Chapter Six.A Quicksilver Globule.“Well, papa?” she said, looking into his face in a half-amused way.“Well, Helen,” said the doctor, taking her hand and drawing her to him; “about this boy?”“Yes, dear. You have made up your mind to adopt and bring one up,” she said, in a low tone which the lad could not hear.“Yes,” said the doctor, taking his tone from her, “to turn the raw material into the polished cultured article.”“But of course you will take this one back, and select another!”“And pray why!” said the doctor sharply.“I thought—I thought—” faltered Helen.“Oh, nonsense! Better for proving my theory.”“Yes, papa, but—”“A little wild and rough, that’s all; boy-like; high-spirited; right stuff in him.”“No doubt, papa; but he is so very rough.”“Then we’ll use plenty of sand-paper and make him smooth. Moral sand-paper. Capital boy, my dear. Had a deal of trouble in getting him—by George! the young wolf! He has finished that cake.”“Then you really mean to keep him, papa?” said Helen, glancing at the boy, where he sat diligently picking up a few crumbs and a currant which he had dropped.“Mean to keep him? Now, my dear Helen, when did you ever know me undertake anything, and not carry it out!”“Never, papa.”“Then I am not going to begin now. There is the boy.”“Yes, papa,” said Helen rather sadly; “there is the boy.”“I mean to make him a gentleman, and I must ask you to help me with the poor orphan—”“He is an orphan, then!” said Helen quickly.“Yes. Son of some miserable tramp who died in the casual ward.”“How dreadful!” said Helen, glancing once more at the boy, who caught her eye, and smiled in a way which made his face light up, and illumined the sallow cheeks and dull white pinched look.“Dreadful? Couldn’t be better for my theory, my dear.”“Very well, papa,” said Helen quietly; “I will help you all I can.”“I knew you would, my dear,” said the doctor warmly; “and I prophesy that you will be proud of your work, and so shall I. Now, then, to begin,” he added loudly.“All in—all in—all in!” shouted the boy, jumping up like a grasshopper, and preparing to go through some fresh gymnastic feat.“Ah! ah! Sit down, sir. How dare you!” shouted the doctor; and the boy dropped into his seat again, and sat like a mouse.“There!” said the doctor softly; “there’s obedience. Result of drilling. Now, then, what’s the first thing? He must have some clothes.”“Oh yes; at once,” said Helen.“And, look here, my dear,” said the doctor testily; “I never use anything of the kind myself, but you girls rub some stuff—pomade or cream—on your hair to make it grow, do you not?”“Well, yes, papa.”“Then, for goodness’ sake, let a double quantity be rubbed at once upon that poor boy’s head. Really it is cut so short that he is hardly fit to be seen without a cap on.”“I’m afraid you will have to wait some time,” said Helen, with a smile.“Humph! yes, I suppose so,” said the doctor gruffly. “That barber ought to be flogged. Couldn’t put the boy in a wig, of course.”“O papa! no.”“Well, I said no,” cried the doctor testily. “Must wait, I suppose; but we can make him look decent.”“Are you—are you going—” faltered Helen.“Going? Going where!”“Going to have him with us, papa, or to let him be with the servants?” said Helen rather nervously; but she regretted speaking the next moment.“Now, my dear child, don’t be absurd,” cried the doctor. “How am I to prove my theory by taking the boy from the lowest station of society and making him, as I shall do, a gentleman, if I let him run wild with the servants!”“I—I beg your pardon, papa.”“Humph! Granted. Now, what’s to be done first? The boy is clean?”“Oh yes.”“Can’t improve him then, that way; but I want as soon as possible to get rid of that nasty, pasty, low-class pallor. One does not see it in poor people’s children, as a rule, while these Union little ones always look sickly to me. You must feed him up, Helen.”“I have begun, papa,” she said, smiling.“Humph! Yes. Clothes. Yes; we must have some clothes, and—oh, by the way, I had forgotten. Here, my boy.”The lad jumped up with alacrity, and came to the doctor’s side boldly—looking keenly from one to the other.“What did you say your name was!”“Bed—Obed Coleby.”“Hah!” cried the doctor; “then we’ll do away with that at once. Now, what shall we call you!”“I d’know,” said the boy, laughing. “Jack?”“No, no,” said the doctor thoughtfully, while Helen looked on rather amused at her father’s intent manner, and the quick bird-like movements of their visitor.For the boy, after watching the doctor for a few moments, grew tired, and finding himself unnoticed, dropped down on the carpet, took four pebbles from his pocket, laid them on the back of his right hand, and throwing them in the air, caught them separately by as many rapid snatches in the air.“Do that again,” cried the doctor, suddenly becoming interested.The boy showed his white teeth, threw the stones in the air, and caught them again with the greatest ease.“That’s it, Helen, my dear,” cried the doctor triumphantly. “Cleverness of the right hand—dexterity. Capital name.”“Capital name, papa?”“Yes; Dexter! Good Latin sound. Fresh and uncommon. Dexter—Dex. Look here, sir. No more Obed. You shall be called Dexter.”“All right,” said the boy.“And if you behave yourself well, perhaps we shall shorten it into Dex.”“Dick’s better,” said the boy sharply.“No, it is not, sir; Dex.”“Well, Dix, then,” said the boy, throwing one stone up high enough to touch the ceiling, and in catching at it over-handed, failing to achieve his object, and striking it instead, so that it flew against the wall with a loud rap.“Put those stones in your pocket, sir,” cried the doctor to the boy, who ran and picked up the one which had fallen, looking rather abashed. “Another inch, and it would have gone through that glass.”“Yes. Wasn’t it nigh!” cried the boy.“Here, stop! Throw them out of that window.”The boy’s brow clouded over.“Let me give them to some one at the school; they’re such nice round ones.”“I said, throw them out of the window, sir.”“All right,” said the boy quickly; and he threw the pebbles into the garden.“Now, then; look here, sir—or no,” said the doctor less sternly. “Look here, my boy.”The doctor’s manner influenced the little fellow directly, and he went up and laid his hand upon his patron’s knee, looking brightly from face to face.“Now, mind this: in future you are to be Dexter.”“All right: Dexter Coleby,” said the boy.“No, no, no, no!” cried the doctor testily. “Dexter Grayson; and don’t keep on saying ‘All right.’”“All—”The boy stopped short, and rubbed his nose with his cuff.“Hah! First thing, my dear. Twelve pocket-handkerchiefs, and mark them ‘Dexter Grayson.’”“What? twelve handkerchies for me—all for me?”“Yes, sir, all for you; and you are to use them. Never let me see you rub your nose with your cuff again.”The boy’s mouth opened to say, “All right,” but he checked himself.“That’s right!” cried the doctor. “I see you are teachable. You were going to say ‘all right.’”“You told me not to.”“I did; and I’m very pleased to find you did not do it.”“I say, shall I have to clean the knives?”“No, no, no.”“Nor yet the boots and shoes?”“No, boy; no.”“I shall have to fetch the water then, shan’t I?”“My good boy, nothing of the kind. You are going to live with us, and you are my adopted son,” said the doctor rather pompously, while Helen sighed.“Which?” queried the boy.“Which what?” said the doctor.“Which what you said?”“I did not say anything, sir.”“Oh my! what a story!” cried the boy, appealing to Helen. “Didn’t you hear him say I was to be his something son?”“Adopted son,” said the doctor severely; “and, look here, you must not speak to me in that way.”“All—” Dexter checked himself again, and he only stared.“Now, you understand,” said the doctor, after a few minutes’ hesitation; “you are to be here like my son, and you may call me—yes, father, or papa.”“How rum!” said the boy, showing his white teeth with a remarkable want of reverence. “I say,” he added, turning to Helen; “what am I to call you!”Helen turned to her father for instructions, her brow wrinkling from amusement and vexation.“Helen,” said the doctor, in a decided tone. “We must have no half measures, my dear; I mean to carry out my plan in its entirety.”“Very well, papa,” said Helen quietly; and then to herself, “It is only for a few days.”“Now, then,” said the doctor, “clothes. Ring that bell, Dexter.”The boy ran so eagerly to the bell that he knocked over a light chair, and left it on the floor till he had rung.“Oh, I say,” he exclaimed; “they go over a deal easier than our forms.”“Never mind the forms now, Dexter. I want you to forget all about the old school.”“Forget it?” said the boy, with his white forehead puckering up.“Yes, and all belonging to it. You are now going to be my son.”“But I shall want to go and see the boys sometimes.”“No, sir; you will not.”“But I must go and see Mother Curdley.”“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor. “Well, we shall see. Perhaps she will be allowed to come and see you.”“Hooray!” cried the boy excitedly; and turning to Helen he obtained possession of her hand. “I say, save her a bit of that cake.”“She shall have some cake, Dexter,” said Helen kindly, for she could not help, in spite of her annoyance, again feeling pleased with the boy’s remembrance of others.“And I say,” he cried, “when she does come, we’ll have a ha’porth o’ snuff screwed up in a bit o’ paper, and—has he got any gin?”“Hush, hush!” whispered Helen.“But she’s so fond of a drop,” said the boy earnestly.“And now,” said the doctor; “the next thing is clothes. Ah, Maria, send Cribb to ask Mr Bleddan to come here directly.”“Yes, sir,” said Maria; and after a glance at the boy she closed the door.In less than a quarter of an hour Mr Bleddan, the tailor of Coleby, was there; and Dexter stood up feeling tickled and amused at being measured for some new clothes which the tailor said should be ready in a week.“A week!” said the doctor; “but what am I to do now? The boy can’t go like that.”“Ready-made, sir? I’ve plenty of new and fashionable suits exactly his size.”“Bring some,” said the doctor laconically; “and shirts and stockings and boots. Everything he wants. Do you understand!”Mr Bleddan perfectly understood, and Dexter stood with his eyes sparkling as he heard the list of upper and under garments, boots, caps, everything which the tailor and clothier considered necessary.The moment the man had gone, Dexter made a dash to recommence his Ixion-like triumphal dance, but this time Helen caught his hand and stopped him.“No, no, not here,” she said quietly; and not in the least abashed, but in the most obedient way, the boy submitted.“It was because I was so jolly glad: that’s all.”“Hah!” said the doctor, smiling. “Now, I like that, Helen. Work with me, and all that roughness will soon pass away.”“I say, will that chap be long?” cried Dexter, running to the window and looking out. “Am I to have all those things for my own self, and may I wear ’em directly?”“Look here, my lad; you shall have everything that’s right and proper for you, if you are a good boy.”“Oh, I’ll be a good boy—least I’ll try to be. Shall you give me the cane if I ain’t?”“I—er—I don’t quite know,” said the doctor. “I hope you will not require it.”“Mr Sibery said I did, and he never knew a boy who wanted it worse, but it didn’t do me no good at all.”“Well, never mind that now,” said the doctor. “You will have to be very good, and never want the cane. You must learn to be a young gentleman.”“Young gentleman?” said Dexter, holding his head on one side like a bird. “One of them who wears black jackets, and turn-down collars, and tall hats, and plays at cricket all day? I shall like that.”“Humph! Something else but play cricket, I hope,” said the doctor quietly. “Helen, my dear, I shall begin to make notes at once for my book, so you can take Dexter in hand, and try how he can read.”The doctor brought out a pocket-book and pencil, and Helen, after a moment’s thought, went to a glass case, and took down an old gift-book presented to her when she was a little girl.