Chapter 22. Master Philip

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_ CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. MASTER PHILIP

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm not a thief," I shouted, wincing still with the pain.

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

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

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

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

"There, now you've done it, you young rough!" he cried viciously. "Come out."

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

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

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

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

"He struck me with the cane."

"He was stealing peaches."

"I was not; I was picking one up."

"He was stealing them. Just look what he has done."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"See what you've done to my Royal George!"

"See what I've done to your Royal George!"--mockingly.

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

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

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

"You forget who I am," cried the boy.

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

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

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

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

"If you talk to me like that I'll tell papa everything, and have you discharged."

"Do!" said Mr Solomon.

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

"I'm not a beggar," I cried hotly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Humph!" said Mr Solomon, "and so you weren't going to eat the peach?"

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

"It is not true," I cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sha'n't!"

"Will you go?"

"No. Don't you push me!"

"Walk out then."

"Sha'n't. It's our place, and I sha'n't go for you."

"Will you go out quietly?"

"No, I shall stop as long as I like."

"Once more, Master Philip, will you go?"

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

"Will you go, sir? Once more."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That'll do," he cried sternly to us both.

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

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

"Oh! should you? Well, don't you bring him here again, or I'll let him know."

"You'd better let him know now, boy, for he's going to stop."

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

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

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

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

"I thought so," cried the boy with a snigger--"he's a pauper then. Ha, ha, ha! a pauper! I'll tell Courtenay. We'll call him pauper if he stops here."

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

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

"Here, hi! Courtenay. Here's a game. We've got a new pauper in the place."

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

"Don't you take any notice of them, my lad."

"Them?" I said in dismay.

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

I smiled and nodded.

"Only schoolboys. Say anything, but it won't hurt us. Here we are. Come in."

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

"This is young Grant," said Mr Solomon.

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

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

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

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

"I'm glad you didn't hit him," he said. "Eat away, my lad."

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

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

"Of course not. Go on with your supper."

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

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

I brightened up, and he saw it.

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

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

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

"They might be made such different boys if properly trained."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"If there's anything you want you can ask. I hope you'll be very clean."

"I'll try to be, ma'am," I said, feeling quite uncomfortable, she looked at me so coldly.

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

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

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

"Hullo!" he said; "butterflies and moths!--eh?"

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

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

"No, sir," I said.

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

"I'll try, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read next: Chapter 23. I Begin Work

Read previous: Chapter 21. I Look Round

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