standing by a table, over which the supper cloth had been spread, was a tall, quiet-looking, elderly woman, with her greyish hair very smoothly stroked down on either side of her rather severe face.

“This is young Grant,” said Mr Solomon.

The woman nodded, and looked me all over, and it seemed as if she took more notice of my shirt and collar than she did of me.

“Sit down, Grant, you must be hungry,” said Mr Solomon; and as soon as we were seated the woman, who, I supposed, was Mrs Solomon, began to cut us both some cold bacon and some bread.

“Master Philip been at you long?” said Mr Solomon, with his mouth full.

“No, sir,” I said; “it all happened in a moment or two.”

“I’m glad you didn’t hit him,” he said. “Eat away, my lad.”

The woman kept on cutting bread, but she was evidently listening intently.

“I’m glad now, sir,” I said; “but he hurt me so, and I was in such a passion that I didn’t think. I didn’t know who he was.”

“Of course not. Go on with your supper.”

“I hope, sir, you don’t think I was going to eat that peach,” I said, for the thought of the affair made my supper seem to choke me.

“If I thought you were the sort of boy who couldn’t be trusted, my lad, you wouldn’t be here,” said Mr Solomon quietly. “Bit more fat, mother.”

I brightened up, and he saw it.

“Why, of course not, my lad. Didn’t I trust you, and send you in among my choice grapes, and ripe figs, and things. There, say no more about it. Gardeners don’t grow fruit to satisfy their mouths, but their eyes, and their minds, my lad. Eat away. Don’t let a squabble with a schoolboy who hasn’t learned manners spoil your supper. We’ve never had any children; but if we had, Grant, I don’t think they would be like that.”

“They make me miserable when they are at home,” said Mrs Solomon, speaking almost for the first time.

“Don’t see why they should,” said Mr Solomon, with his voice sounding as if his tongue were a little mixed up with his supper. “Why, they don’t come here.”

“They might be made such different boys if properly trained.”

“They’ll come right by and by, but for the present, Grant, you steer clear of them. They’re just like a couple of young slugs, or so much blight in the garden now.”

The supper was ended, and Mrs Solomon, in a very quiet, quick way, cleared the cloth, and after she had done, placed a Bible on the table, out of which Mr Solomon read a short chapter, and then shook hands with me and sent me away happy.

“Good night, my lad!” he said. “It’s all strange to you now, and we’re not noisy jolly sort of people, but you’re welcome here, and we shall get on.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Solomon in a very cold stern way that did not seem at all inviting or kind. “Come along and I’ll show you your bed-room.”

I followed her upstairs and into a little room with a sloping ceiling and a window looking out upon the garden; and at the sight of the neat little place, smelling of lavender, and with some flowers in a jug upon the drawers, the depression which kept haunting me was driven away.

Everything looked attractive—the clean white bed and its dainty hangings, the blue ewer and basin on the washstand, the picture or two on the wall, and the strips of light-coloured carpet on the white floor, all made the place cheerful and did something to recompense me for the trouble of having to leave what seemed to be my regular home, and come from one who had of late been most fatherly and kind, to people who were not likely to care for me at all.

“I think there’s everything you want,” said Mrs Solomon, looking at me curiously. “Soap and towel, and of course you’ve got your hair-brush and things in your box there.”

She pointed at the corded box which stood in front of the table.

“If there’s anything you want you can ask. I hope you’ll be very clean.”

“I’ll try to be, ma’am,” I said, feeling quite uncomfortable, she looked at me so coldly.

“You can use those drawers, and your box can go in the back room. Good-night!”

She went away and shut the door, looking wonderfully clean and prim, but depressing instead of cheering me; and as soon as she was gone I uncorded my box, wondering whether I should be able to stay, and wishing myself back at Isleworth.

I had taken out my clothes and had reached the bottom of my box, anxious to see whether the treasures I had there in a flat case, consisting of pinned-out moths and butterflies, were all right and had not been shaken out of place by the jolting of the cart, when there was a sharp tap at the door and Mr Solomon came in.

“Hullo!” he said; “butterflies and moths!—eh?”

He spoke quite angrily, as it seemed to me, and chilled me, as I felt that he would not like me to do such a thing as collect.

“Hah!” he said. “I used to do that when I was a boy. There’s lots here; but don’t go after them when you’re at work.”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Thought I’d come up, my lad, as it’s all strange to you. I haven’t much to say to you, only keep away from those boys. Let ’em talk, but never you mind.”

“I’ll try, sir.”

“That’s right. Work to-morrow morning at six. You may begin sooner if you like. I often, do. Breakfast at eight; dinner at twelve; tea at five, and then work’s supposed to be done. I generally go in the houses then. Always something wants doing there.”

He stood thinking and looking as cold and hard as could be while I waited for him to speak again; but he did not for quite five minutes, during which time he stood picking up my comb and dropping it back into the hair-brush.

“Yes,” he said suddenly, “I should go in for those late lettuces if I was Ezra. He’d find a good sale for them when salads were getting scarce. Celery’s very good, but people don’t like to be always tied down to celery and endives—a tough kind of meat at the best of times. If you write home—no, this is home now—if you write to Brother Ezra, you say I hope he’ll keep his word about the lettuces. Good-night!”

I felt puzzled as soon as he had gone, and had not the slightest idea how I felt towards the people with whom I was to pass months—perhaps years.

“I shall never like Mrs Solomon,” I said to myself dolefully; “and I shall only like him half and half—liking him sometimes and not caring for him at others.”

I was very tired, and soon after I was lying in the cool sweet sheets thinking about my new home, and watching the dimly-seen window; and then it seemed to be all light and to look over Old Brownsmith’s garden, where Shock was pelting at me with pellets of clay thrown from the end of a switch. And all the time he came nearer and nearer till the pellets went right over my shoulder, and they grew bigger till they were peaches that he kept sticking on the end of the switch, and as he threw them they broke with a noise that was like the word Push!