“Come here, Dexter,” she said, “and let me hear you read.”The boy flushed with pleasure.“Yes,” he said. “I should like to read to you. May I kneel down and have the book on your knees!”“Yes, if you like,” said Helen, who felt that the boy was gaining upon her more and more: for, in spite of his coarseness, there was a frank, merry, innocent undercurrent that, she felt, might be brought to the surface, strengthened and utilised to drive the roughness away.“Read here!” said the boy, opening the book at random. “Oh, here’s a picture. What are these girls doing?”“Leave the pictures till afterwards. Go on reading now.”“Here?”“Yes; at the beginning of that chapter.”“I shall have to read it all, as there’s no other boy here. We always stand up in a class at the House, and one boy reads one bit, and another boy goes on next, and then you’re always losing your place, because it’s such a long time before it comes round to your turn, and then old Sibery gives you the cane.”“Yes, yes; but go on,” said Helen, with a feeling of despair concerning her father’sprotégé.Dexter began to read in a forced, unnatural voice, with a high-pitched unpleasant twang, and regardless of sense or stops—merely uttering the words one after the other, and making them all of the same value.At the end of the second line Helen’s face was a study. At the end of the fourth the doctor roared out—“Stop! I cannot stand any more. Saw-sharpening or bag-pipes would be pleasant symphonies in comparison.”At that moment Maria entered.“Lunch is on the table, if you please, sir.”“Ah, yes, lunch,” said the doctor. “Did you put a knife and fork for Master Dexter?”“For who, sir!” said Maria, staring.“For Master Dexter here,” said the doctor sharply. “Go and put them directly.”Maria ran down to her little pantry, and then attacked Mrs Millett.“Master’s going mad, I think,” she said. “Why, he’s actually going to have that boy at the table to lunch.”“Never!”“It’s a fact,” cried Maria; “and I’ve come down for more knives and forks.”“And you’d better make haste and get ’em, then,” said the housekeeper; “master’s master, and he always will have his way.”Maria did make haste, and to her wonder and disgust Dexter was seated at the doctor’s table in his workhouse clothes, gazing wonderingly round at everything: the plate, cruets, and sparkling glass taking up so much of his attention that for the moment he forgot the viands.The sight of a hot leg of lamb, however, when the cover was removed, made him seize his knife and fork, and begin tapping with the handles on either side of his plate.“Errum!” coughed the doctor. “Put that knife and fork down, Dexter, and wait.”The boy’s hands went behind him directly, and there was silence till Maria had left the room, when the doctor began to carve, and turned to Helen—“May I give you some lamb, my dear?”“There, I knowed it was lamb,” cried Dexter excitedly, “’cause it was so little. We never had no lamb at the House.”“Hush!” said the doctor quietly. “You must not talk like that.”“All right.”“Nor yet like that, Dexter. Now, then, may I send you some lamb!”“May I say anything?” said the boy so earnestly that Helen could not contain her mirth, and the boy smiled pleasantly again.“Of course you may, my boy,” said the doctor. “Answer when you are spoken to, and try and be polite.”“Yes, sir, I will; I’ll try so hard.”“Then may I send you some lamb!”“Yes; twice as much as you give her. It does smell nice.”The doctor frowned a little, and then helped the boy pretty liberally.“Oh, I say! Just look at the gravy,” he cried. “Have you got plenty, Miss!”“Oh yes, Dexter,” said Helen. “May I—”“Don’t give it all to me, Mister,” cried the boy. “Keep some for yourself. I hate a pig.”“Errum!” coughed the doctor, frowning. “Miss Grayson was going to ask if you would take some vegetables!”“What? taters? No thankye, we got plenty o’ them at the House,” cried the boy; and he began cutting and devouring the lamb at a furious rate.“Gently, gently!” cried the doctor. “You have neither bread nor salt.”“Get’s plenty o’ them at the House,” cried the boy, with his mouth full; “and you’d better look sharp, too. The bell’ll ring directly, and we shall have to—no it won’t ring here, will it!” he said, looking from one to another.“No, sir,” said the doctor sternly; “and you must not eat like that. Watch how Miss Grayson eats her lunch, and try and imitate her.”The boy gave the doctor a sharp glance, and then, in a very praiseworthy manner, tried to partake of the savoury joint in a decent way.But it was hard work for him. The well-cooked succulent meat was so toothsome that he longed to get to the end of it; and whenever he was not watching the doctor and his daughter he kept glancing at the dish, wondering whether he would be asked to have any more.“What’s that rum-looking stuff?” he said, as the doctor helped himself from a small tureen.“Mint sauce, sir. Will you have some?”“I don’t know. Let’s taste it.”The little sauce tureen was passed to him, and he raised the silver ladle, but instead of emptying it upon his plate he raised it to his lips, and drank with a loud, unpleasant noise, suggestive of the wordsoup.The doctor was going to utter a reproof, but the sight of Helen’s mirth checked him, and he laughed heartily as he saw the boy’s face full of disgust.“I don’t like that,” he said, pushing the tureen away. “It ain’t good.”“But you should—”“Don’t correct him now, papa; you will spoil the poor boy’s dinner,” remonstrated Helen.“He said it was lunch,” said Dexter.“Your dinner, sir, and our lunch,” said the doctor. “There, try and behave as we do at the table, and keep your elbows off the cloth.”Dexter obeyed so quickly that he knocked a glass from the table, and on leaving his seat to pick it up he found that the foot was broken off.The doctor started, and uttered a sharp ejaculation.In an instant the boy shrank away into a corner, sobbing wildly.“I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it, sir. Don’t beat me, please. Don’t beat me this time. I’ll never do so any more.”“Bless my soul!” cried the doctor, jumping up hastily; and the boy uttered a wild cry, full of fear, and would have dashed out of the open window into the garden had not Helen caught him, the tears in her eyes, and her heart moved to pity as she read the boy’s agony of spirit. In fact that one cry for mercy had done more for Dexter’s future at the doctor’s than a month’s attempts at orderly conduct.“Hush, hush!” said Helen gently, as she took his hands; and, with a look of horror in his eyes, the boy clung to her.“I don’t mind the cane sometimes,” he whispered, “but don’t let him beat me very much.”“Nonsense! nonsense!” said the doctor rather huskily. “I was not going to beat you.”“Please, sir, you looked as if you was,” sobbed the boy.“I only looked a little cross, because you were clumsy and broke that glass. But it was an accident.”“Yes, it was; it was,” cried the boy, in a voice full of pleading, for the breakage had brought up the memory of an ugly day in his young career. “I wouldn’t ha’ done it, was it ever so; it’s true as goodness I wouldn’t.”“No, no, Maria, not yet,” cried Helen hastily, as the door was opened. “We will ring.”Maria walked out again, and the boy clung to Helen as he sobbed.“There, there,” she said. “Papa is not cross. You broke the glass, and you have apologised. Come: sit down again.”If some one had told Helen Grayson two hours before that she would have done such a thing, she would have smiled incredulously, but somehow she felt moved to pity just then, and leading the boy back to his chair, she bent down and kissed his forehead.In a moment Dexter’s arms were about her neck, and he was clinging to her with passionate energy, sobbing now wildly, while the doctor got up and walked to the window for a few moments.“There, there,” said Helen gently, as she pressed the boy down into his seat, and kissed him once again, after seeing that her father’s back was turned. “That’s all over now. Come, papa.”The doctor came back, and as he was passing the back of the boy’s chair, he raised his hand quickly, intending to pat him on the head.The boy flinched like a frightened animal anticipating a blow.“Why, bless my soul, Dexter! this will not do,” he said huskily. “Here, give me your hand. There, there, my dear boy, you and I are to be the best of friends. Why, my dear Helen,” he added in French, “they must have been terribly severe, for the little fellow to shrink like this.”The boy still sobbed as he laid his hand in the doctor’s, and then the meal was resumed; but Dexter’s appetite was gone. He could not finish the lamb, and it was only with difficulty that he managed a little rhubarb tart and custard.“Why, what are you thinking about, Dexter!” said Helen after the lunch; and somehow her tone of voice seemed to indicate that she had forgotten all about the workhouse clothes.“Will he send me back to the House?” the boy whispered hoarsely, but the doctor heard.“No, no,” he said quickly; and the boy seemed relieved.That night about eleven, as she went up to bed, Helen Grayson went softly into a little white bedroom, where the boy’s pale face lay in the full moonlight, and something sparkled.“Poor child!” she said, in a voice full of pity; “he has been crying.”She was quite right, and as she bent over him, her presence must have influenced his dreams, for he uttered a low, soft sigh, and then smiled, while, forgetting everything now but the fact that this poor little waif of humanity had been stranded, as it were, at their home, she bent over him and kissed him.Then she started, for she became aware of the fact that her father was at the door.The next moment she was in his arms.“Bless you, my darling!” he said. “This is like you. I took this up as a whim as well as a stubborn belief; but somehow that poor little ignorant fellow, with his rough ways, seems to be rousing warmer feelings towards him, and, please God, we’ll make a man of him of whom we shall not be ashamed.”Poor Dexter had cried himself to sleep, feeling in his ignorant fashion that he had disgraced himself, and that the two harsh rulers were quite right,—that he was as bad as ever he could be; but circumstances were running in a way he little thought.
“Well, papa?” she said, looking into his face in a half-amused way.
“Well, Helen,” said the doctor, taking her hand and drawing her to him; “about this boy?”
“Yes, dear. You have made up your mind to adopt and bring one up,” she said, in a low tone which the lad could not hear.
“Yes,” said the doctor, taking his tone from her, “to turn the raw material into the polished cultured article.”
“But of course you will take this one back, and select another!”
“And pray why!” said the doctor sharply.
“I thought—I thought—” faltered Helen.
“Oh, nonsense! Better for proving my theory.”
“Yes, papa, but—”
“A little wild and rough, that’s all; boy-like; high-spirited; right stuff in him.”
“No doubt, papa; but he is so very rough.”
“Then we’ll use plenty of sand-paper and make him smooth. Moral sand-paper. Capital boy, my dear. Had a deal of trouble in getting him—by George! the young wolf! He has finished that cake.”
“Then you really mean to keep him, papa?” said Helen, glancing at the boy, where he sat diligently picking up a few crumbs and a currant which he had dropped.
“Mean to keep him? Now, my dear Helen, when did you ever know me undertake anything, and not carry it out!”
“Never, papa.”
“Then I am not going to begin now. There is the boy.”
“Yes, papa,” said Helen rather sadly; “there is the boy.”
“I mean to make him a gentleman, and I must ask you to help me with the poor orphan—”
“He is an orphan, then!” said Helen quickly.
“Yes. Son of some miserable tramp who died in the casual ward.”
“How dreadful!” said Helen, glancing once more at the boy, who caught her eye, and smiled in a way which made his face light up, and illumined the sallow cheeks and dull white pinched look.
