Brownsmiths Boy | Page 3

could see how the boy fastened up
his trousers with one strap and a piece of string, for he had no braces,
and there were no brace buttons. Those corduroy trousers had been
made for somebody else, I should say for a man, and pieces of the legs
had been cut off, and the upper part came well over his back and chest.
He had no waistcoat, but he wore a jacket that must have belonged to a
man. It was a jacket that was fustian behind, and had fustian sleeves,

but the front was of purple plush with red and yellow flowers, softened
down with dirt; and the sleeves of this jacket were tucked up very high,
while the bottom came down to his knees.
He did not wear a hat, but the crown of an old straw bonnet, the top of
which had come unsewed, and rose and fell like the lid of a round box
with one hinge, and when the lid blew open you could see his shaggy
hair, which seemed as if it had never been brushed since it first came up
out of his skin.
The opera-glass was very useful to me, especially as the boy fascinated
me so, for I used to watch him with it till I knew that he had two brass
shank-buttons and three four-holes of bone on his jacket, that there
were no buttons at all on his shirt, and that he had blue eyes, a
snub-nose, and had lost one of his top front teeth.
I must have been quite as great an attraction to him as he was to me,
but he showed it in a very different way. There would be threatening
movements made with his fists. After an hour's hard work at weeding,
without paying the slightest heed to my presence, he would suddenly
jump up as if resenting my watching, catch up the basket, and make
believe to hurl it at me. Perhaps he would pick up a great clod and
pretend to throw that, but let it fall beside him; while one day, when I
went to the window and looked out, I found him with a good-sized
switch which had been the young shoot of a pear tree, and a lump of
something of a yellowish brown tucked in the fork of a tree close by
where he worked.
He had a basket by his side and was busily engaged as usual weeding,
for there was a great battle for ever going on in that garden, where the
weeds were always trying to master the flowers and vegetables, and
that boy's duty seemed to be to tear up weeds by the roots, and nothing
else.
But there by his side stuck in the ground was the switch, and as soon as
he saw me at the window he gave a look round to see if he was watched,
and then picked up the stick.

"I wonder what he is going to do!" I thought, as I twisted the glass a
little and had a good look.
He was so near that the glass was not necessary, but I saw through it
that he pinched off a bit of the yellowish-brown stuff, which was
evidently clay, and, after rolling it between his hands, he stuck what
seemed to be a bit as big as a large taw marble on the end of the switch,
gave it a flourish, and the bit of clay flew off.
I could not see where it went, but I saw him watching it, as he quickly
took another piece, kneaded it, and with another flourish away that
flew.
That bit evidently went over our house; and the next time he tried--flap!
the piece struck the wall somewhere under the window.
Five times more did he throw, the clay flying swiftly, till all at once
thud! came a pellet and stuck on the window pane just above my head.
I looked up at the flattened clay, which was sticking fast, and then at
that boy, who was down on his knees again weeding away as hard as
he could weed, but taking no more notice of me, and I saw the reason:
his master was coming down the garden.
CHAPTER TWO.
OLD BROWNSMITH.
I used to take a good deal of notice of that boy's master as I sat at the
window, and it always seemed to me that he went up and down his
garden because he was so fond of it.
Later on I knew that it was because he was a market-gardener, and was
making his plans as to what was to be cut or picked, or what wanted
doing in the place.
He was a pleasant-looking man, with white hair and whiskers, and a red
face that