George Meredith
The Adventures of Harry Richmond. Complete
‘I say, Julia, my dear, I say, do you know…’
And Temple on the other: ‘Miss Julia, I wish you’d let me tell you—’
We longed to arouse her pity for Heriot at the moment she was admiring him, but she checked us, and as she was surrounded by ladies and gentlemen of the town, and particular friends of hers, we could not speak out. Heriot brought his bat to the booth for eighty-nine runs. His sleeve happened to be unbuttoned, and there, on his arm, was a mark of the cane.
‘Look!’ I said to Julia. But she looked at me.
‘Richie, are you ill?’
She assured me I was very pale, and I felt her trembling excessively, and her parasol was covering us.
‘Here, Roy, Temple,’ we heard Heriot call; ‘here, come here and bowl to me.’
I went and bowled till I thought my head was flying after the ball and getting knocks, it swam and throbbed so horribly.
Temple related that I fell, and was carried all the way from the cricket-field home by Heriot, who would not give me up to the usher. I was in Julia’s charge three days. Every time I spoke of her father and Heriot, she cried, ‘Oh, hush!’ and had tears on her eyelids. When I was quite strong again, I made her hear me out. She held me and rocked over me like a green tree in the wind and rain.
‘Was any name mentioned?’ she asked, with her mouth working, and to my ‘No,’ said ‘No, she knew there was none,’ and seemed to drink and choke, and was one minute calm, all but a trembling hanging underlip, next smiling on me, and next having her face carved in grimaces by the jerking little tugs of her mouth, which I disliked to see, for she would say nothing of what she thought of Heriot, and I thought to myself, though I forbore to speak unkindly, ‘It’s no use your making yourself look ugly, Julia.’ If she had talked of Heriot, I should have thought that crying persons’ kisses were agreeable.
On my return into the school, I found it in a convulsion of excitement, owing to Heriot’s sending Boddy a challenge to fight a duel with pistols. Mr. Rippenger preached a sermon to the boys concerning the unChristian spirit and hideous moral perversity of one who would even consent to fight a duel. How much more reprehensible, then, was one that could bring himself to defy a fellow-creature to mortal combat! We were not of his opinion; and as these questions are carried by majorities, we decided that Boddy was a coward, and approved the idea that Heriot would have to shoot or scourge him when the holidays came. Mr. Rippenger concluded his observations by remarking that the sharpest punishment he could inflict upon Heriot was to leave him to his own conscience; which he did for three days, and then asked him if he was in a fit state of mind to beg Mr. Boddy’s pardon publicly.
‘I’m quite prepared to tell him what I think of him publicly, sir,’ said Heriot.
A murmur of exultation passed through the school. Mr. Rippenger seized little Temple, and flogged him. Far from dreading the rod, now that Heriot and Temple had tasted it, I thought of punishment as a mad pleasure, not a bit more awful than the burning furze-bush plunged into by our fellows in a follow-my-leader scamper on the common; so I caught Temple’s hand as he went by me, and said, eagerly, ‘Shall I sing out hurrah?’
‘Bother it!’ was Temple’s answer, for he had taken a stinging dozen, and had a tender skin.
Mr. Rippenger called me up to him, to inform me, that whoever I was, and whatever I was, and I might be a little impostor foisted on his benevolence, yet he would bring me to a knowledge of myself: he gave me warning of it; and if my father objected to his method, my father must write word to that effect, and attend punctually to business duties, for Surrey House was not an almshouse, either for the sons of gentlemen of high connection, or for the sons of vagabonds. Mr. Rippenger added a spurning shove on my shoulder to his recommendation to me to resume my seat. I did not understand him at all. I was, in fact, indebted to a boy named Drew, a known sneak, for the explanation, in itself difficult to comprehend. It was, that Mr. Rippenger was losing patience because he had received no money on account of my boarding and schooling. The intelligence filled my head like the buzz of a fly, occupying my meditations without leading them anywhere. I spoke on the subject to Heriot.