“Dreadful? Couldn’t be better for my theory, my dear.”
“Very well, papa,” said Helen quietly; “I will help you all I can.”
“I knew you would, my dear,” said the doctor warmly; “and I prophesy that you will be proud of your work, and so shall I. Now, then, to begin,” he added loudly.
“All in—all in—all in!” shouted the boy, jumping up like a grasshopper, and preparing to go through some fresh gymnastic feat.
“Ah! ah! Sit down, sir. How dare you!” shouted the doctor; and the boy dropped into his seat again, and sat like a mouse.
“There!” said the doctor softly; “there’s obedience. Result of drilling. Now, then, what’s the first thing? He must have some clothes.”
“Oh yes; at once,” said Helen.
“And, look here, my dear,” said the doctor testily; “I never use anything of the kind myself, but you girls rub some stuff—pomade or cream—on your hair to make it grow, do you not?”
“Well, yes, papa.”
“Then, for goodness’ sake, let a double quantity be rubbed at once upon that poor boy’s head. Really it is cut so short that he is hardly fit to be seen without a cap on.”
“I’m afraid you will have to wait some time,” said Helen, with a smile.
“Humph! yes, I suppose so,” said the doctor gruffly. “That barber ought to be flogged. Couldn’t put the boy in a wig, of course.”
“O papa! no.”
“Well, I said no,” cried the doctor testily. “Must wait, I suppose; but we can make him look decent.”
“Are you—are you going—” faltered Helen.
“Going? Going where!”
“Going to have him with us, papa, or to let him be with the servants?” said Helen rather nervously; but she regretted speaking the next moment.
“Now, my dear child, don’t be absurd,” cried the doctor. “How am I to prove my theory by taking the boy from the lowest station of society and making him, as I shall do, a gentleman, if I let him run wild with the servants!”
“I—I beg your pardon, papa.”
“Humph! Granted. Now, what’s to be done first? The boy is clean?”
“Oh yes.”
“Can’t improve him then, that way; but I want as soon as possible to get rid of that nasty, pasty, low-class pallor. One does not see it in poor people’s children, as a rule, while these Union little ones always look sickly to me. You must feed him up, Helen.”
“I have begun, papa,” she said, smiling.
“Humph! Yes. Clothes. Yes; we must have some clothes, and—oh, by the way, I had forgotten. Here, my boy.”
The lad jumped up with alacrity, and came to the doctor’s side boldly—looking keenly from one to the other.
“What did you say your name was!”
“Bed—Obed Coleby.”
“Hah!” cried the doctor; “then we’ll do away with that at once. Now, what shall we call you!”
“I d’know,” said the boy, laughing. “Jack?”
“No, no,” said the doctor thoughtfully, while Helen looked on rather amused at her father’s intent manner, and the quick bird-like movements of their visitor.
For the boy, after watching the doctor for a few moments, grew tired, and finding himself unnoticed, dropped down on the carpet, took four pebbles from his pocket, laid them on the back of his right hand, and throwing them in the air, caught them separately by as many rapid snatches in the air.
“Do that again,” cried the doctor, suddenly becoming interested.
The boy showed his white teeth, threw the stones in the air, and caught them again with the greatest ease.
“That’s it, Helen, my dear,” cried the doctor triumphantly. “Cleverness of the right hand—dexterity. Capital name.”
“Capital name, papa?”
“Yes; Dexter! Good Latin sound. Fresh and uncommon. Dexter—Dex. Look here, sir. No more Obed. You shall be called Dexter.”
“All right,” said the boy.
“And if you behave yourself well, perhaps we shall shorten it into Dex.”
“Dick’s better,” said the boy sharply.
“No, it is not, sir; Dex.”
“Well, Dix, then,” said the boy, throwing one stone up high enough to touch the ceiling, and in catching at it over-handed, failing to achieve his object, and striking it instead, so that it flew against the wall with a loud rap.
“Put those stones in your pocket, sir,” cried the doctor to the boy, who ran and picked up the one which had fallen, looking rather abashed. “Another inch, and it would have gone through that glass.”
“Yes. Wasn’t it nigh!” cried the boy.
“Here, stop! Throw them out of that window.”
The boy’s brow clouded over.
“Let me give them to some one at the school; they’re such nice round ones.”
“I said, throw them out of the window, sir.”
“All right,” said the boy quickly; and he threw the pebbles into the garden.
“Now, then; look here, sir—or no,” said the doctor less sternly. “Look here, my boy.”
The doctor’s manner influenced the little fellow directly, and he went up and laid his hand upon his patron’s knee, looking brightly from face to face.
“Now, mind this: in future you are to be Dexter.”
“All right: Dexter Coleby,” said the boy.
“No, no, no, no!” cried the doctor testily. “Dexter Grayson; and don’t keep on saying ‘All right.’”
“All—”
The boy stopped short, and rubbed his nose with his cuff.
“Hah! First thing, my dear. Twelve pocket-handkerchiefs, and mark them ‘Dexter Grayson.’”
“What? twelve handkerchies for me—all for me?”
“Yes, sir, all for you; and you are to use them. Never let me see you rub your nose with your cuff again.”
The boy’s mouth opened to say, “All right,” but he checked himself.
“That’s right!” cried the doctor. “I see you are teachable. You were going to say ‘all right.’”
“You told me not to.”
“I did; and I’m very pleased to find you did not do it.”
“I say, shall I have to clean the knives?”
“No, no, no.”
“Nor yet the boots and shoes?”
“No, boy; no.”
“I shall have to fetch the water then, shan’t I?”
“My good boy, nothing of the kind. You are going to live with us, and you are my adopted son,” said the doctor rather pompously, while Helen sighed.
“Which?” queried the boy.
“Which what?” said the doctor.
“Which what you said?”
“I did not say anything, sir.”
“Oh my! what a story!” cried the boy, appealing to Helen. “Didn’t you hear him say I was to be his something son?”
“Adopted son,” said the doctor severely; “and, look here, you must not speak to me in that way.”
“All—” Dexter checked himself again, and he only stared.
“Now, you understand,” said the doctor, after a few minutes’ hesitation; “you are to be here like my son, and you may call me—yes, father, or papa.”
“How rum!” said the boy, showing his white teeth with a remarkable want of reverence. “I say,” he added, turning to Helen; “what am I to call you!”
Helen turned to her father for instructions, her brow wrinkling from amusement and vexation.
“Helen,” said the doctor, in a decided tone. “We must have no half measures, my dear; I mean to carry out my plan in its entirety.”
“Very well, papa,” said Helen quietly; and then to herself, “It is only for a few days.”
“Now, then,” said the doctor, “clothes. Ring that bell, Dexter.”
The boy ran so eagerly to the bell that he knocked over a light chair, and left it on the floor till he had rung.
“Oh, I say,” he exclaimed; “they go over a deal easier than our forms.”
“Never mind the forms now, Dexter. I want you to forget all about the old school.”
“Forget it?” said the boy, with his white forehead puckering up.
“Yes, and all belonging to it. You are now going to be my son.”
“But I shall want to go and see the boys sometimes.”
“No, sir; you will not.”
“But I must go and see Mother Curdley.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor. “Well, we shall see. Perhaps she will be allowed to come and see you.”
“Hooray!” cried the boy excitedly; and turning to Helen he obtained possession of her hand. “I say, save her a bit of that cake.”
“She shall have some cake, Dexter,” said Helen kindly, for she could not help, in spite of her annoyance, again feeling pleased with the boy’s remembrance of others.
“And I say,” he cried, “when she does come, we’ll have a ha’porth o’ snuff screwed up in a bit o’ paper, and—has he got any gin?”
“Hush, hush!” whispered Helen.
“But she’s so fond of a drop,” said the boy earnestly.
“And now,” said the doctor; “the next thing is clothes. Ah, Maria, send Cribb to ask Mr Bleddan to come here directly.”
“Yes, sir,” said Maria; and after a glance at the boy she closed the door.
In less than a quarter of an hour Mr Bleddan, the tailor of Coleby, was there; and Dexter stood up feeling tickled and amused at being measured for some new clothes which the tailor said should be ready in a week.
“A week!” said the doctor; “but what am I to do now? The boy can’t go like that.”
“Ready-made, sir? I’ve plenty of new and fashionable suits exactly his size.”
“Bring some,” said the doctor laconically; “and shirts and stockings and boots. Everything he wants. Do you understand!”
Mr Bleddan perfectly understood, and Dexter stood with his eyes sparkling as he heard the list of upper and under garments, boots, caps, everything which the tailor and clothier considered necessary.
The moment the man had gone, Dexter made a dash to recommence his Ixion-like triumphal dance, but this time Helen caught his hand and stopped him.
“No, no, not here,” she said quietly; and not in the least abashed, but in the most obedient way, the boy submitted.
“It was because I was so jolly glad: that’s all.”
“Hah!” said the doctor, smiling. “Now, I like that, Helen. Work with me, and all that roughness will soon pass away.”
“I say, will that chap be long?” cried Dexter, running to the window and looking out. “Am I to have all those things for my own self, and may I wear ’em directly?”
“Look here, my lad; you shall have everything that’s right and proper for you, if you are a good boy.”
“Oh, I’ll be a good boy—least I’ll try to be. Shall you give me the cane if I ain’t?”
“I—er—I don’t quite know,” said the doctor. “I hope you will not require it.”
“Mr Sibery said I did, and he never knew a boy who wanted it worse, but it didn’t do me no good at all.”
“Well, never mind that now,” said the doctor. “You will have to be very good, and never want the cane. You must learn to be a young gentleman.”
“Young gentleman?” said Dexter, holding his head on one side like a bird. “One of them who wears black jackets, and turn-down collars, and tall hats, and plays at cricket all day? I shall like that.”
“Humph! Something else but play cricket, I hope,” said the doctor quietly. “Helen, my dear, I shall begin to make notes at once for my book, so you can take Dexter in hand, and try how he can read.”
The doctor brought out a pocket-book and pencil, and Helen, after a moment’s thought, went to a glass case, and took down an old gift-book presented to her when she was a little girl.
“Come here, Dexter,” she said, “and let me hear you read.”
The boy flushed with pleasure.
“Yes,” he said. “I should like to read to you. May I kneel down and have the book on your knees!”
“Yes, if you like,” said Helen, who felt that the boy was gaining upon her more and more: for, in spite of his coarseness, there was a frank, merry, innocent undercurrent that, she felt, might be brought to the surface, strengthened and utilised to drive the roughness away.
“Read here!” said the boy, opening the book at random. “Oh, here’s a picture. What are these girls doing?”
“Leave the pictures till afterwards. Go on reading now.”
“Here?”
“Yes; at the beginning of that chapter.”
“I shall have to read it all, as there’s no other boy here. We always stand up in a class at the House, and one boy reads one bit, and another boy goes on next, and then you’re always losing your place, because it’s such a long time before it comes round to your turn, and then old Sibery gives you the cane.”
“Yes, yes; but go on,” said Helen, with a feeling of despair concerning her father’sprotégé.
Dexter began to read in a forced, unnatural voice, with a high-pitched unpleasant twang, and regardless of sense or stops—merely uttering the words one after the other, and making them all of the same value.