I wanted to stop him, but I could not till he threw one peach with all his might, and the switch caught me across the back, and I retaliated by taking it away and thrashing him.

Then I woke with a start, and found I had been dreaming. I lay for a few minutes after that in the darkness thinking that I would learn all I could about fruit-growing as fast as possible, so as to know everything, and get back to Old Brownsmith; and then all at once I found myself sitting up in bed listening, with the sun shining in at one side of my blind, while I was wondering where I was and how I had come there.

Chapter Twenty Three.

I Begin Work.

Boys like sleep in the morning, but the desire to cuddle up for a few minutes more and to go back to dreamland is not there on the first morning at a new home or at a fresh school.

On that particular morning I did not feel in the least sleepy, only uncomfortably nervous; and, hearing voices through the wall, I jumped up and dressed quickly, to find on going down that Mr Solomon was in the kitchen putting on his thick boots.

“Just coming to call you,” he said, nodding. “Harpus five. Hah! change coming,” he cried, stamping his feet in his boots; “rain—rain. Come along.”

He unbolted the door and I followed him out, drawing a breath of the sweetly fragrant air as we stepped at once into the bright sunshine, where the flowers were blooming and the trees were putting forth their strength.

But I had no opportunity for looking about the garden, for Mr Solomon led the way at once to the stoke-holes down behind the glass-houses, rattled open the doors, and gave a stoke here with a great iron rod, and a poke there where the fires were caked together; while, without waiting to be asked, I seized upon the shovel I saw handy and threw on some coke.

“Far back as you can, my lad,” said Mr Solomon. “Seems a rum time of year to be having fires; but we’re obliged to keep up a little, specially on cloudy days.”

This done, he led the way into one of the sunken pits where the melons were growing, and after reaching in among them and snipping off a runner or two he routed out a slug and killed it.

Then turning to me:

“First thing in gardening, Grant, is to look out for your enemies. You’ll never beat them; all you can do is to keep ’em down. Now look here,” he said, picking off a melon leaf and holding it before me, “What’s the matter with that?”

“I don’t see much the matter,” I said, “only that the leaf looks specked a little with yellow, as if it was unhealthy.”

“Turn it over,” he said.

I did, and looked at it well.

“There are a few red specks on it—very small ones,” I said.

“Good eyes,” he said approvingly. “That’s what’s the matter, my lad. You’ve seen the greatest enemy we have under glass. Those red specks, so small that you can hardly see them, cover the lower parts of the leaves with tiny cobwebs and choke the growth while they suck all the goodness out, and make the yellow specks on the top by sucking all the sap from the leaves.”

“What, those tiny specks!”

“Yes, those little specks would spoil all our melon plants if we did not destroy them—melons, cucumbers, vines, peaches, and nectarines—anything almost under glass. But there’s your gun and ammunition; load up and shoot ’em. Never give them any rest.”

I looked at him wonderingly, for he was pointing at a syringe standing in a pail of soapy-looking water.

“Yes,” he continued, “that’s right—kill ’em when you can. If you leave them, and greenfly, and those sort of things, alone till to-morrow, by that time they’re turned into great-grandfathers, and have got such a family of little ones about ’em that your leaves are ten times worse.”

“But what are those red specks?” I said.

“Red spider, boy. Now I’ll show you. This is my plan to keep my plants healthy: have a bucket of soap and water in every house, and a syringe in it. Then you take it up as soon as you see the mischief and kill it at once. It’s all handy for you, same as it is to have a bit of matting hanging up on a nail, ready to tie up the stem that wants it. Somebody said, Grant, ‘A stitch in time saves nine,’ it ought to have been, ‘A washed leaf keeps off grief.’ See here.”

He took the syringe, filled it, and sent a fine shower beneath the leaves of the melons, where they were trained over a trellis, thoroughly washing them all over.

“Now you try,” he said, and taking off my jacket I syringed away vigorously, while with matting and knife he tied in some loose strands and cut off others, so as to leave the vines neat.

“That’ll do for the present,” he said; “but mind this, Grant, if ever you see an enemy, shoot him while he’s a single man if you can. Wait till to-morrow, you’ll have to shoot all his relations too.”

He led the way out of the pit, and round by the grounds, where different men were at work mowing and sweeping, the short cut grass smelling delicious in the morning air. He spoke to first one and then another in a short business-like way, and then went on with me to one of the great conservatories up by the house.

“I might put you to that sort of work, Grant,” he said, giving his head a backward jerk; “but that wants no brains. Work under glass does. You want to work with your hands and your head. Now we’ll have a tidy up in here. Sir Francis likes plenty of bright flowers.”

I should have liked to stop looking about as soon as we were in the large glass building, which was one mass of bloom; but following Mr Solomon’s example I was soon busily snipping off dead flowers and leaves, so as to make the various plants tidy; and I was extremely busy in one corner over this when I suddenly found that Mr Solomon was watching me, and that a big bell was ringing somewhere.

“That’s right,” he said, nodding his head in a satisfied way. “That’s what I want. You don’t know much yet, but you will. If I was to set one of those men to do that he’d have knocked off half the buds, and—what have you been doing there?”

“I tied up those two flower-stems,” I said. “Wasn’t it right, sir?”

“Right and wrong, my lad,” he said, whipping out his knife and cutting them free. “Look here.”

He took a piece of wet matting—a mere strip—and tied them up again, with his big fingers moving so quickly and cleverly that I wondered.

“There, that’s the way. Looks the same as you did it, eh?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling.

“No, it isn’t. You tied yours in front of the stem, with an ugly knot to rub and fret it, and make a sore place when the windows were open. I’ve put a neat band round mine, and the knot rests on the stick.”

“Oh, I see!” I cried.

“Yes, Grant, there’s a right way and a wrong way, and somehow the natural way is generally the wrong. Never saw one tried, but I believe if you took a savage black and told him to get up on a horse, he would go on the wrong side, put his left foot in the stirrup, and throw his right leg over, and come down sitting with his face to the tail. Breakfast.”