‘Oh, the sordid old brute!’ said he of Mr. Rippenger. ‘How can he know the habits and feelings of gentlemen? Your father’s travelling, and can’t write, of course. My father’s in India, and I get a letter from him about once a year. We know one another, and I know he’s one of the best officers in the British army. It’s just the way with schoolmasters and tradesmen: they don’t care whether a man is doing his duty to his country; he must attend to them, settle accounts with them—hang them! I’ll send you money, dear little lad, after I’ve left.’
He dispersed my brooding fit. I was sure my father was a fountain of gold, and only happened to be travelling. Besides, Heriot’s love for Julia, whom none of us saw now, was an incessant distraction. She did not appear at prayers. She sat up in the gallery at church, hardly to be spied. A letter that Heriot flung over the gardenwall for her was returned to him, open, enclosed by post.
‘A letter for Walter Heriot,’ exclaimed Mr. Boddy, lifting it high for Heriot to walk and fetch it; and his small eyes blinked when Heriot said aloud on his way, cheerfully,
‘A letter from the colonel in India!’
Boddy waited a minute, and then said, ‘Is your father in good health?’
Heriot’s face was scarlet. At first he stuttered, ‘My father!—I hope so! What have you in common with him, sir?’
‘You stated that the letter was from your father,’ said Boddy.
‘What if it is, sir?’
‘Oh, in that case, nothing whatever to me.’
They talked on, and the youngest of us could perceive Boddy was bursting with devilish glee. Heriot got a letter posted to Julia. It was laid on his desk, with her name scratched completely out, and his put in its place. He grew pale and sad, but did his work, playing his games, and only letting his friends speak to him of lessons and play. His counsel to me was, that in spite of everything, I was always to stick to my tasks and my cricket. His sadness he could not conceal. He looked like an old lamp with a poor light in it. Not a boy in the school missed seeing how Boddy’s flat head perpetually had a side-eye on him.
All this came to an end. John Salter’s father lived on the other side of the downs, and invited three of us to spend a day at his house. The selection included Heriot, Saddlebank, and me. Mr. Rippenger, not liking to refuse Mr. Salter, consented to our going, but pretended that I was too young. Salter said his mother and sisters very much wished to make my acquaintance. We went in his father’s carriage. A jolly wind blew clouds and dust and leaves: I could have fancied I was going to my own father. The sensation of freedom had a magical effect on me, so that I was the wildest talker of them all. Even in the middle of the family I led the conversation; and I did not leave Salter’s house without receiving an assurance from his elder sisters that they were in love with me. We drove home—back to prison, we called it—full of good things, talking of Salter’s father’s cellar of wine and of my majority Burgundy, which I said, believing it was true, amounted to twelve hundred dozen; and an appointment was made for us to meet at Dipwell Farm, to assist in consuming it, in my honour and my father’s. That matter settled, I felt myself rolling over and over at a great rate, and clasping a juniper tree. The horses had trenched from the chalk road on to the downs. I had been shot out. Heriot and Salter had jumped out—Heriot to look after me; but Saddlebank and the coachman were driving at a great rate over the dark slope. Salter felt some anxiety concerning his father’s horses, so we left him to pursue them, and walked on laughing, Heriot praising me for my pluck.
‘I say good-bye to you to-night, Richie,’ said he. ‘We’re certain to meet again. I shall go to a military school. Mind you enter a cavalry regiment when you’re man enough. Look in the Army List, you’ll find me there. My aunt shall make a journey and call on you while you’re at Rippenger’s, so you shan’t be quite lonely.’
To my grief, I discovered that Heriot had resolved he would not return to school.
‘You’ll get thrashed,’ he said; ‘I can’t help it: I hope you’ve grown tough by this time. I can’t stay here. I feel more like a dog than a man in that house now. I’ll see you back safe. No crying, young cornet!’