At the end of the second line Helen’s face was a study. At the end of the fourth the doctor roared out—
“Stop! I cannot stand any more. Saw-sharpening or bag-pipes would be pleasant symphonies in comparison.”
At that moment Maria entered.
“Lunch is on the table, if you please, sir.”
“Ah, yes, lunch,” said the doctor. “Did you put a knife and fork for Master Dexter?”
“For who, sir!” said Maria, staring.
“For Master Dexter here,” said the doctor sharply. “Go and put them directly.”
Maria ran down to her little pantry, and then attacked Mrs Millett.
“Master’s going mad, I think,” she said. “Why, he’s actually going to have that boy at the table to lunch.”
“Never!”
“It’s a fact,” cried Maria; “and I’ve come down for more knives and forks.”
“And you’d better make haste and get ’em, then,” said the housekeeper; “master’s master, and he always will have his way.”
Maria did make haste, and to her wonder and disgust Dexter was seated at the doctor’s table in his workhouse clothes, gazing wonderingly round at everything: the plate, cruets, and sparkling glass taking up so much of his attention that for the moment he forgot the viands.
The sight of a hot leg of lamb, however, when the cover was removed, made him seize his knife and fork, and begin tapping with the handles on either side of his plate.
“Errum!” coughed the doctor. “Put that knife and fork down, Dexter, and wait.”
The boy’s hands went behind him directly, and there was silence till Maria had left the room, when the doctor began to carve, and turned to Helen—
“May I give you some lamb, my dear?”
“There, I knowed it was lamb,” cried Dexter excitedly, “’cause it was so little. We never had no lamb at the House.”
“Hush!” said the doctor quietly. “You must not talk like that.”
“All right.”
“Nor yet like that, Dexter. Now, then, may I send you some lamb!”
“May I say anything?” said the boy so earnestly that Helen could not contain her mirth, and the boy smiled pleasantly again.
“Of course you may, my boy,” said the doctor. “Answer when you are spoken to, and try and be polite.”
“Yes, sir, I will; I’ll try so hard.”
“Then may I send you some lamb!”
“Yes; twice as much as you give her. It does smell nice.”
The doctor frowned a little, and then helped the boy pretty liberally.
“Oh, I say! Just look at the gravy,” he cried. “Have you got plenty, Miss!”
“Oh yes, Dexter,” said Helen. “May I—”
“Don’t give it all to me, Mister,” cried the boy. “Keep some for yourself. I hate a pig.”
“Errum!” coughed the doctor, frowning. “Miss Grayson was going to ask if you would take some vegetables!”
“What? taters? No thankye, we got plenty o’ them at the House,” cried the boy; and he began cutting and devouring the lamb at a furious rate.
“Gently, gently!” cried the doctor. “You have neither bread nor salt.”
“Get’s plenty o’ them at the House,” cried the boy, with his mouth full; “and you’d better look sharp, too. The bell’ll ring directly, and we shall have to—no it won’t ring here, will it!” he said, looking from one to another.
“No, sir,” said the doctor sternly; “and you must not eat like that. Watch how Miss Grayson eats her lunch, and try and imitate her.”
The boy gave the doctor a sharp glance, and then, in a very praiseworthy manner, tried to partake of the savoury joint in a decent way.
But it was hard work for him. The well-cooked succulent meat was so toothsome that he longed to get to the end of it; and whenever he was not watching the doctor and his daughter he kept glancing at the dish, wondering whether he would be asked to have any more.
“What’s that rum-looking stuff?” he said, as the doctor helped himself from a small tureen.
“Mint sauce, sir. Will you have some?”
“I don’t know. Let’s taste it.”
The little sauce tureen was passed to him, and he raised the silver ladle, but instead of emptying it upon his plate he raised it to his lips, and drank with a loud, unpleasant noise, suggestive of the wordsoup.
The doctor was going to utter a reproof, but the sight of Helen’s mirth checked him, and he laughed heartily as he saw the boy’s face full of disgust.
“I don’t like that,” he said, pushing the tureen away. “It ain’t good.”
“But you should—”
“Don’t correct him now, papa; you will spoil the poor boy’s dinner,” remonstrated Helen.
“He said it was lunch,” said Dexter.
“Your dinner, sir, and our lunch,” said the doctor. “There, try and behave as we do at the table, and keep your elbows off the cloth.”
Dexter obeyed so quickly that he knocked a glass from the table, and on leaving his seat to pick it up he found that the foot was broken off.
The doctor started, and uttered a sharp ejaculation.
In an instant the boy shrank away into a corner, sobbing wildly.
“I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it, sir. Don’t beat me, please. Don’t beat me this time. I’ll never do so any more.”
“Bless my soul!” cried the doctor, jumping up hastily; and the boy uttered a wild cry, full of fear, and would have dashed out of the open window into the garden had not Helen caught him, the tears in her eyes, and her heart moved to pity as she read the boy’s agony of spirit. In fact that one cry for mercy had done more for Dexter’s future at the doctor’s than a month’s attempts at orderly conduct.
“Hush, hush!” said Helen gently, as she took his hands; and, with a look of horror in his eyes, the boy clung to her.
“I don’t mind the cane sometimes,” he whispered, “but don’t let him beat me very much.”
“Nonsense! nonsense!” said the doctor rather huskily. “I was not going to beat you.”
“Please, sir, you looked as if you was,” sobbed the boy.
“I only looked a little cross, because you were clumsy and broke that glass. But it was an accident.”
“Yes, it was; it was,” cried the boy, in a voice full of pleading, for the breakage had brought up the memory of an ugly day in his young career. “I wouldn’t ha’ done it, was it ever so; it’s true as goodness I wouldn’t.”
“No, no, Maria, not yet,” cried Helen hastily, as the door was opened. “We will ring.”
Maria walked out again, and the boy clung to Helen as he sobbed.
“There, there,” she said. “Papa is not cross. You broke the glass, and you have apologised. Come: sit down again.”
If some one had told Helen Grayson two hours before that she would have done such a thing, she would have smiled incredulously, but somehow she felt moved to pity just then, and leading the boy back to his chair, she bent down and kissed his forehead.
In a moment Dexter’s arms were about her neck, and he was clinging to her with passionate energy, sobbing now wildly, while the doctor got up and walked to the window for a few moments.
“There, there,” said Helen gently, as she pressed the boy down into his seat, and kissed him once again, after seeing that her father’s back was turned. “That’s all over now. Come, papa.”
The doctor came back, and as he was passing the back of the boy’s chair, he raised his hand quickly, intending to pat him on the head.
The boy flinched like a frightened animal anticipating a blow.
“Why, bless my soul, Dexter! this will not do,” he said huskily. “Here, give me your hand. There, there, my dear boy, you and I are to be the best of friends. Why, my dear Helen,” he added in French, “they must have been terribly severe, for the little fellow to shrink like this.”
The boy still sobbed as he laid his hand in the doctor’s, and then the meal was resumed; but Dexter’s appetite was gone. He could not finish the lamb, and it was only with difficulty that he managed a little rhubarb tart and custard.
“Why, what are you thinking about, Dexter!” said Helen after the lunch; and somehow her tone of voice seemed to indicate that she had forgotten all about the workhouse clothes.
“Will he send me back to the House?” the boy whispered hoarsely, but the doctor heard.
“No, no,” he said quickly; and the boy seemed relieved.
That night about eleven, as she went up to bed, Helen Grayson went softly into a little white bedroom, where the boy’s pale face lay in the full moonlight, and something sparkled.
“Poor child!” she said, in a voice full of pity; “he has been crying.”
She was quite right, and as she bent over him, her presence must have influenced his dreams, for he uttered a low, soft sigh, and then smiled, while, forgetting everything now but the fact that this poor little waif of humanity had been stranded, as it were, at their home, she bent over him and kissed him.
Then she started, for she became aware of the fact that her father was at the door.
The next moment she was in his arms.
“Bless you, my darling!” he said. “This is like you. I took this up as a whim as well as a stubborn belief; but somehow that poor little ignorant fellow, with his rough ways, seems to be rousing warmer feelings towards him, and, please God, we’ll make a man of him of whom we shall not be ashamed.”
Poor Dexter had cried himself to sleep, feeling in his ignorant fashion that he had disgraced himself, and that the two harsh rulers were quite right,—that he was as bad as ever he could be; but circumstances were running in a way he little thought.