“What! so soon?” I said.

“Soon! Why, it’s past eight.”

I was astounded, the time had gone so quickly; and soon after I was saying “good morning” to Mrs Solomon, and partaking of the plain meal.

“Well?” said Mrs Solomon in her cold impassive way.

Mr Solomon was so busy with a piece of cold bacon and some bread that he did not look up, and Mrs Solomon waited patiently till he raised his head and gave her a nod.

“I am glad,” she said, giving a sigh as if she were relieved; and then she turned to me and looked quite pleasantly at me, and taking my cup, refilled it with coffee, and actually smiled.

“Notice the missus?” said Mr Solomon, as, after a glance at his big silver watch, he had suddenly said “Harpusate,” and led the way to the vineries.

“Notice Mrs Brownsmith?” I said.

“Yes; see anything about her?”

“I thought she looked better this morning than she did last night. Was she ill?”

“Yes,” he said shortly. “Get them steps.”

I fetched them steps, and thought that a gardener might just as well be grammatical.

He opened them out, and opening his knife, cut a few strands of matting ready, stuck them under one of his braces, after taking off his coat, and then climbed up to the top to tie in a long green cane of the grape-vine.

“Hold the steps steady,” he said; and then with his head in amongst the leaves he went on talking.

“Bit queer in the head,” he said slowly, and with his face averted. “Shied at you.”

I stared. His wife was not a horse, and I thought they were the only things that shied; but I found I was wrong, for Mr Solomon went on:

“I did, too. Ezra said a lot about you. Fine young shoot this, ain’t it?”

I said it was, for it was about ten feet long and as thick as my finger, and it seemed wonderful that it should have grown like that in a few months; but all the time my cheeks were tingling as I wondered what Old Brownsmith had said about me.

“Sounded all right, but it’s risky to take a boy into your house when you are comfortable without, you see.”

I felt ashamed and hurt that I should have been talked of so, and remained silent.

“The missus said you might be dirty and awkward in the house. This cane will be loaded next year if we get it well ripened this year, Grant. That’s why I’m tying it in here close to the glass, where it’ll get plenty of sun and air.”

“What! will that bear grapes next year, sir?” I said, for I felt obliged to say something.

“Yes; and when the leaves are off you shall cut this one right out down at the bottom yonder.”

He tapped a beautiful branch or cane from the main stem, which was bearing about a dozen fine bunches of grapes, and it seemed a pity; but of course he knew best, and he began cutting and snapping out shoots and big leaves between the new green cane and the glass.

“She was afraid you’d be a nuisance to me, and said you’d be playing with tops, and throwing stones, and breaking the glass. I told her that Brother Ezra wouldn’t send me such a boy as that; but she only shook her head. ‘I know what boys are,’ she said. ‘Look at her ladyship’s two.’ But I said that you wouldn’t be like them, and you won’t, will you?”

I laughed, for it seemed such a comical idea for me to be behaving as Mrs Solomon had supposed.

“What are you laughing at?” he said, looking down at me.

“I was thinking about what Mrs Brownsmith said,” I replied.

“Oh yes! To be sure,” he continued. “You’ll like her. She’s a very nice woman. A very good woman. I’ve known her thirty years.”

“Have you had any children, sir?” I said.

“No,” he replied, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye; “and yet I’ve always been looking after nurseries—all my life.”

In about an hour he finished his morning work in the vinery, and I went out with him in the garden, where he left me to tidy up a great bed of geraniums with a basket and a pair of scissors.

“I’ve got to see to the men now,” he said. “By-and-by we’ll go and have a turn at the cucumbers.”

The bed I was employed upon was right away from the house in a sort of nook where the lawn ran up amongst some great Portugal laurels. It was a mass of green and scarlet, surrounded by shortly cropped grass, and I was very busy in the hot sunshine, enjoying my task, and now and then watching the thrushes that kept hopping out on to the lawn and then back under the shelter of the evergreens, when I suddenly saw a shadow, and, turning sharply, found that my friend of the peach-house had come softly up over the grass with another lad very much like him, but a little taller, and probably a couple of years older.

“Hullo, pauper!” said the first.

I felt my cheeks tingle, and my tongue wanted to say something very sharp, but I kept my teeth closed for a moment and then said:

“Good morning, sir!”

He took no notice of this, but turned to his brother and whispered something, when they both laughed together; and as I bent down over my work I felt as if I must have looked very much like one of the scarlet geraniums whose dead blossom stems I was taking out.

Of course, a boy with a well-balanced brain and plenty of sound, honest, English stuff in him ought to be able to treat with contempt the jeering and laughter of those who are teasing him; but somehow I’m afraid that there are very few boys who can bear being laughed at with equanimity. I know, to be frank, I could not, for as those two lads stared at me and then looked at each other and whispered, and then laughed heartily—well, no; not heartily, but in a forced way, I felt my face burn and my fingers tingle. My mouth seemed to get a little dry, too, and the thought came upon me in the midst of my sensations that I wanted to get up and fight.

The circumstances were rather exceptional, for I was suffering from two sore places. One started from my shoulder and went down my back, where there must have been the mark of the cane; the other was a mental sore, caused by the word pauper, which seemed to rankle and sting more than the cut from the cane.

Of course I ought to have treated it as beneath my notice, but whoever reads this will have found out before now that I was very far from perfect; and as those two lads evidently saw my annoyance, and went on trying to increase it, I bent over my work in a vicious way, and kept on taking out the dead leaves and stems as if they were some of the enemies Mr Solomon had been talking about in the pits.

All at once, as I was bending down, I heard Courtenay, the elder boy, say:

“What did he say—back to school and be flogged?”

“Yes,” said Philip aloud; “but he didn’t know. They only flog workhouse boys and paupers.”

“I say, though,” said Courtenay, “who is that chap grubbing out the slugs and snails?”