We had lost the sound of the carriage. Heriot fell to musing. He remarked that the accident took away from Mr. Salter the responsibility of delivering him at Surrey House, but that he, Heriot, was bound, for Mr. Salter’s sake, to conduct me to the doors; an unintelligible refinement of reasoning, to my wits. We reached our town between two and three in the morning. There was a ladder leaning against one of the houses in repair near the school. ‘You are here, are you!’ said Heriot, speaking to the ladder: ‘you ‘ll do me a service—the last I shall want in the neighbourhood.’ He managed to poise the ladder on his shoulder, and moved forward.
‘Are we going in through the window?’ I asked, seeing him fix the ladder against the school-house wall.
He said, ‘Hush; keep a look-out.’
I saw him mount high. When he tapped at the window I remembered it was Julia’s; I heard her cry out inside. The window rose slowly. Heriot spoke:
‘I have come to say good-bye to you, Julia, dear girl: don’t be afraid of me.’ She answered inaudibly to my ears. He begged her to come to him at once, only once, and hear him and take his hand. She was timid; he had her fingers first, then her whole arm, and she leaned over him. ‘Julia, my sweet, dear girl,’ he said; and she:
‘Heriot, Walter, don’t go—don’t go; you do not care for me if you go. Oh, don’t go.’
‘We’ve come to it,’ said Heriot.
She asked why he was not in bed, and moaned on:
‘Don’t go.’ I was speechless with wonder at the night and the scene. They whispered; I saw their faces close together, and Heriot’s arms round her neck. ‘Oh, Heriot, my darling, my Walter,’ she said, crying, I knew by the sound of her voice.
‘Tell me you love me,’ said Heriot.
‘I do, I do, only don’t go,’ she answered.
‘Will you love me faithfully?’
‘I will; I do.’
‘Say, “I love you, Walter.”’
‘I love you, Walter.’
‘For ever.’
‘For ever. Oh! what a morning for me. Do you smell my honeysuckle? Oh, don’t go away from me, Walter. Do you love me so?’
‘I’d go through a regiment of sabres to get at you.’
‘But smell the night air; how sweet! oh, how sweet! No, not kiss me, if you are going to leave me; not kiss me, if you can be so cruel!’
‘Do you dream of me in your bed?’
‘Yes, every night.’
‘God bless the bed!’
‘Every night I dream of you. Oh! brave Heriot; dear, dear Walter, you did not betray me; my father struck you, and you let him for my sake. Every night I pray heaven to make you forgive him: I thought you would hate me. I cried till I was glad you could not see me. Look at those two little stars; no, they hurt me, I can’t look at them ever again. But no, you are not going; you want to frighten me. Do smell the flowers. Don’t make them poison to me. Oh, what a morning for me when you’re lost! And me, to look out on the night alone! No, no more kisses! Oh, yes, I will kiss you, dear.’
Heriot said, ‘Your mother was Irish, Julia.’
‘Yes. She would have loved you.’
‘I ‘ve Irish blood too. Give me her portrait. It ‘s the image of you.’
‘To take away? Walter! not to take it away?’
‘You darling! to keep me sure of you.’
‘Part with my mother’s portrait?’
‘Why, yes, if you love me one bit.’
‘But you are younger than me, Heriot.’
‘Then good-night, good-bye, Julia.’
‘Walter, I will fetch it.’
Heriot now told her I was below, and she looked down on me and called my name softly, sending kisses from her fingers while he gave the cause for our late return.
‘Some one must be sitting up for you—are we safe?’ she said.
Heriot laughed, and pressed for the portrait.
‘It is all I have. Why should you not have it? I want to be remembered.’
She sobbed as she said this and disappeared. Heriot still talked into her room. I thought I heard a noise of the garden-door opening. A man came out rushing at the ladder. I called in terror: ‘Mr. Boddy, stop, sir.’ He pushed me savagely aside, pitching his whole force against the ladder. Heriot pulled down Julia’s window; he fell with a heavy thump on the ground, and I heard a shriek above. He tried to spring to his feet, but dropped, supported himself on one of his hands, and cried:
‘All right; no harm done; how do you do, Mr. Boddy? I thought I’d try one of the attics, as we were late, not to disturb the house. I ‘m not hurt, I tell you,’ he cried as loud as he could.