Chapter Seven.Taming the Wild.“Ah!” said the doctor, laying down his pen and rubbing his hands. “That’s better;” and he took off his spectacles, made his grey hair stand up all over his head like tongues of silver fire, and looked Dexter over from top to toe.Thanks to Helen’s supervision, the boy looked very creditable. His hair was of course “cut almost to the bone,” and his face had still the Union look—pale and saddened, but he was dressed in a neat suit which fitted him, and his turn-down collar and black tie seemed to give his well-cut features quite a different air.“What did I say, Helen!” said the doctor, with a chuckle. “You see what we have done already. Well, sir, how do you feel now!”“Not very jolly,” said the boy, with a writhe.“Hem!” coughed the doctor; “not very comfortable you mean!”“Yes, that’s it,” said Dexter. “Boots hurts my feet, and when the trousers ain’t rubbin’ the skin o’ my legs, this here collar feels as if it would saw my head off.”“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor stiffly. “You had better put on the old things again.”“Eh? No, thankye,” cried Dexter eagerly. “I like these here ever so much. Please may I keep ’em!”“Of course,” said the doctor; “and take care of them, like a good boy.”“Yes. I’m going to be a very good boy now, sir. She says I am to.”He nodded his head in the direction of Helen, and stood upon one leg to ease the foot which the shoe pinched.“That’s right, but don’t sayshe. You must look upon Miss Grayson now as if she were your sister.”“Yes, that I will,” said the boy warmly.Helen flushed a little at her father’s words, and a serious look came into her sweet face; but at that moment she felt Dexter steal his hand into hers, and then it was lifted and held against the boy’s cheek, as, in feline fashion, he rubbed his face against it, and a smile came into her eyes again, as she laid the hand at liberty upon the closely cropped head.“I say, ain’t she pretty, and don’t she look nice?” said Dexter suddenly; and his free and easy way made the doctor frown: but he looked at the boy’s appearance, and in the belief that he would soon change the manners to match, he nodded, and said, “Yes.”Helen looked at her father, as if asking him what next, but the doctor joined his finger-tips and frowned, as if thinking deeply.“Dexter and I have been filling his drawers with his new clothes and linen,” she said.“Yes; such a lot of things,” cried the boy; “and is that always to be my bedroom?”“Yes; that’s to be your room,” said the doctor.“And I’ve got three pairs of boots. I mean two pairs of boots, and one pair of shoes,” cried Dexter. “One pair on, and two in the bedroom; and I shall get up at six o’clock every morning, and clean ’em, and I’ll clean yours too.”“Hem!” coughed the doctor. “No, my boy, your boots will be cleaned for you, and you will not have to dirty your hands now.”The boy stared wonderingly, as the doctor enunciated a matter which was beyond his grasp. But all the time his eyes were as busy as those of a monkey, and wandering all over the study, and taking in everything he saw.“May I leave Dexter with you now!” said Helen, “as I have a few little matters to see to.”“Yes, yes; of course, my dear. We are beginning capitally. Dexter, my boy; you can sit down on that chair, and amuse yourself with a book, while I go on writing.”The boy looked at the chair, then at the doctor, and then at Helen.“I say, mayn’t I go with you?” he said.“Not now, Dexter, I am going to be very busy. By and by I will take you for a walk.”Helen nodded, and left the room.“You’ll find some books on that shelf,” said the doctor kindly; and he turned once more to his writing, while Dexter went to the bookcase, and, after taking down one or two works, found a large quarto containing pictures.He returned to the chair the doctor had pointed out, opened the book upon his knees, turned over a few leaves, and then raised his eyes to have a good long wondering stare at the doctor, as he sat frowning there very severely, and in the midst of a great deal of deep thought put down a sentence now and again.Dexter’s eyes wandered from the doctor to a dark-looking bust upon the top of a book-shelf. From thence to a brown bust on the opposite shelf, at which he laughed, for though it was meant for Cicero, it put him greatly in mind of Mr Sibery, and he then fell a-wondering what the boys were doing at the workhouse school.Just then the black marble timepiece on the shelf chimed four quarters, and struck eleven.“No matter what may be the descent,” wrote the doctor, “the human frame is composed of the same element.”“I say,” cried Dexter loudly.“Eh? Yes?” said the doctor, looking up.“What time are you going to have dinner!”“Dinner? One o’clock, sir. Why, it’s not long since you had breakfast.”“Seems a long time.”“Go on looking at your book.”Dexter obeyed, and the doctor went on writing, and became very interested in his work.So did not the boy, who yawned, fidgeted in his seat, rubbed his neck impatiently, and then bent down and tried to ease his boot, which evidently caused him pain.There was a pause during which Dexter closed the book and fidgeted about; now one leg went out, now the other. Then his arms moved about as if so full of life and energy that they must keep on the jerk.There was another yawn, but the doctor did not hear it, he was too much intent upon the chapter he was writing. Then a happy thought occurred to Dexter, and he raised the heavy quarto book he had upon his knees, placed it upon his head, and balanced it horizontally.That was too easy, there was no fun or excitement in the feat, so he placed it edgewise.That was better, but very easy—both topwise and bottomwise. Harder when tried with the front edges upon his crown, for the big book demonstrated a desire to open.But he dodged that, and felt happier.He glanced at the doctor, and smiled at his profile, for in his intentness the writer’s thick bottom lip protruded far beyond the upper, and seemed to Dexter as if trying to reach the tip of his nose.What should he do next?Could he balance that book on its back?Dexter held it between his hands and cogitated. The back was round, therefore the feat would be more difficult, and all the more enjoyable, but would the book keep shut?He determined to try.Up went the book, his hands on either side keeping it close. Then there was a little scheming to get it exactly in equilibrium; this was attained, and as the boy sat there stiff-necked and rigid of spine, with his eyes turned upwards, there was nothing left to do now but to remove his hands.This he proceeded to do by slow degrees, a finger at a time, till the heavy work was supported only by the left and right forefingers, the rounded back exactly on the highest point of his cranium.“All right,” said Dexter to himself, supremely happy in his success, and with a quick movement he let his hands drop to his lap.For one solitary moment the great quarto volume remained balanced exactly; then, as a matter of course, it opened all at once.Flip! flop! bang!The book had given him two boxes on the sides of the head, and then, consequent upon his sudden effort to save it, made a leap, and came heavily upon the floor.Dexter’s face was scarlet as he dropped upon his knees to pick it up, and found the doctor gazing at him, or, as in his own mind he put it, threatening a similar caning to that which Mr Sibery gave him a year before, when he dropped the big Bible on the schoolroom floor.“Be careful, my boy, be careful,” said the doctor dreamily, for he was half lost in thought. “That damages the bindings. Take a smaller book.”Dexter felt better, and hastily replaced the work on the shelf, taking one of a smaller size, and returning to his seat to bend down and thrust a finger inside his boot.“How they do hurt!” he thought to himself; and he made a sudden movement.Then he checked himself.No; ’twas a pity. They were so new, and looked so nice.Yes, he would: they hurt so terribly; and, stooping down, he rapidly unlaced the new boots, and pushed them off, smiling with gratification at the relief.Then he had another good look round for something to amuse himself with, yawned, glanced at the doctor, dropped down on hands and knees, went softly to the other side of the centre table, and began to creep about with the agility of a quadruped or one of the monkey tribe.This was delightful, and the satisfied look on the boy’s face was a study, till happening to raise his eyes, he saw that the doctor had risen, and was leaning over the writing-table, gazing down at him with a countenance full of wonder and astonishment combined.“What are you doing, sir?” said the doctor sternly. “Have you lost something?”Dexter might have said, “Yes, a button—a marble;” but he did not; he only rose slowly, and his late quadrupedal aspect was emphasised by a sheepish look.“Don’t do that on the carpet, sir. You’ll wear out the knees of your trousers. Why, where are your boots?”“On that chair, sir,” said Dexter confusedly.“Then put them on again, and get another book.”Dexter put on his boots slowly, laced them up, and then fetched himself another book.He returned to his seat, yawning, and glanced at the doctor again.Booz, booz, booz, boom—’m—’m.A bluebottle had flown in through the open window, bringing with it the suggestion of warm sunshine, fields, gardens, flowers, and the blue sky and waving trees.“Booz!” said the bluebottle, and it dashed away, leaving a profound silence, broken by the scratching of the doctor’s pen.“I say,” cried Dexter excitedly; “is that your garden?”“Yes, my boy, yes,” said the doctor, without looking up from his writing.“May I go out in it?”“Certainly, my boy. Yes,” said the doctor, without looking up, though there was the quick sound of footsteps, and, with a bound, Dexter was through the open French window, and out upon the lawn.The doctor did not heed the lapse of time, for he was intent upon his writing, and an hour had passed when the door opened and Helen returned.“Now I am at liberty, papa,” she said; “and—where is Dexter?”“Eh? The boy? Bless me, I thought he was here!”Smash! Tinkle!The sound of breaking glass, and the doctor leaped to his feet, just as a loud gruff voice sounded—“Here, you just come down.”“Copestake!” cried the doctor. “Why, what is the matter out there!”
“Ah!” said the doctor, laying down his pen and rubbing his hands. “That’s better;” and he took off his spectacles, made his grey hair stand up all over his head like tongues of silver fire, and looked Dexter over from top to toe.
Thanks to Helen’s supervision, the boy looked very creditable. His hair was of course “cut almost to the bone,” and his face had still the Union look—pale and saddened, but he was dressed in a neat suit which fitted him, and his turn-down collar and black tie seemed to give his well-cut features quite a different air.
“What did I say, Helen!” said the doctor, with a chuckle. “You see what we have done already. Well, sir, how do you feel now!”
“Not very jolly,” said the boy, with a writhe.
“Hem!” coughed the doctor; “not very comfortable you mean!”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Dexter. “Boots hurts my feet, and when the trousers ain’t rubbin’ the skin o’ my legs, this here collar feels as if it would saw my head off.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor stiffly. “You had better put on the old things again.”
“Eh? No, thankye,” cried Dexter eagerly. “I like these here ever so much. Please may I keep ’em!”
“Of course,” said the doctor; “and take care of them, like a good boy.”
“Yes. I’m going to be a very good boy now, sir. She says I am to.”
He nodded his head in the direction of Helen, and stood upon one leg to ease the foot which the shoe pinched.
“That’s right, but don’t sayshe. You must look upon Miss Grayson now as if she were your sister.”
“Yes, that I will,” said the boy warmly.
Helen flushed a little at her father’s words, and a serious look came into her sweet face; but at that moment she felt Dexter steal his hand into hers, and then it was lifted and held against the boy’s cheek, as, in feline fashion, he rubbed his face against it, and a smile came into her eyes again, as she laid the hand at liberty upon the closely cropped head.
“I say, ain’t she pretty, and don’t she look nice?” said Dexter suddenly; and his free and easy way made the doctor frown: but he looked at the boy’s appearance, and in the belief that he would soon change the manners to match, he nodded, and said, “Yes.”
Helen looked at her father, as if asking him what next, but the doctor joined his finger-tips and frowned, as if thinking deeply.
“Dexter and I have been filling his drawers with his new clothes and linen,” she said.
“Yes; such a lot of things,” cried the boy; “and is that always to be my bedroom?”
“Yes; that’s to be your room,” said the doctor.
“And I’ve got three pairs of boots. I mean two pairs of boots, and one pair of shoes,” cried Dexter. “One pair on, and two in the bedroom; and I shall get up at six o’clock every morning, and clean ’em, and I’ll clean yours too.”
“Hem!” coughed the doctor. “No, my boy, your boots will be cleaned for you, and you will not have to dirty your hands now.”
The boy stared wonderingly, as the doctor enunciated a matter which was beyond his grasp. But all the time his eyes were as busy as those of a monkey, and wandering all over the study, and taking in everything he saw.
“May I leave Dexter with you now!” said Helen, “as I have a few little matters to see to.”
“Yes, yes; of course, my dear. We are beginning capitally. Dexter, my boy; you can sit down on that chair, and amuse yourself with a book, while I go on writing.”
The boy looked at the chair, then at the doctor, and then at Helen.
“I say, mayn’t I go with you?” he said.
“Not now, Dexter, I am going to be very busy. By and by I will take you for a walk.”
Helen nodded, and left the room.
“You’ll find some books on that shelf,” said the doctor kindly; and he turned once more to his writing, while Dexter went to the bookcase, and, after taking down one or two works, found a large quarto containing pictures.
He returned to the chair the doctor had pointed out, opened the book upon his knees, turned over a few leaves, and then raised his eyes to have a good long wondering stare at the doctor, as he sat frowning there very severely, and in the midst of a great deal of deep thought put down a sentence now and again.
Dexter’s eyes wandered from the doctor to a dark-looking bust upon the top of a book-shelf. From thence to a brown bust on the opposite shelf, at which he laughed, for though it was meant for Cicero, it put him greatly in mind of Mr Sibery, and he then fell a-wondering what the boys were doing at the workhouse school.
Just then the black marble timepiece on the shelf chimed four quarters, and struck eleven.
“No matter what may be the descent,” wrote the doctor, “the human frame is composed of the same element.”
“I say,” cried Dexter loudly.
“Eh? Yes?” said the doctor, looking up.
“What time are you going to have dinner!”
“Dinner? One o’clock, sir. Why, it’s not long since you had breakfast.”
“Seems a long time.”
“Go on looking at your book.”
Dexter obeyed, and the doctor went on writing, and became very interested in his work.
So did not the boy, who yawned, fidgeted in his seat, rubbed his neck impatiently, and then bent down and tried to ease his boot, which evidently caused him pain.
There was a pause during which Dexter closed the book and fidgeted about; now one leg went out, now the other. Then his arms moved about as if so full of life and energy that they must keep on the jerk.