My back was turned, and I went on with my work. “What! that chap I spoke to?” said Philip; “why, I told you. He’s a pauper.”

“Is he?”

“Yes, and Browny fetched him from the workhouse. Brought him home in the cart. He’s going to be a caterpillar crusher.”

I felt as if I should have liked to be a boy crusher, and have run at him with my fists clenched, and drubbed him till he roared for mercy, but I did not stir.

“Then what’s he doing here?” said Courtenay in a sour, morose tone of voice. “He ought to be among the cabbages, and not here.”

This was as if they were talking to themselves, but meant for me to hear.

“Old Browny was afraid to put him there for fear he’d begin wolfing them. I caught him as soon as he came. He got loose, and I found him in the peach-house eating the peaches, but I dropped on to him with the cane and made the beggar howl.”

“Old Browny ought to look after him,” said Courtenay.

“Don’t I tell you he ran away. I expect Browny will have to put a dog-collar and chain on him, and drive a stake down in the kitchen-garden to keep him from eating the cabbages when he’s caterpillaring. These workhouse boys are such hungry beggars.”

“Put a muzzle on him like they do on a ferret,” said Courtenay; and then they laughed together.

“Hasn’t he got a rum phiz?” said Philip, who, I soon found, was the quicker with his tongue.

“Yes; don’t talk so loud: he’ll hear you. Just like a monkey,” said Courtenay; and they laughed again.

“I say, is he going to stop?” said Courtenay.

“I suppose so. They want a boy to scrape the shovels and light the fires, and go up the hothouse chimneys to clear out the soot. He’s just the sort for that.”

“He’ll have to polish Old Browny’s boots, too.”

“Yes; and wash Mother Browny’s stockings. I say, Court, don’t he look a hungry one?”

“Regular wolf,” said Courtenay; and there was another laugh.

“I say,” said Courtenay, “I don’t believe he’s a workhouse.”

“He is, I tell you; Browny went and bought him yesterday. They sell ’em cheap. You can have as many as you like almost for nothing. They’re glad to get rid of ’em.”

“I wonder what they’d say to poor old Shock!” I thought to myself. “I’m glad he isn’t here.”

“I don’t care,” said Courtenay; “I think he’s a London street boy. He looks like it from the cut of his jib.”

I paid not the slightest heed, but my heart beat fast and I could feel the perspiration standing all over my face.

“I don’t care; he’s a pauper. I wonder what Old Browny will feed him on.”

“Skilly,” said Courtenay; and the boys laughed again. All at once I felt a push with a foot, and if I had not suddenly stiffened my arms I should have gone down and broken some of the geraniums, but they escaped, and I leaped to my feet and faced them angrily.

“Here, what’s your name?” said Courtenay haughtily.

I swallowed my annoyance, and answered:

“Grant.”

“What a name for a boy!” said Courtenay. “I say, Phil, isn’t his hair cut short. He ought to have his ears trimmed too. Here, where are your father and mother?”

I felt a catch in my throat as I tried to answer steadily:

“Dead.”

“There, I told you so,” cried Philip. “He hasn’t got any father or mother. Didn’t you come out of the workhouse, pauper?”

“No,” I said steadily, as my fingers itched to strike him.

“Here, what was your father?” said Courtenay.

I did not answer.

“Do you hear? And say ‘sir’ when you speak,” cried Courtenay with a brutal insolent manner that seemed to fit with his dark thin face. “I say, do you hear, boy?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Yes, sir, you beggar,” cried Courtenay. “What was your father?”

“He don’t know,” cried Philip grinning. “Pauper boys don’t know. They’re all mixed up together, and they call ’em Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or names of streets or places, anything. He doesn’t know what his father was. He was mixed up with a lot more.”

“I’ll make him answer,” said Courtenay. “Here, what was your father?”

“An officer and a gentleman,” I said proudly.

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Philip, dancing about with delight, and hanging on to his brother, who laughed too. “Here’s a game—a gardener’s boy a gentleman! Oh my!”

I was sorry I had said those words, but they slipped out, and I stood there angry and mortified before my tormentors.

“I say, Court, don’t he look like a gentleman? Look at the knees of his trousers, and his fists.”

“Never mind,” said Courtenay, “I want to bat. Look here, you, sir, can you play cricket?”

“Yes,” I said, “a little.”

“Yes, sir, you beggar; how many more times am I to tell you! Come out in the field. You’ve got to bowl for us. Here, catch!”

He threw a cricket-ball he had in his hand at me with all his might, and in a nasty spiteful way, but I caught it, and in a jeering way Philip shouted:

“Well fielded. Here, come on, Court. We’ll make the beggar run.”

I hesitated, for I wanted to go on with my work, but these were my master’s sons, and I felt that I ought to obey.

“What are you standing staring like that for, pauper?” cried Philip. “Didn’t you hear Mr Courtenay say you were to come on and bowl?”

“What do you want, young gentleman?” said a voice that was very welcome to me; and Mr Solomon came from behind the great laurels.

“What’s that to you, Browny? He’s coming to bowl for us in the field,” said Courtenay.

“No, he is not,” said Mr Solomon coolly. “He’s coming to help me in the cucumber house.”

“No, he isn’t,” said Philip; “he’s coming to bowl for us. Come along, pauper.”

I threw the ball towards him and it fell on the lawn, for neither of the boys tried to catch it.

“Here, you, sir,” cried Courtenay furiously, “come and pick up this ball.”

I glanced at Mr Solomon and did not stir.

“Do you hear, you, sir! come and pick up this ball,” said Courtenay.

“Now, pauper, look alive,” said Philip.

I turned and stooped down over my work.

“I say, Court, we’re not going to stand this, are we?”

“Go into the field and play, boys,” said Mr Solomon coldly; “we’ve got to work.”

“Yes, paupers have to work,” said Courtenay with a sneer.

“If I thought that worth notice, young fellow, I’d make you take that word back,” said Mr Solomon sternly.