The usher’s words were in a confusion of rage and inquiries. He commanded Heriot to stand on his legs, abused him, asked him what he meant by it, accused him of depravity, of crime, of disgraceful conduct, and attempted to pluck him from the spot.
‘Hands off me,’ said Heriot; ‘I can help myself. The youngster ‘ll help me, and we’ll go round to the front door. I hope, sir, you will behave like a gentleman; make no row here, Mr. Boddy, if you’ve any respect for people inside. We were upset by Mr. Salter’s carriage; it’s damaged my leg, I believe. Have the goodness, sir, to go in by your road, and we’ll go round and knock at the front door in the proper way. We shall have to disturb the house after all.’
Heriot insisted. I was astonished to see Boddy obey him and leave us, after my dear Heriot had hopped with his hand on my shoulder to the corner of the house fronting the road. While we were standing alone a light cart drove by. Heriot hailed it, and hopped up to the driver.
‘Take me to London, there’s a good fellow,’ he said; ‘I’m a gentleman; you needn’t look fixed. I’ll pay you well and thank you. But quick. Haul me up, up; here’s my hand. By jingo! this is pain.’
The man said, ‘Scamped it out of school, sir?’
Heriot replied: ‘Mum. Rely on me when I tell you I’m a gentleman.’
‘Well, if I pick up a gentleman, I can’t be doing a bad business,’ said the man, hauling him in tenderly.
Heriot sung to me in his sweet manner, ‘Good-bye, little Richie. Knock when five minutes are over. God bless you, dear little lad! Leg ‘ll get well by morning, never fear for me; and we’ll meet somehow; we’ll drink the Burgundy. No crying. Kiss your hand to me.’
I kissed my hand to him. I had no tears to shed; my chest kept heaving enormously. My friend was gone. I stood in the road straining to hear the last of the wheels after they had long been silent.
CHAPTER VI. A TALE OF A GOOSE
From that hour till the day Heriot’s aunt came to see me, I lived systematically out of myself in extreme flights of imagination, locking my doors up, as it were, all the faster for the extremest strokes of Mr. Rippenger’s rod. He remarked justly that I grew an impenetrably sullen boy, a constitutional rebel, a callous lump: and assured me that if my father would not pay for me, I at least should not escape my debts. The title of little impostor, transmitted from the master’s mouth to the school in designation of one who had come to him as a young prince, and for whom he had not received one penny’s indemnification, naturally caused me to have fights with several of the boys. Whereupon I was reported: I was prayed at to move my spirit, and flogged to exercise my flesh. The prayers I soon learnt to laugh to scorn. The floggings, after they were over, crowned me with delicious sensations of martyrdom. Even while the sting lasted I could say, it’s for Heriot and Julia! and it gave me a wonderful penetration into—the mournful ecstasy of love. Julia was sent away to a relative by the sea-side, because, one of the housemaids told me, she could not bear to hear of my being beaten. Mr. Rippenger summoned me to his private room to bid me inform him whether I had other relatives besides my father, such as grandfather, grandmother, uncles, or aunts, or a mother. I dare say Julia would have led me to break my word to my father by speaking of old Riversley, a place I half longed for since my father had grown so distant and dim to me; but confession to Mr. Rippenger seemed, as he said of Heriot’s behaviour to him, a gross breach of trust to my father; so I refused steadily to answer, and suffered the consequences now on my dear father’s behalf. Heriot’s aunt brought me a cake, and in a letter from him an extraordinary sum of money for a boy of my age. He wrote that he knew I should want it to pay my debts for treats to the boys and keep them in good humour. He believed also that his people meant to have me for the Christmas holidays. The sum he sent me was five pounds, carefully enclosed. I felt myself a prince again. The money was like a golden gate through which freedom twinkled a finger. Forthwith I paid my debts, amounting to two pounds twelve shillings, and instructed a couple of day-boarders, commercial fellows, whose heavy and mysterious charges for commissions ran up a bill in no time, to prepare to bring us materials for a feast on Saturday. Temple abominated the trading propensities of these boys. ‘They never get licked and they’ve always got money, at least I know they always get mine,’ said he; ‘but you and I and Heriot despise them.’ Our position toward them was that of an encumbered aristocracy, and really they paid us great respect. The fact was that, when they had trusted us, they were compelled to continue obsequious, for Heriot had instilled the sentiment in the school, that gentlemen never failed to wipe out debts in the long run, so it was their interest to make us feel they knew us to be gentlemen, who were at some time or other sure to pay, and thus also they operated on our consciences. From which it followed that one title of superiority among us, ranking next in the order of nobility to the dignity conferred by Mr. Rippenger’s rod, was the being down in their books. Temple and I walked in the halo of unlimited credit like more than mortal twins. I gave an order for four bottles of champagne.