There was another yawn, but the doctor did not hear it, he was too much intent upon the chapter he was writing. Then a happy thought occurred to Dexter, and he raised the heavy quarto book he had upon his knees, placed it upon his head, and balanced it horizontally.
That was too easy, there was no fun or excitement in the feat, so he placed it edgewise.
That was better, but very easy—both topwise and bottomwise. Harder when tried with the front edges upon his crown, for the big book demonstrated a desire to open.
But he dodged that, and felt happier.
He glanced at the doctor, and smiled at his profile, for in his intentness the writer’s thick bottom lip protruded far beyond the upper, and seemed to Dexter as if trying to reach the tip of his nose.
What should he do next?
Could he balance that book on its back?
Dexter held it between his hands and cogitated. The back was round, therefore the feat would be more difficult, and all the more enjoyable, but would the book keep shut?
He determined to try.
Up went the book, his hands on either side keeping it close. Then there was a little scheming to get it exactly in equilibrium; this was attained, and as the boy sat there stiff-necked and rigid of spine, with his eyes turned upwards, there was nothing left to do now but to remove his hands.
This he proceeded to do by slow degrees, a finger at a time, till the heavy work was supported only by the left and right forefingers, the rounded back exactly on the highest point of his cranium.
“All right,” said Dexter to himself, supremely happy in his success, and with a quick movement he let his hands drop to his lap.
For one solitary moment the great quarto volume remained balanced exactly; then, as a matter of course, it opened all at once.
Flip! flop! bang!
The book had given him two boxes on the sides of the head, and then, consequent upon his sudden effort to save it, made a leap, and came heavily upon the floor.
Dexter’s face was scarlet as he dropped upon his knees to pick it up, and found the doctor gazing at him, or, as in his own mind he put it, threatening a similar caning to that which Mr Sibery gave him a year before, when he dropped the big Bible on the schoolroom floor.
“Be careful, my boy, be careful,” said the doctor dreamily, for he was half lost in thought. “That damages the bindings. Take a smaller book.”
Dexter felt better, and hastily replaced the work on the shelf, taking one of a smaller size, and returning to his seat to bend down and thrust a finger inside his boot.
“How they do hurt!” he thought to himself; and he made a sudden movement.
Then he checked himself.
No; ’twas a pity. They were so new, and looked so nice.
Yes, he would: they hurt so terribly; and, stooping down, he rapidly unlaced the new boots, and pushed them off, smiling with gratification at the relief.
Then he had another good look round for something to amuse himself with, yawned, glanced at the doctor, dropped down on hands and knees, went softly to the other side of the centre table, and began to creep about with the agility of a quadruped or one of the monkey tribe.
This was delightful, and the satisfied look on the boy’s face was a study, till happening to raise his eyes, he saw that the doctor had risen, and was leaning over the writing-table, gazing down at him with a countenance full of wonder and astonishment combined.
“What are you doing, sir?” said the doctor sternly. “Have you lost something?”
Dexter might have said, “Yes, a button—a marble;” but he did not; he only rose slowly, and his late quadrupedal aspect was emphasised by a sheepish look.
“Don’t do that on the carpet, sir. You’ll wear out the knees of your trousers. Why, where are your boots?”
“On that chair, sir,” said Dexter confusedly.
“Then put them on again, and get another book.”
Dexter put on his boots slowly, laced them up, and then fetched himself another book.
He returned to his seat, yawning, and glanced at the doctor again.
Booz, booz, booz, boom—’m—’m.
A bluebottle had flown in through the open window, bringing with it the suggestion of warm sunshine, fields, gardens, flowers, and the blue sky and waving trees.
“Booz!” said the bluebottle, and it dashed away, leaving a profound silence, broken by the scratching of the doctor’s pen.
“I say,” cried Dexter excitedly; “is that your garden?”
“Yes, my boy, yes,” said the doctor, without looking up from his writing.
“May I go out in it?”
“Certainly, my boy. Yes,” said the doctor, without looking up, though there was the quick sound of footsteps, and, with a bound, Dexter was through the open French window, and out upon the lawn.
The doctor did not heed the lapse of time, for he was intent upon his writing, and an hour had passed when the door opened and Helen returned.
“Now I am at liberty, papa,” she said; “and—where is Dexter?”
“Eh? The boy? Bless me, I thought he was here!”
Smash! Tinkle!
The sound of breaking glass, and the doctor leaped to his feet, just as a loud gruff voice sounded—
“Here, you just come down.”
“Copestake!” cried the doctor. “Why, what is the matter out there!”
Chapter Eight.Old Dan’l is Wroth.Mr Grayson’s was the best garden for twenty miles round.The Coleby people said so, and they ought to have known.But Dan’l Copestake said it was all nonsense. “Might be made a good garden if master wasn’t so close,” he used to say to everybody. “Wants more money spent on it, and more hands kept. How’m I to keep a place like that to rights with only two—me and a lab’rer, under me, and Peter to do the sweeping?”Keep it to rights or not, it was to Helen Grayson four acres of delight, and she was to blame for a great deal which offended Dan’l Copestake, the head-gardener.“Papa,” it would be, “did you give orders for that beautiful privet hedge to be cut down!”“Eh? no, my dear, Copestake said it kept the light off some of those young trees, and I said he might cut it down.”“Oh, do stop him,” cried Helen. “It will take years to grow up, and this past year it has been delightful, with its sweet-scented blossom and beautiful black berries.”So it was with scores of things. Helen wanted to see them growing luxuriantly, Dan’l Copestake loved to hash and chop them into miserably cramped “specimints,” as he called them, and the doctor got all the blame.But what a garden! It was full of old-fashioned flowers in great clumps, many of them growing, to Dan’l’s disgust, down among the fruit and vegetables.There were flowering shrubs and beautiful conifers, a great mulberry-tree on the mossy lawn, and a huge red brick wall all round, literally covered with trained trees, which in their seasons were masses of white bloom, or glowing with purple and golden plums, and light red, black, or yellowy pink cherries, and great fat pears, while, facing the south, there were dozens of trees of peaches, nectarines, and downy golden apricots.As to the apples, they grew by the bushel, almost by the ton; and for strawberries and the other lower fruits there was no such garden near.Then there was Helen’s conservatory, always full of sweet-scented flowers, and the vinery and pits, where the great purple and amber bunches hung and ripened, and the long green cucumber and melon came in their good time.But Dan’l grumbled, as gardeners will.“Blights is offle,” he said. “It’s the blightiest garden I ever see, and a man might spend all his life keeping the birds down with a gun.”But Dan’l did not spend any part of his life, let alone all, keeping the birds down with a gun. The doctor caught him shooting one day, and nearly shot him out of the place.“How dare you, sir?” he cried. “I will not have a single bird destroyed.”“Then you won’t get no peace, sir, nor not a bit of fruit.”“I shall have the place overrun with slugs and snails, and all kinds of injurious blight, sir, if you use that gun. No, sir, you’ll put nets over the fruit when it’s beginning to ripen. That will do.”The doctor walked away with Helen, and as soon as they were out of sight, behind the great laurustinus clump, Helen threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him for saving her pet birds.Consequently, in addition to abundance of fruit, and although it was so close in the town, there was always a chorus of song in the season; and even the nightingale came from the woodlands across the river and sang within the orchard, through which the river ran.That river alone half made the place, for it was one of those useless rivers, so commercial men called it, where the most you could do was pleasure-boating; barges only being able to ascend to Coleby Bridge, a sort of busy colony from the town, two miles nearer the sea.“Yes, sir,” Sir James Danby had been known to say, “if the river could be deepened right through the town it would be the making of the place.”“And the spoiling of my grounds,” said the doctor, “so I’m glad it runs over the solid rock.”This paradise of a garden was the one into which Dexter darted, and in which Dan’l Copestake was grumbling that morning—“Like a bear with a sore head, that’s what I say,” said Peter Cribb to the under-gardener. “Nothing never suits him.”“Yes, it do,” said Dan’l, showing a very red face over a clump of rhododendron. “Master said you was to come into the garden three days a week, and last week I only set eyes on you twice, and here’s half the week gone and you’ve only been once.”“Look here,” said Peter Cribb, a hard-looking bullet-headed man of five-and-twenty; and he leaned on his broom, and twisted one very tightly trousered leg round the other, “do you think I can sit upon the box o’ that there wagginette, drivin’ miles away, and be sweeping this here lawn same time!”“Master said as it was your dooty to be in this garden three days a week; and t’other three days you was to do your stable-work—there.”“Didn’t I go out with the carriage every day this week?”“I don’t know when you went out with the carriage, and when you didn’t,” said Dan’l; “all I know is as my lawn didn’t get swept; and how the doctor expects a garden like this here to be kept tidy without help, I should be glad to know.”“Well, you’d better go and grumble at him, and not worry me, and—pst! Lookye there.”He pointed with his broom, and both men remained paralysed at the sight which met their eyes.It was not so much from its extraordinary nature as from what Dan’l afterwards spoke of as its “imperence.” That last, he said, was what staggered him, that any human boy should, in the very middle of the day, dare to do such a thing in his garden.He saidhisgarden, for when speaking of it the doctor seemed to be only some one who was allowed to walk through it for a treat.What the two men gazed at was the figure of a boy, in shirt and trousers, going up the vinery roof, between where the early and the late houses joined and there was a sloping brick coping. From this they saw him reach the big wall against which the vinery was built, and there he sat for a few moments motionless.“Why, who is he?” said Peter, in a whisper. “He went up that vinery just like a monkey.”Peter had never seen a monkey go up the roof of a vinery, but Dan’l did not notice that.“Hold your row,” said Dan’l, in a low voice; “don’t speak, and we’ll ketch my nabs. Now we know where my peaches went last year.”“But who is he!” whispered Peter.“I don’t know, and I don’t care, but I mean to have him as sure as he’s there. Now if master hadn’t been so precious ’tickler about a gun, I could ha’ brought him down like a bird.”“Lookye there,” cried Peter. “See that?”“Oh yes, I see him,” said Dan’l, as the figure ran easily along the top of the twelve-foot wall on all-fours. “I see my gentleman. Nice little game he’s having. I’ll bet a shilling he’s about gorged with grapes, and now he’s on the look-out for something else. But let him alone; wait a bit and we’ll put salt on his tail before he can say what’s what. I knowed some grapes was a-going. I could about feel it, like.”“Well, I never!” whispered Peter, peering through the laurustinus, and watching the boy. “See that?”“Oh yes, I see him. Nice un he is.”This last was consequent upon the boy running a few yards, and then holding tightly with his hands, and kicking both legs in the air two or three times before trotting on along the wall again as easily as a tomcat.“See that?” said Peter.“Oh yes, I can see,” said Dan’l. “He’s so full o’ grapes it makes him lively,” and he stared at the boy, who had suddenly stopped, and planting his hands firmly, stood up on them, balancing himself, with his legs spread wide in the air.“He’ll break his neck, that’s what he’ll do,” said Peter.“Good job too, I says,” grumbled Dan’l. “Boys like that ought to be done away with. He’s one on ’em out o’ the town. Now look here, Peter, we’ve got to get him, that’s what we’ve got to do.”“Ah, that’s better,” said Peter, who had been nervous ever since a horse ran away with him. “I don’t like to see a boy doing dangerous things that how.”