“Yes, it’s all right, Courtenay; the boy isn’t a pauper.”

“You said he was.”

“Yes, but it was a mistake,” sneered Philip; “he says he’s a gentleman.”

The two boys roared with laughter, and Mr Solomon looked red.

“Look here, Grant,” he said quietly, “if being a gentleman is to be like these two here, don’t you be one, but keep to being a gardener.”

“Ha, ha, ha!—ho, ho, ho!” they both laughed. “A gentleman! Pretty sort of a gentleman.”

“Pauper gentleman,” cried Philip maliciously. “Yes, I daresay he has got a title,” said Courtenay, who looked viciously angry at being thwarted; and he was the more enraged because Mr Solomon bent down and helped me at the bed, taking no notice whatever of the orders for me to go.

“Yes,” said Philip; “he’s a barrow-net—a wheelbarrow-net. Ha, ha, ha!”

“With a potato-fork for his crest.”

“And ragged coat without any arms,” said Philip.

“And his motto is ‘Oh the poor workhouse boy!’” cried Courtenay.

“There, that will do, Grant,” said Mr Solomon. “Let these little boys amuse themselves. It won’t hurt us. Bring your basket.”

“Yes, take him away, Browny,” cried Philip.

“Ah, young fellows, your father will find out some day what nice boys you are! Come along, Grant and let these young gentlemen talk till they’re tired.”

“Yes, go on,” cried Philip; while I saw Courtenay turn yellow with rage at the cold bitter words Mr Solomon used. “Take away your pauper—take care of your gentleman—go and chain him up, and give him his skilly. Go on! take him to his kennel. Oh, I say, Courtenay—a gentleman! What a game!”

I followed Mr Solomon with my face wrinkled and lips tightened up, till he turned round and looked at me and then clapped his hand on my shoulder.

“Bah!” he said laughing; “you are not going to mind that, my lad. It isn’t worth a snap of the fingers. I wish, though, you hadn’t said anything about being a gentleman.”

“So do I, sir,” I said. “It slipped out, though, and I was sorry when it was too late.”

“Never mind; and don’t you leave your work for them. Now come and have a look at my cucumber house, and then—ha, ha, ha! there’s something better than skilly for dinner, my boy.”

I found out that Mr Solomon had another nature beside the one that seemed cold.

Chapter Twenty Four.

Sir Francis and a Friend.

The next few days passed pleasantly enough, for I saw very little of the two young gentlemen, who spent a good deal of their time in a meadow beyond the garden, playing cricket and quarrelling. Once there seemed to have been a fight, for I came upon Philip kneeling down by a watering-pot busy with his handkerchief bathing his face, and the state of the water told tales of what had happened to his nose.

As he seemed in trouble I was about to offer him my services, but he turned upon me so viciously with, “Hullo! pauper, what do you want?” that I went away.

The weather was lovely, and while it was so hot Mr Solomon used to do the principal part of his work in the glass houses at early morn and in the evening.

“Makes us work later, Grant,” he used to say apologetically; “but as it’s for our own convenience we ought not to grumble.”

“I’m not going to grumble, sir,” I said laughing; “all that training and tying in is so interesting, I like it.”

“That’s right,” he said, patting me on the shoulder; “always try and like your work; take a pride in it, my man, and it will turn up trumps some time or another. It means taking prizes.”

I had not seen Sir Francis yet, for he had been away, and I could not help feeling a little nervous about our first meeting. Still I was pretty happy there, and I felt that in spite of a few strong sensations of longing to be back at the old garden with Ike and Shock, I was getting to like my new life very much indeed, and that as soon as the two boys had gone back to their school I should be as happy as could be.

I was gradually getting to like Mr Solomon, and Mrs Solomon grew more kind to me every day. The men about the garden, too, were all very civil to me, and beyond a little bit of good-humoured banter from them now and then I had no cause for complaint.

My great fear was that they would catch up the name young Philip had bestowed upon me. That they knew of it I had pretty good evidence, for one day when I was busy over one of the verbena beds—busy at a task Mr Solomon had set me after the sun had made the peach-house too hot, a big bluff gardener came and worked close by me, mowing the grass in a shady part under some trees.

“It’s dry, and cuts like wire,” he said, stopping to wipe his scythe and give it a touch with the stone, making the blade ring and send forth what always sounded to be pleasant music to me.

“Oughtn’t you to cut it when the dew is on?” I said.

“Yes, squire, if you can,” he replied; “but there is so much grass we can’t get over it all in the early morning.”

He went on mowing, and I continued my task of pegging down the long shoots of the beautiful scarlet, crimson, and white flowers, just as Mr Solomon had instructed me, when all at once he came and looked on, making me feel very nervous; but he nodded and went away, so I supposed he was satisfied, and I worked on again as cheerfully as could be, till all at once I felt the blood flush up in my face, for the voice of young Philip Dalton came unpleasantly grating on my ear, as he said:

“Hullo, Bunce, mowing again?”

“Yes, Master Philup, mowin’ again.”

“Why, you’ve got the pauper there!” cried Philip. “I say, did you know he was a pauper?”

“No,” said Bunce, “I didn’t know. Do you want your legs ampytated?”

“No, stoopid, of course I don’t.”

“Then get outer the way or I shall take ’em off like carrots.”

“Get out!” said Philip, as I saw that he was watching me. “I say, though, did you know that he was a pauper, and lived on skilly?”

“No,” said the gardener quietly; and I felt as if I must get up and go away, for now I knew I should be a mark of contempt for the whole staff who worked in the garden.

“He was,” said Philip.

“Pauper, was he?” said Bunce, making his scythe glide round in a half circle. “I shouldn’t ha’ thought it.”

“Oh but he was or is, and always will be,” said the boy maliciously. “Once a pauper always a pauper. Look at him.”

“I’ve been a looking at him,” said Bunce slowly, for he was a big meditative man, and he stood upright, took a piece of flannel from the strap that supported his whetstone sheath, and wiped the blade of the scythe.