On the Friday evening Catman walked out with us. His studious habits endeared him to us immensely, owing to his having his head in his book on all occasions, and a walk under his superintendence was first cousin to liberty. Some boys roamed ahead, some lagged behind, while Catman turned over his pages, sounding the return only when it grew dark. The rumour of the champagne had already intoxicated the boys. There was a companion and most auspicious rumour that Boddy was going to be absent on Saturday. If so, we said, we may drink our champagne under Catman’s nose and he be none the wiser. Saddlebank undertook to manage our feast for us. Coming home over the downs, just upon twilight, Temple and I saw Saddlebank carrying a long withy upright. We asked him what it was for. He shouted back: ‘It’s for fortune. You keep the rear guard.’ Then we saw him following a man and a flock of geese, and imitating the action of the man with his green wand. As we were ready to laugh at anything Saddlebank did, we laughed at this. The man walked like one half asleep, and appeared to wake up now and then to find that he was right in the middle of his geese, and then he waited, and Saddlebank waited behind him. Presently the geese passed a lane leading off the downs. We saw Saddlebank duck his wand in a coaxing way, like an angler dropping his fly for fish; he made all sorts of curious easy flourishes against the sky and branched up the lane. We struck after him, little suspecting that he had a goose in front, but he had; he had cut one of the loiterers off from the flock; and to see him handle his wand on either side his goose, encouraging it to go forward, and remonstrating, and addressing it in bits of Latin, and the creature pattering stiff and astonished, sent us in a dance of laughter.
‘What have you done, old Saddle?’ said Temple, though it was perfectly clear what Saddlebank had done.
‘I’ve carved off a slice of Michaelmas,’ said Saddlebank, and he hewed the air to flick delicately at his goose’s head.
‘What do you mean—a slice?’ said we.
We wanted to be certain the goose was captured booty. Saddlebank would talk nothing but his fun. Temple fetched a roaring sigh:
‘Oh! how good this goose ‘d be with our champagne.’
The idea seized and enraptured me. ‘Saddlebank, I ‘ll buy him off you,’ I said.
‘Chink won’t flavour him,’ said Saddlebank, still at his business: ‘here, you two, cut back by the down and try all your might to get a dozen apples before Catman counts heads at the door, and you hold your tongues.’
We shot past the man with the geese—I pitied him—clipped a corner of the down, and by dint of hard running reached the main street, mad for apples, before Catman appeared there. Apples, champagne, and cakes were now provided; all that was left to think of was the goose. We glorified Saddlebank’s cleverness to the boys.
‘By jingo! what a treat you’ll have,’ Temple said among them, bursting with our secret.
Saddlebank pleaded that he had missed his way on presenting himself ten minutes after time. To me and Temple he breathed of goose, but he shunned us; he had no fun in him till Saturday afternoon, when Catman called out to hear if we were for cricket or a walk.
‘A walk on the downs,’ said Saddlebank.