“Don’t call a thing like that a boy, do yer!” said Dan’l. “I calls it monkey rubbidge. Now you step round the house, and through the stable, and get down that side o’ the wall, and I’ll go this. Don’t you seem to see him till you hear me whistle. Then grab.”“But how am I to grab when he’s up there!” said Peter.“Ah! ’tis high up,” said Dan’l. “Wish I’d got one o’ them grappling-irons as hangs down by the bridge; I’d fetch him off pretty quick.”“Shall I get a fruit-ladder?” suggested Peter.“Nay, we don’t want no fruit-ladders,” grumbled Dan’l. “We’ll soon fetch his lordship down. Now then, you be off.”“Stop a moment,” said Peter, as he watched the boy intently. “Look at him! Well, I never did!”It was a very true remark. Peter certainly never did, and very few boys would have cunning enough to perform such a feat with so much ease. For, after running about fifty yards along the top of the wall, the little fellow turned quickly and ran back again, made offers as if he were going to leap down, and then suddenly squatted down in exact imitation of a cat, and began licking his arms, and passing them over his head.“Well, he caps me!” cried Peter. “I never see a boy do anything like that since I was at a show at Exeter, and then it was a bigger chap than him.”“Look here,” said Dan’l; “I’ve got it. You get a big strong clothes-prop, and I’ll get another, and we’ll poke him off. If he comes down your side, mind this: he’ll be like a rat, and off as quick as quick; but don’t you let him go. Drop your prop, and throw yourself on him; we’ll ketch him, and take him in to the gov’nor, and he’ll know now where the fruit goes. You couldn’t net chaps like this.”In happy ignorance of the doctor’s plans, Peter and Dan’l each provided himself with a clothes-prop, and in due time made for the appointed sides of the wall; but no sooner did the boy catch sight of his pursuers than he started off on another all-fours run; but this took him away from the house, and before he had gone far he turned and ran back.Dan’l whistled, and Peter made a poke at the runner from one side of the wall, while Dan’l made a savage poke from the other.The boy, who seemed as active as a squirrel, dodged them both, ran along toward the vinery, and as fast as the various trees would allow the two men followed.Peter was soon out of the race, for a lean-to shed on his side of the wall put a stop to further pursuit, and Dan’l, who looked as malicious as a savage after a wild beast, had the hunt all to himself.“Ah!” he shouted, as he stopped panting, “now I’ve got you, my fine fellow.”This was untrue, for he was as far off his quarry as ever, he being at the front of the vinery, and the boy on the top of the wall right at the back of the glass slope.“Now, then, none o’ yer nonsense, and down yer come.”Down the boy did not come, for he squatted there at the top, in a sitting position, with his arms round his knees, gazing coolly but watchfully at the gardener.“D’yer hear? come down!”The Yankee ’coon in the tree, when he saw the celebrated Colonel Crockett taking aim at him, and in full possession of the hunter’s reputation as a dead shot, is reported to have said, “Don’t shoot; I’ll come down;” and the boy might have said something of the kind to Dan’l Copestake. But he had no faith in the gardener, and it is expecting too much of a boy who is seated in a safe place, to conclude that he will surrender at the first summons, especially to a fierce-looking man, who is armed with a very big stick.This boy had not the least intention of giving himself up as a prisoner, and he sat and stared at Dan’l, and Dan’l stared at him.“Do you hear me?” cried Dan’l; but the boy did not move a muscle, he only stared.“Are you over there, Peter?” shouted Dan’l.“Ay! All right!”“You stop there, then, and nip him if he comes your way. I’ll get a ladder, and will soon have him down.”“All right!” came from Peter again; and the boy’s eyes watched keenly the old gardener’s movements.“Do you hear what I say!” continued Dan’l. “Am I to fetch that ladder, or will you come down without!”The boy did not move.“Let’s see: I can reach you with this here, though,” Dan’l went on. “Not going to have any more of your nonsense, my fine fellow, so now then.”The boy’s eyes flashed as he saw the gardener come close up to the foot of the glass slope, and reach toward him with the long ash clothes-prop; but he measured mentally the length of that prop, and sat still, for, as he had quickly concluded, the gardener could not, even with his arm fully extended, reach to within some feet of where he sat.Dan’l pushed and poked about, and nearly broke a pane of glass, but the boy did not stir.“Oh, very well: only you’d better get down; you’ll have it all the worse if I do fetch that ladder.”Still the boy made no sign. He merely glanced to right and left, and could have dashed along the wall at once, but that would have taken him down the garden, toward the river, and that was the direction in which he did not want to go.To his left there was a portion of the house, the wall rising a good height, so that there was no escape in that direction. His way was either by the garden wall, or else down the slope of the vinery, as he had gone up.But, like a lion in his path, there at the foot of this slope stood Dan’l, with the great clothes-prop, and the boy, concluding that he was best where he was, sat and stared at the gardener, and waited.“Oh, very well then, my fine fellow: ladder it is,” cried Dan’l; and, sticking the prop into the ground with a savage dig, he turned and ran off.It was only a feint, and he turned sharply at the end of a dozen steps, to find, as he expected, that the boy had moved, and begun to descend.Dan’l ran back, and the boy slipped into his former place, and sat like a monument of stone.“Oh, that’s your game, is it!” said Dan’l. “But it won’t do, my fine fellow. Now, are you coming down?”No reply.Dan’l reflected.If he went off to fetch the ladder from the stable-yard, the boy would slide down the top of the vinery and escape.That would not do.If he called to Peter to fetch the ladder, the boy would wait till the groom was gone, and slip over the wall, drop, and escape that way.That would not do either.Hah! There was the labourer. He could call him.It was past twelve, and he had gone to his dinner, Dan’l, like Peter, taking his at the more aristocratic hour of one.Dan’l was in a fix. He meant to have that boy, and make an example of him, but a great difficulty stared him in the face.There was no one to call, unless he waited till the doctor came. If the doctor came, he would perhaps take a lenient view of the matter, and let the boy go, and, unless Dan’l could first give the prisoner a sound thrashing with a hazel stick, one of a bundle which he had in his tool-shed, all his trouble would have been in vain.So he would not call the doctor.He made two or three more feints of going, and each time the boy began to descend, but only to dart back as the gardener turned.“Oh, that’s your game, is it!” said Dan’l. “Very well; come down, but you can’t get out of the garden if you do.”The next time, after a few minutes’ thought, Dan’l turned and ran as hard as he could, with every appearance now of going right off for the ladder. But he had made his plans with no little calculation of probabilities; and his idea was now to go right on till he had given the boy time to descend, and make for one of the entrances, when he meant to return, run him down, and seize him, before the young scamp, as he called him, had time to clamber up any other place.Dan’l ran on, and the boy watched him; and as soon as the gardener showed by his movements that he was evidently going away, began to descend.Hardly, however, had he reached the ground than Dan’l turned, saw him, and made a fresh dash to capture him.If the gardener had waited a couple more minutes he would have had a better chance. As it was, the boy had time to reach the dividing wall of the vinery wall again, but just as he was scrambling up, Dan’l was upon him, and was in the act of grasping one arm, when it was snatched away.In the effort the boy lost his composure, and the steady easy-going confidence which had enabled him to trot along with such facility; and the consequence was that as he made a final bound to reach the back wall his right foot slipped, went through a pane of glass, and as this startled him more, he made another ill-judged attempt, and, slipping, went through the top of the vinery, only saving himself from dropping down inside by spreading his arms across the rafters, and hanging, caught as if in a trap.“Here, just you come down!”Directly after the doctor appeared in the study window, and, closely followed by Helen, hurried toward the front of the vinery, where the gardener stood.
Mr Grayson’s was the best garden for twenty miles round.
The Coleby people said so, and they ought to have known.
But Dan’l Copestake said it was all nonsense. “Might be made a good garden if master wasn’t so close,” he used to say to everybody. “Wants more money spent on it, and more hands kept. How’m I to keep a place like that to rights with only two—me and a lab’rer, under me, and Peter to do the sweeping?”
Keep it to rights or not, it was to Helen Grayson four acres of delight, and she was to blame for a great deal which offended Dan’l Copestake, the head-gardener.
“Papa,” it would be, “did you give orders for that beautiful privet hedge to be cut down!”
“Eh? no, my dear, Copestake said it kept the light off some of those young trees, and I said he might cut it down.”
“Oh, do stop him,” cried Helen. “It will take years to grow up, and this past year it has been delightful, with its sweet-scented blossom and beautiful black berries.”
So it was with scores of things. Helen wanted to see them growing luxuriantly, Dan’l Copestake loved to hash and chop them into miserably cramped “specimints,” as he called them, and the doctor got all the blame.
But what a garden! It was full of old-fashioned flowers in great clumps, many of them growing, to Dan’l’s disgust, down among the fruit and vegetables.
There were flowering shrubs and beautiful conifers, a great mulberry-tree on the mossy lawn, and a huge red brick wall all round, literally covered with trained trees, which in their seasons were masses of white bloom, or glowing with purple and golden plums, and light red, black, or yellowy pink cherries, and great fat pears, while, facing the south, there were dozens of trees of peaches, nectarines, and downy golden apricots.
As to the apples, they grew by the bushel, almost by the ton; and for strawberries and the other lower fruits there was no such garden near.
Then there was Helen’s conservatory, always full of sweet-scented flowers, and the vinery and pits, where the great purple and amber bunches hung and ripened, and the long green cucumber and melon came in their good time.
But Dan’l grumbled, as gardeners will.
“Blights is offle,” he said. “It’s the blightiest garden I ever see, and a man might spend all his life keeping the birds down with a gun.”
But Dan’l did not spend any part of his life, let alone all, keeping the birds down with a gun. The doctor caught him shooting one day, and nearly shot him out of the place.
“How dare you, sir?” he cried. “I will not have a single bird destroyed.”
“Then you won’t get no peace, sir, nor not a bit of fruit.”
“I shall have the place overrun with slugs and snails, and all kinds of injurious blight, sir, if you use that gun. No, sir, you’ll put nets over the fruit when it’s beginning to ripen. That will do.”
The doctor walked away with Helen, and as soon as they were out of sight, behind the great laurustinus clump, Helen threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him for saving her pet birds.
Consequently, in addition to abundance of fruit, and although it was so close in the town, there was always a chorus of song in the season; and even the nightingale came from the woodlands across the river and sang within the orchard, through which the river ran.
That river alone half made the place, for it was one of those useless rivers, so commercial men called it, where the most you could do was pleasure-boating; barges only being able to ascend to Coleby Bridge, a sort of busy colony from the town, two miles nearer the sea.
“Yes, sir,” Sir James Danby had been known to say, “if the river could be deepened right through the town it would be the making of the place.”
“And the spoiling of my grounds,” said the doctor, “so I’m glad it runs over the solid rock.”
This paradise of a garden was the one into which Dexter darted, and in which Dan’l Copestake was grumbling that morning—
“Like a bear with a sore head, that’s what I say,” said Peter Cribb to the under-gardener. “Nothing never suits him.”