“Well, can’t you see?” cried my tormentor, watching me as I worked away and assumed ignorance of his presence.

“No,” said Bunce sturdily; “and seeing what a long, yellow, lizardly-looking wisp you are, Master Phil, if you two changed clothing I should pick you out as the pauper.”

“How dare you!” cried the boy fiercely.

“Mind the scythe,” shouted Bunce; “d’yer want to get cut?”

“You insolent old worm chopper, how dare you call me a pauper?”

“I didn’t call you a pauper,” said Bunce chuckling; “did I, Grant?”

“No,” I said.

“You’re a liar, you pauper!” cried the boy, who was furious. “I’ll tell papa—I’ll tell Sir Francis, and you shall both be discharged, you blackguards.”

“I’m just going to mow there, squire,” said Bunce, sharpening away at his scythe.

“Then you’ll wait till I choose to move.”

“If you don’t get out of the way I shall take the soles off your boots,” said Bunce, putting back his rubber.

“I’ll speak to papa about your insolence,” cried the boy, with his eyes flashing and his fists clenched; and I thought he was going to strike Bunce.

“Well,” said a sharp ringing voice, “speak to him then. What is it?”

I started to my feet, and Bunce touched his cap to a tall elderly gentleman with closely-cut grey hair and a very fierce-looking white moustache, whose keen eyes seemed to look me through and through.

“I said, what is it, Phil?” cried the newcomer, whom I felt to be Sir Francis before Philip spoke.

“This fellow called me a pauper, pa!”

Sir Francis turned sharply on Bunce, who did not seem in the slightest degree alarmed.

“How dare you call my son a pauper, sir?” he said sternly.

“I—”

“Stop!” cried Sir Francis. “Here, you boy, go away and wait till I call you. Not far.”

“Yes, sir,” I said; and I walked away thinking what a fierce quick man he seemed, and not knowing then that he was one of the magistrates.

A minute later he called to me to go back, and as soon as I had reached him, with Philip by his side and Bunce before him, Philip stepped back and held up his fist at me menacingly.

He thought the movement was unobserved by his stepfather; but Sir Francis, who was an old Indian officer, noted the act, as he showed us directly after.

“Now, boy,” he said, “what’s your name?”

“Grant, Sir Francis.”

“Well, Grant, did this under-gardener call Master Philip a pauper?”

I told him exactly what had occurred, and Sir Francis turned sharply on his step-son.

“You were already self-condemned, Philip,” he said sternly. “I saw you threaten this boy with your fist. The way to win respect from those beneath you in station is to treat them with respect.”

“But, papa—”

“Hold your tongue, sir,” said Sir Francis sternly.

“I had eight hundred men in my regiment, and all the band came from one of the unions, and better fellows could not be found. My lad,” he continued, “I dare say you know that pauper only means poor. It is no disgrace to be poor. Philip, go indoors.”

“That’s a flea in his ear,” said Bunce chuckling, as Sir Francis went one way, Philip the other. “What do you think of the master?”

“He seems very sharp and angry,” I said, returning to my work.

“He’s all that,” said the man; “but he’s a reg’lar gentleman. He always drops on to them two if he catches ’em up to their larks. Nice boys both of ’em.”

That word pauper rankled a good deal in my breast, for it was quite evident to me that Sir Francis thought I was from one of the unions, and I had had no opportunity of showing him that I was not.

“But I will show him,” I said to myself angrily. “He sha’n’t see anything in me to make him believe it. It’s too bad.”

I was busy, as I said that, arranging a barrowful of plants in rows, where they were to be surrounded with earth, “plunged,” as we called it, under the shelter of a wall, where they would get warmth and sunshine and grow hardy and strong, ready for taking in to the shelter of the greenhouse when the weather turned cold.

It was some days since I had seen Philip; but, weakly enough, I let the memory of that word rankle still.

To carry out my task I had to fetch a pot at a time from the large wide barrow, and set them down in the trench that had been cut for them. This necessitated stooping, and as I was setting one down a lump of something caught me so smartly on the back that I nearly dropped the flower-pot and started upright, looking round for the thrower of the piece of clay, for there it was at my feet.

I could not see, but I guessed at once that it was Philip, though it might have been Courtenay hiding behind some gooseberry bushes or the low hornbeam hedge, about twenty yards away.

“I won’t take any notice of the ill-bred young cubs,” I said to myself angrily; and I stooped and arranged the pot in its place and went back for another, when whack! came another well-aimed piece, and hit me on the side of the cap.

“You—”

I stopped myself, as I banged down the pot in a rage—stopped words and act, for I was going to run towards the spot whence the clay seemed to have come.

“It’s only play after all,” I said to myself. “I’ll show them, pauper or no, that I’m above being annoyed by such a trifle as that.”

I moved a couple more pots, when something whizzed by my ear, and then I was hit on the shoulder by a little raw potato.

I wanted to run round to the back of the hornbeam hedge, which had been planted to shelter plants and not sharpshooters, but I restrained myself.

“Playing cricket makes them take such good aim,” I thought to myself, as a piece of clay hit me on the back again; and I worked hard to finish my task so as to get to the pit from which I was fetching the pots down to the grass walk where I was; and I had got to the last pot, when, in stooping to put it in its place, plop came a soft lump of clay on the nape of my neck, and began to slip under my collar.

Down went the pot, and my cap on to the plant, and I turned sharp round, certain now that the missiles had been sent, not from the shelter hedge nor the gooseberry bushes, but from the wall, and there, sure enough, with his head and shoulders above the top, was my assailant.

My angry look changed to a bland smile as I saw the ragged straw hat with the hair standing out of the top, and the grubby face of Shock looking at me with his eyes twinkling and the skin all round wrinkled, while the rest of his face was sour.

“Why, Shock!” I cried; “who’d have thought of seeing you? How did you get there?”

“Clum up.”

“Did Mr Brownsmith send you?”