Temple and I echoed him, and Saddlebank motioned his hand as though he were wheedling his goose along. Saddlebank spoke a word to my commissioners. I was to leave the arrangements for the feast to him, he said. John Salter was at home unwell, so Saddlebank was chief. No sooner did we stand on the downs than he gathered us all in a circle, and taking off his cap threw in it some slips of paper. We had to draw lots who should keep by Catman out of twenty-seven; fifteen blanks were marked. Temple dashed his hand into the cap first ‘Like my luck,’ he remarked, and pocketed both fists as he began strutting away to hide his desperation at drawing a blank. I bought a substitute for him at the price of half-a-crown,—Drew, a fellow we were glad to get rid of; he wanted five shillings. The feast was worth fifty, but to haggle about prices showed the sneak. He begged us to put by a taste for him; he was groaned out of hearing. The fifteen looked so wretched when they saw themselves divided from us that I gave them a shilling a-piece to console them. They took their instructions from Saddlebank as to how they were to surround Catman, and make him fancy us to be all in his neighbourhood; and then we shook hands, they requesting us feebly to drink their healths, and we saying, ay, that we would.
Temple was in distress of spirits because of his having been ignominiously bought off. Saddlebank, however, put on such a pace that no one had leisure for melancholy. ‘I’ll get you fellows up to boiling point,’ said he. There was a tremendously hot sun overhead. On a sudden he halted, exclaiming: ‘Cooks and gridirons! what about sage and onions?’ Only Temple and I jumped at the meaning of this. We drew lots for a messenger, and it was miserable to behold an unfortunate fellow touch Saddlebank’s hand containing the notched bit of stick, and find himself condemned to go and buy sage and onions somewhere, without knowing what it was for how could he guess we were going to cook a raw goose! The lot fell to a boy named Barnshed, a big slow boy, half way up every class he was in, but utterly stupid out of school; which made Saddlebank say: ‘They’ll take it he’s the bird that wants stuffing.’ Barnshed was directed where to rejoin us. The others asked why he was trotted after sage and onions. ‘Because he’s an awful goose,’ said Saddlebank.
Temple and I thought the word was out and hurrahed, and back came Barnshed. We had a task in persuading him to resume his expedition, as well as Saddlebank to forgive us. Saddlebank’s anger was excessive. We conciliated him by calling him captain, and pretending to swear an oath of allegiance. He now led us through a wood on to some fields down to a shady dell, where we were to hold the feast in privacy. He did not descend it himself. Vexatious as it was to see a tramp’s tent there, we nevertheless acknowledged the respectful greeting of the women and the man with a few questions about tentpegs, pots, and tin mugs. Saddlebank remained aloft, keeping a look-out for the day-school fellows, Chaunter, Davis, and Bystop, my commissioners. They did not keep us waiting long. They had driven to the spot in a cart, according to Saddlebank’s directions. Our provisions were in three large hampers. We praised their forethought loudly at the sight of an extra bottle of champagne, with two bottles of ginger-wine, two of currant, two of raisin, four pint bottles of ale, six of ginger-beer, a Dutch cheese, a heap of tarts, three sally-lunns, and four shillingsworth of toffy. Temple and I joined our apples to the mass: a sight at which some of the boys exulted aloud. The tramp-women insisted on spreading things out for us: ten yards off their children squatted staring: the man smoked and chaffed us.
At last Saddlebank came running over the hill-side, making as if he meant to bowl down what looked a black body of a baby against the sky, and shouting, ‘See, you fellows, here’s a find!’ He ran through us, swinging his goose up to the hampers, saying that he had found the goose under a furze-bush. While the words were coming out of his mouth, he saw the tramps, and the male tramp’s eyes and his met.
The man had one eyebrow and his lips at one corner screwed in a queer lift: he winked slowly. ‘Odd! ain’t it?’ he said.
Saddlebank shouldered round on us, and cried, ‘Confound you fellows! here’s a beastly place you’ve pitched upon.’ His face was the colour of scarlet in patches.
‘Now, I call it a beautiful place,’ said the man, ‘and if you finds gooses hereabouts growing ready for the fire, all but plucking, why, it’s a bountiful place, I call it.’
The women tried to keep him silent. But for them we should have moved our encampment. ‘Why, of course, young gentlemen, if you want to eat the goose, we’ll pluck it for you and cook it for you, all nice,’ they said. ‘How can young gentlemen do that for theirselves?’