“Yes, it do,” said Dan’l, showing a very red face over a clump of rhododendron. “Master said you was to come into the garden three days a week, and last week I only set eyes on you twice, and here’s half the week gone and you’ve only been once.”
“Look here,” said Peter Cribb, a hard-looking bullet-headed man of five-and-twenty; and he leaned on his broom, and twisted one very tightly trousered leg round the other, “do you think I can sit upon the box o’ that there wagginette, drivin’ miles away, and be sweeping this here lawn same time!”
“Master said as it was your dooty to be in this garden three days a week; and t’other three days you was to do your stable-work—there.”
“Didn’t I go out with the carriage every day this week?”
“I don’t know when you went out with the carriage, and when you didn’t,” said Dan’l; “all I know is as my lawn didn’t get swept; and how the doctor expects a garden like this here to be kept tidy without help, I should be glad to know.”
“Well, you’d better go and grumble at him, and not worry me, and—pst! Lookye there.”
He pointed with his broom, and both men remained paralysed at the sight which met their eyes.
It was not so much from its extraordinary nature as from what Dan’l afterwards spoke of as its “imperence.” That last, he said, was what staggered him, that any human boy should, in the very middle of the day, dare to do such a thing in his garden.
He saidhisgarden, for when speaking of it the doctor seemed to be only some one who was allowed to walk through it for a treat.
What the two men gazed at was the figure of a boy, in shirt and trousers, going up the vinery roof, between where the early and the late houses joined and there was a sloping brick coping. From this they saw him reach the big wall against which the vinery was built, and there he sat for a few moments motionless.
“Why, who is he?” said Peter, in a whisper. “He went up that vinery just like a monkey.”
Peter had never seen a monkey go up the roof of a vinery, but Dan’l did not notice that.
“Hold your row,” said Dan’l, in a low voice; “don’t speak, and we’ll ketch my nabs. Now we know where my peaches went last year.”
“But who is he!” whispered Peter.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care, but I mean to have him as sure as he’s there. Now if master hadn’t been so precious ’tickler about a gun, I could ha’ brought him down like a bird.”
“Lookye there,” cried Peter. “See that?”
“Oh yes, I see him,” said Dan’l, as the figure ran easily along the top of the twelve-foot wall on all-fours. “I see my gentleman. Nice little game he’s having. I’ll bet a shilling he’s about gorged with grapes, and now he’s on the look-out for something else. But let him alone; wait a bit and we’ll put salt on his tail before he can say what’s what. I knowed some grapes was a-going. I could about feel it, like.”
“Well, I never!” whispered Peter, peering through the laurustinus, and watching the boy. “See that?”
“Oh yes, I see him. Nice un he is.”
This last was consequent upon the boy running a few yards, and then holding tightly with his hands, and kicking both legs in the air two or three times before trotting on along the wall again as easily as a tomcat.
“See that?” said Peter.
“Oh yes, I can see,” said Dan’l. “He’s so full o’ grapes it makes him lively,” and he stared at the boy, who had suddenly stopped, and planting his hands firmly, stood up on them, balancing himself, with his legs spread wide in the air.
“He’ll break his neck, that’s what he’ll do,” said Peter.
“Good job too, I says,” grumbled Dan’l. “Boys like that ought to be done away with. He’s one on ’em out o’ the town. Now look here, Peter, we’ve got to get him, that’s what we’ve got to do.”
“Ah, that’s better,” said Peter, who had been nervous ever since a horse ran away with him. “I don’t like to see a boy doing dangerous things that how.”
“Don’t call a thing like that a boy, do yer!” said Dan’l. “I calls it monkey rubbidge. Now you step round the house, and through the stable, and get down that side o’ the wall, and I’ll go this. Don’t you seem to see him till you hear me whistle. Then grab.”
“But how am I to grab when he’s up there!” said Peter.
“Ah! ’tis high up,” said Dan’l. “Wish I’d got one o’ them grappling-irons as hangs down by the bridge; I’d fetch him off pretty quick.”
“Shall I get a fruit-ladder?” suggested Peter.
“Nay, we don’t want no fruit-ladders,” grumbled Dan’l. “We’ll soon fetch his lordship down. Now then, you be off.”
“Stop a moment,” said Peter, as he watched the boy intently. “Look at him! Well, I never did!”
It was a very true remark. Peter certainly never did, and very few boys would have cunning enough to perform such a feat with so much ease. For, after running about fifty yards along the top of the wall, the little fellow turned quickly and ran back again, made offers as if he were going to leap down, and then suddenly squatted down in exact imitation of a cat, and began licking his arms, and passing them over his head.
“Well, he caps me!” cried Peter. “I never see a boy do anything like that since I was at a show at Exeter, and then it was a bigger chap than him.”
“Look here,” said Dan’l; “I’ve got it. You get a big strong clothes-prop, and I’ll get another, and we’ll poke him off. If he comes down your side, mind this: he’ll be like a rat, and off as quick as quick; but don’t you let him go. Drop your prop, and throw yourself on him; we’ll ketch him, and take him in to the gov’nor, and he’ll know now where the fruit goes. You couldn’t net chaps like this.”
In happy ignorance of the doctor’s plans, Peter and Dan’l each provided himself with a clothes-prop, and in due time made for the appointed sides of the wall; but no sooner did the boy catch sight of his pursuers than he started off on another all-fours run; but this took him away from the house, and before he had gone far he turned and ran back.
Dan’l whistled, and Peter made a poke at the runner from one side of the wall, while Dan’l made a savage poke from the other.
The boy, who seemed as active as a squirrel, dodged them both, ran along toward the vinery, and as fast as the various trees would allow the two men followed.
Peter was soon out of the race, for a lean-to shed on his side of the wall put a stop to further pursuit, and Dan’l, who looked as malicious as a savage after a wild beast, had the hunt all to himself.
“Ah!” he shouted, as he stopped panting, “now I’ve got you, my fine fellow.”
This was untrue, for he was as far off his quarry as ever, he being at the front of the vinery, and the boy on the top of the wall right at the back of the glass slope.
“Now, then, none o’ yer nonsense, and down yer come.”
Down the boy did not come, for he squatted there at the top, in a sitting position, with his arms round his knees, gazing coolly but watchfully at the gardener.
“D’yer hear? come down!”
The Yankee ’coon in the tree, when he saw the celebrated Colonel Crockett taking aim at him, and in full possession of the hunter’s reputation as a dead shot, is reported to have said, “Don’t shoot; I’ll come down;” and the boy might have said something of the kind to Dan’l Copestake. But he had no faith in the gardener, and it is expecting too much of a boy who is seated in a safe place, to conclude that he will surrender at the first summons, especially to a fierce-looking man, who is armed with a very big stick.
This boy had not the least intention of giving himself up as a prisoner, and he sat and stared at Dan’l, and Dan’l stared at him.
“Do you hear me?” cried Dan’l; but the boy did not move a muscle, he only stared.
“Are you over there, Peter?” shouted Dan’l.
“Ay! All right!”
“You stop there, then, and nip him if he comes your way. I’ll get a ladder, and will soon have him down.”
“All right!” came from Peter again; and the boy’s eyes watched keenly the old gardener’s movements.
“Do you hear what I say!” continued Dan’l. “Am I to fetch that ladder, or will you come down without!”
The boy did not move.
“Let’s see: I can reach you with this here, though,” Dan’l went on. “Not going to have any more of your nonsense, my fine fellow, so now then.”
The boy’s eyes flashed as he saw the gardener come close up to the foot of the glass slope, and reach toward him with the long ash clothes-prop; but he measured mentally the length of that prop, and sat still, for, as he had quickly concluded, the gardener could not, even with his arm fully extended, reach to within some feet of where he sat.
Dan’l pushed and poked about, and nearly broke a pane of glass, but the boy did not stir.
“Oh, very well: only you’d better get down; you’ll have it all the worse if I do fetch that ladder.”
Still the boy made no sign. He merely glanced to right and left, and could have dashed along the wall at once, but that would have taken him down the garden, toward the river, and that was the direction in which he did not want to go.
To his left there was a portion of the house, the wall rising a good height, so that there was no escape in that direction. His way was either by the garden wall, or else down the slope of the vinery, as he had gone up.
But, like a lion in his path, there at the foot of this slope stood Dan’l, with the great clothes-prop, and the boy, concluding that he was best where he was, sat and stared at the gardener, and waited.
“Oh, very well then, my fine fellow: ladder it is,” cried Dan’l; and, sticking the prop into the ground with a savage dig, he turned and ran off.
It was only a feint, and he turned sharply at the end of a dozen steps, to find, as he expected, that the boy had moved, and begun to descend.
Dan’l ran back, and the boy slipped into his former place, and sat like a monument of stone.
“Oh, that’s your game, is it!” said Dan’l. “But it won’t do, my fine fellow. Now, are you coming down?”
No reply.
Dan’l reflected.
If he went off to fetch the ladder from the stable-yard, the boy would slide down the top of the vinery and escape.
That would not do.
If he called to Peter to fetch the ladder, the boy would wait till the groom was gone, and slip over the wall, drop, and escape that way.
That would not do either.
Hah! There was the labourer. He could call him.
It was past twelve, and he had gone to his dinner, Dan’l, like Peter, taking his at the more aristocratic hour of one.
Dan’l was in a fix. He meant to have that boy, and make an example of him, but a great difficulty stared him in the face.
There was no one to call, unless he waited till the doctor came. If the doctor came, he would perhaps take a lenient view of the matter, and let the boy go, and, unless Dan’l could first give the prisoner a sound thrashing with a hazel stick, one of a bundle which he had in his tool-shed, all his trouble would have been in vain.
So he would not call the doctor.
He made two or three more feints of going, and each time the boy began to descend, but only to dart back as the gardener turned.
“Oh, that’s your game, is it!” said Dan’l. “Very well; come down, but you can’t get out of the garden if you do.”
The next time, after a few minutes’ thought, Dan’l turned and ran as hard as he could, with every appearance now of going right off for the ladder. But he had made his plans with no little calculation of probabilities; and his idea was now to go right on till he had given the boy time to descend, and make for one of the entrances, when he meant to return, run him down, and seize him, before the young scamp, as he called him, had time to clamber up any other place.
Dan’l ran on, and the boy watched him; and as soon as the gardener showed by his movements that he was evidently going away, began to descend.
Hardly, however, had he reached the ground than Dan’l turned, saw him, and made a fresh dash to capture him.
If the gardener had waited a couple more minutes he would have had a better chance. As it was, the boy had time to reach the dividing wall of the vinery wall again, but just as he was scrambling up, Dan’l was upon him, and was in the act of grasping one arm, when it was snatched away.
In the effort the boy lost his composure, and the steady easy-going confidence which had enabled him to trot along with such facility; and the consequence was that as he made a final bound to reach the back wall his right foot slipped, went through a pane of glass, and as this startled him more, he made another ill-judged attempt, and, slipping, went through the top of the vinery, only saving himself from dropping down inside by spreading his arms across the rafters, and hanging, caught as if in a trap.
“Here, just you come down!”
Directly after the doctor appeared in the study window, and, closely followed by Helen, hurried toward the front of the vinery, where the gardener stood.