He shook his head.

“How is it you are here, then?”

“Hooked it.”

“Why, you haven’t run away?”

“I jest have, though.”

“But you are going back?”

He shook his head with all his might.

“I’ve sin you lots o’ times,” he said.

“When?”

“Yes’day. Day afore, and day afore that.”

“What! have you been here three days?” Shock nodded.

“Where have you slept, then?”

“Haystack.”

“And what have you had to eat?”

“Bread. Lots o’ things I fun’ in the fields. Rabbud.”

“Who’s that boy?” said a sharp voice that well knew; and Shock’s head disappeared.

“Mr Ezra Brownsmith’s boy, Sir Francis,” I said. “He used to work with me.”

“Was he from the workhouse?”

“Yes, Sir Francis.”

“Tell him not to do that again, and don’t you encourage him. I don’t approve of it. Go on with your work.”

I took the barrow handles and wheeled it away, biting my lips, for it had suddenly struck me that Sir Francis thought that I was talking to a boy who was my companion in the workhouse, and it seemed as if fate was fixing the term pauper upon me so tightly that I should not be able to get it removed.

Plenty of little annoyances occurred, but I put up with them; and not the least was the appearance of Shock at the top of first one wall and then another, but never near enough to speak to me.

He showed himself so often here and there that I used to go about the garden feeling sure that he was watching me; and at last I found, to my horror, that he had grown more bold, and used to get into the garden, for one day I caught sight of him creeping on hands and knees among the gooseberry bushes.

I started in pursuit, but stopped directly, feeling sure that if I did so the act would result in trouble to us both, and determined to write to Mr Ezra about him. I was glad I did so the next minute, for Courtenay and Philip came down the garden to amuse themselves picking gooseberries and eating them.

I was busy watering some celery that had been planted in trenches and shaded from the hot sun.

To do this I had a barrel fitted on wheels in a sort of barrow. From this I filled my can by dipping it, and when I had finished I had to go down to the bottom of the garden to a good-sized pond and reverse the process, dipping a bucket at some steps and filling the barrel.

I had filled my barrel once, and was busy dipping my can and thinking about Shock and what would be the consequences if he were seen by the two boys, when I suddenly found them by me, each with his cap full of ripe gooseberries, which they were eating as they watched me; and after giving his brother a look, Philip opened the annoyance by saying:

“Come, pauper, work away.”

I took no notice, when a half-sucked gooseberry struck me on the arm.

It was a disgusting act on the young coward’s part, but though in a moment I felt on fire, I only wiped it off, when Courtenay threw one and hit me on the face.

I wiped that away too, and raising my can stepped off the path on to the bed to go to the trench, but not in time to avoid a large over-ripe gooseberry which smashed as it struck me in the ear and began to trickle down.

I was in such a rage that the roar of laughter from my two tyrants half maddened me, and I watered that celery in a way that washed some of the roots quite bare.

They were waiting for me when I got back to the tub, and, emboldened by the patient way in which I bore their insults, they kept on pelting me with the over-ripe fruit till I had it in my hair, my eyes, and down within the collar of my shirt.

I ground my teeth with rage, and felt that I could bear it no longer, but I made no sign.

Then they pelted me with words too, inventing ridiculous names, asking me about the workhouse food, and at last I determined to bear it no longer, but go straight up to the house and show Sir Francis the state I was in and beg him to put a stop to this annoyance.

But just then it flashed upon my mind that Sir Francis and her ladyship had gone out the day before to stay somewhere for a fortnight, and this explained the boldness of the two young ruffians, who had never behaved so outrageously before.

“If I go and tell Mr Solomon,” I thought, “he will only tell me I was foolish to take any notice;” and at last, writhing with annoyance, I emptied the barrel and trundled it down to the pond, hoping to leave my tormentors behind.

But no; they followed me and continued their assaults as soon as they had replenished their caps with the gooseberries that were abundant on the bushes, over-ripe many of them, and of monstrous size.

“Did you ever see such a coward?” said Philip.

“Like all these paupers,” cried Courtenay. “Ha! ha! ha! right in the ear.”

I stamped with rage for his words were true about his aim, though I did not feel cowardly, for I was working hard to do my duty and keep my hands from my assailants.

“Give him one in the eye,” said Philip. “Bet you twopence, Court, I hit him first in the eye.”

They went on pelting and I went on filling my barrel, dipping with the bucket and pouring it in, and a dozen times over it was all I could do to keep from discharging the contents of the pail in Courtenay’s face.

Full at last, and I was ready to go up the garden again.

I glanced round in the hope of seeing Mr Solomon or Bunce or one of the other gardeners; but they were all busy in the upper gardens, while I was quite shut in here with my tormentors.

“Here, let’s get some more shot, Court,” cried Philip. “I’ll serve the sneaking coward out for getting me in that row with pa.”

“Wait a bit,” said his brother; “look at him. He goes down just like a monkey. He’s going to wash his gooseberry face.”

He was quite right, for I had laid my cap aside and stooped down at the dipping place to wash off some of the seedy, sticky pulp before going back.

“Dirty brute!” said Philip. “I never saw such a coward in my life.”

I ought to have been on my guard and not have given them the opportunity which I did, for as I stooped down there, crouching on my heels, I placed a great temptation in Courtenay Dalton’s way. For as I stooped right down, scooping up the water with one hand to bathe my face, I suddenly felt a sharp thrust from a foot on my back, and before I could save myself I was head over heels in the deep water.

It was not so deep but that I got my footing directly, and seizing the post at the side tried to struggle out, when amidst shouts of laughter Philip cried:

“Give him another dowse. That’s the way to wash a pauper clean.”

I was half-blind with the water, as Courtenay thrust my hand from the post, and in I went again, to come up red hot instead of cold.

He thrust me in again and I went right under; but my rage was not quenched, and, taught by my experience, I made a rush as if to spring out on to the dipping-place but instead of doing so I caught at a branch of a willow by the side and sprang out.