It was clear to us we must have a fire for the goose. Certain observations current among us about the necessity to remove the goose’s inside, and not to lose the giblets, which even the boy who named them confessed his inability to recognize, inclined the majority to accept the woman’s proposal. Saddlebank said it was on our heads, then.
To revive his good humour, Temple uncorked a bottle of champagne. The tramp-woman lent us a tin mug, and round it went. One boy said, ‘That’s a commencement’; another said, ‘Hang old Rippenger.’ Temple snapped his fingers, and Bystop, a farmer’s son, said, ‘Well, now I’ve drunk champagne; I meant to before I died!’ Most of the boys seemed puzzled by it. As for me, my heart sprang up in me like a colt turned out of stables to graze. I determined that the humblest of my retainers should feed from my table, and drink to my father’s and Heriot’s honour, and I poured out champagne for the women, who just sipped, and the man, who vowed he preferred beer. A spoonful of the mashed tarts I sent to each of the children. Only one, the eldest, a girl about a year older than me, or younger, with black eyebrows and rough black hair, refused to eat or drink.
‘Let her bide, young gentlemen,’ said a woman; ‘she’s a regular obstinate, once she sets in for it.’
‘Ah!’ said the man, ‘I’ve seen pigs druv, and I’ve seen iron bent double. She’s harder ‘n both, once she takes ‘t into her head.’
‘By jingo, she’s pig-iron!’ cried Temple, and sighed, ‘Oh, dear old Heriot!’
I flung myself beside him to talk of our lost friend.
A great commotion stirred the boys. They shrieked at beholding their goose vanish in a pot for stewing. They wanted roast-goose, they exclaimed, not boiled; who cared for boiled goose! But the woman asked them how it was possible to roast a goose on the top of wood-flames, where there was nothing to hang it by, and nothing would come of it except smoked bones!
The boys groaned in consternation, and Saddlebank sowed discontent by grumbling, ‘Now you see what your jolly new acquaintances have done for you.’
So we played at catch with the Dutch cheese, and afterwards bowled it for long-stopping, when, to the disgust of Saddlebank and others, down ran the black-haired girl and caught the ball clean at wicket-distance. As soon as she had done it she was ashamed, and slunk away.
The boys called out, ‘Now, then, pig-iron!’
One fellow enraged me by throwing an apple that hit her in the back. We exchanged half-a-dozen blows, whereupon he consented to apologize, and roared, ‘Hulloa, pig-iron, sorry if I hurt you.’
Temple urged me to insist on the rascal’s going on his knees for flinging at a girl.
‘Why,’ said Chaunter, ‘you were the first to call her pig-iron.’
Temple declared he was a blackguard if he said that. I made the girl take a piece of toffy.
‘Aha!’ Saddlebank grumbled, ‘this comes of the precious company you would keep in spite of my caution.’
The man told us to go it, for he liked to observe young gentlemen enjoying themselves. Temple tossed him a pint bottle of beer, with an injunction to him to shut his trap.
‘Now, you talk my mother tongue,’ said the man; ‘you’re what goes by the name of a learned gentleman. Thank ye, sir. You’ll be a counsellor some day.’
‘I won’t get off thieves, I can tell you,’ said Temple. He was the son of a barrister.
‘Nor you won’t help cook their gooses for them, may be,’ said the man. ‘Well, kindness is kindness, all over the world.’
The women stormed at him to command him not to anger the young gentlemen, for Saddlebank was swearing awfully in an undertone. He answered them that he was the mildest lamb afloat.
Despairing of the goose, we resolved to finish the cold repast awaiting us. The Dutch cheese had been bowled into bits. With a portion of the mashed tarts on it, and champagne, it tasted excellently; toffy to follow. Those boys who chose ginger-wine had it, and drank, despised. The ginger-beer and ale, apples and sallylunns, were reserved for supper. My mind became like a driving sky, with glimpses of my father and Heriot bursting through.