“Shake yourself, dog!” cried Courtenay, roaring with laughter.

“Fetch him a towel,” cried Philip. “A towel for the clean pauper. Give him another ducking, Courtenay.”

He ran at me, but in those moments I had forgotten everything in my thirst to be revenged on my cowardly persecutors.

Philip only seemed to be something in my way as I made at his brother, and throwing out one fist, he went down amongst the willows, while the next minute I was striking at Courtenay with all my might.

He was a bigger boy than I. Taller and older, and he had had many a good fight at school no doubt; but my onslaught staggered him, and I drove him before me, striking at him as he reached the handles of my water-barrow, and he fell over them heavily.

This only enraged him, and he sprang up and received my next blow right in the face, to be staggered for the moment.

Then I don’t know what happened, only that my arms were going like windmills, that I was battering Courtenay, and that he was battering me; that we were down, and then up, and then down again, over and over, and fighting fiercely as a couple of dogs.

I think I was getting the best of it, when I began to feel weak, and that my adversary was hitting me back and front at once.

Then I realised that Philip had attacked me too, and that I was getting very much the worst of it in a sort of thunderstorm which rained blows.

Then the blows only came from one side, for there was a hoarse panting and the sound of heavy blows and scuffling away from me, while I was hitting out again with all my might at one boy instead of two.

All at once there was a crash and the rattle of an iron handle, and Courtenay went down. He had caught against the pail and fallen.

This gave me time to glance round and see in a half-blinded way that Philip was fighting with some other boy, who closed with him, and down they went together.

“Yah! yah! Cowards! cowards!” cried a voice that I well knew; and I saw giddily that Courtenay and Philip were running up the path, and that Shock was standing beside me.

“Well done!” cried another voice. “What a licking you two give ’em!”

Shock started, and ran, darting among the bushes, while I sat down on a barrow-handle, feeling rather thick and dizzy.

“I was coming to stop it. Two to one’s too bad; but that ragged chap come out at young Phil, and my word, he did give it him well. Are you much hurt, my lad?”

“No, not much, Mr Bunce,” I said, staring at him in rather a confused way.

“Here, I’ll get some water,” he said; and he went and dipped a pailful. “Bathe your face in that.”

I did so, and felt clearer and refreshed directly.

“Go on,” he said; “keep it up. It will stop the bleeding. What! have you been in the pond?”

“Yes,” I said; “they’ve been pelting me this last half hour, and then they pushed me in.”

“The young rips!” cried Bunce. “Never mind. I’m as pleased as if some one had given me a sovereign.”

“Yes,” I said dismally; “and they’ll tell Sir Francis, and I shall have to go.”

“Not you,” said Bunce. “They’re awful curs, but they’re beaten, and they won’t tell.”

“Hallo! what’s all this?” said Mr Solomon, coming up.

Bunce told him.

“And did he thrash ’em well?” said Mr Solomon, looking rather angry, “the pair of them?”

“No. They were too strong both at once, but that Ragged Jack of a chap that’s been hanging about—him as I told you of this morning—he come out and tackled young Phil when he was on Grant’s back, and my word those two have gone off with their tails between their legs. Licked, sir, licked out and out.”

“I suppose I shall be sent away, sir,” I said, wringing the water out of my shirt-sleeves.

“I suppose you won’t,” said Mr Solomon sharply. “I’ve seen a deal, my lad, and I wondered you didn’t have a turn at them before. I didn’t think you’d got the stuff in you, to tell you the truth.”

“Oh, but he had!” said Bunce. “I wish you’d ha’ seen.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” said Mr Solomon. “No, I’m not; I’m glad. They’ll leave you alone now. There, go and change your things. It was time you did strike. Here, I’ll go with you, or you’ll frighten the missus into fits. I say,” he shouted back, “keep a sharp look-out for that boy, and catch him if you can. I must have him stopped.”

“Poor old Shock!” I thought, as I felt grateful to him for what he had done.

The next minute I was at the gardener’s cottage, being scolded and wiped by Mrs Solomon, who said she had never seen such a sight in her life, and who was not happy till she had me down-stairs in dry things, bathing one of my eyes, putting a leech on the other, and carefully strapping up a cut on the back of my head.

Chapter Twenty Five.

I Have a Difficult Task.

The gardener was right. The fight was a lesson for the boys, who kept at a distance from me, during the next few days, while our scratches and bruises grew faint and began to heal.

We had expected they would have been off to school; but for some reason, illness I believe, the holidays were extended for a month, and so they stayed, but I was pretty well left in peace.

My first hint of Sir Francis’ return was given by that gentleman himself, who came upon me suddenly as I was busy in the peach-house. I was painting away at the branches that had become infected with a tiresome kind of blight, when I heard a sharp quick step behind me, and my heart quailed, for I felt that it was Sir Francis about to take me to task for my encounter with his sons.

I kept busily on with my work, in the faint, hope that he might pass me and say nothing, but he stopped short, and looked on as I busied myself with my brush and the poisonous decoction that was to kill the insects.

I was in agony, for I felt that he was looking me through and through, and when he did speak at last I gave quite a jump.

“Hah!” he exclaimed, “rather hard upon the insects. Well, Grant, how are you getting on?”

“Very well, Sir Francis, I think,” I said.

“Seen any more of that boy?”

“Yes, Sir Francis,” I said, colouring.

“Climbed up the wall, has he?”

“I don’t know, Sir Francis,” I replied; “but he has got into the garden lately.”

“That’s right, my lad, be frank,” he said. “I know he has got into the garden. I caught my young gentleman and took him to task. He says he came because you were here.”

“I’m afraid that is why he did come, Sir Francis,” I said.

“Did you tell him to come?”

“No, Sir Francis. We were never very friendly.”

“Ho!” he said, and he walked on looking at the peaches for a few minutes, and then went away, leaving me to wipe the cold perspiration off my forehead, for I had fully expected a severe scolding.