Hide and Seek | Page 9

up
and down the room."
Zack paused, debating for an instant whether he should disobey or burst
out crying.
"Put back the stick," repeated Mr. Thorpe.
Zack remembered the dressing-room and the "Select Bible Texts for
Children," and wisely obeyed. He was by this time completely crushed
down into as rigid a state of Sunday discipline as his father could desire.
After depositing the stick in the corner, he slowly walked up to Mr.
Goodworth, with a comical expression of amazement and disgust in his
chubby face, and meekly laid down his head on his grandfather's knee.
"Never say die, Zack," said the kind old gentleman, rising and taking
the boy in his arms. "While nurse is getting your dinner ready, let's look
out of window, and see if it's going to clear up."
Mr. Thorpe raised his head disapprovingly from his book, but said
nothing this time.
"Ah, rain! rain! rain!" muttered Mr. Goodworth, staring desperately out
at the miserable prospect, while Zack amused himself by rubbing his
nose vacantly backwards and forwards against a pane of glass. "Rain!
rain! Nothing but rain and fog in November. Hold up, Zack! Ding-dong,
ding-dong; there go the bells for afternoon church! I wonder whether it

will be fine to-morrow? Think of the pudding, my boy!" whispered the
old gentleman with a benevolent remembrance of the consolation
which that thought had often afforded to him, when he was a child
himself.
"Yes," said Zack, acknowledging the pudding suggestion, but declining
to profit by it. "And, please, when I've had my dinner, will somebody
put me to bed?"
"Put you to bed!" exclaimed Mr. Goodworth. "Why, bless the boy!
what's come to him now? He used always to be wanting to stop up."
"I want to go to bed, and get to to-morrow, and have my picture-book,"
was the weary and whimpering answer.
"I'll be hanged, if I don't want to go to bed too!" soliloquized the old
gentleman under his breath, "and get to to-morrow, and have my
'Times' at breakfast. I'm as bad as Zack, every bit!"
"Grandpapa," continued the child, more wearily than before, "I want to
whisper something in your ear."
Mr. Goodworth bent down a little. Zack looked round cunningly
towards his father--then putting his mouth close to his grandfather's ear,
communicated the conclusion at which he had arrived, after the events
of the day, in these words--
"I say, granpapa, I hate Sunday!"

BOOK I
THE HIDING.
CHAPTER I.
A NEW NEIGHBORHOOD, AND A STRANGE CHARACTER.

At the period when the episode just related occurred in the life of Mr.
Zachary Thorpe the younger--that is to say, in the year
1837--Baregrove Square was the farthest square from the city, and the
nearest to the country, of any then existing in the north-western suburb
of London. But, by the time fourteen years more had elapsed--that is to
say, in the year 1851--Baregrove Square had lost its distinctive
character altogether; other squares had filched from it those last
remnants of healthy rustic flavor from which its good name had been
derived; other streets, crescents, rows, and villa-residences had forced
themselves pitilessly between the old suburb and the country, and had
suspended for ever the once neighborly relations between the pavement
of Baregrove Square and the pathways of the pleasant fields.
Alexander's armies were great makers of conquests; and Napoleon's
armies were great makers of conquests; but the modern Guerilla
regiments of the hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln, are the greatest
conquerors of all; for they hold the longest the soil that they have once
possessed. How mighty the devastation which follows in the wake of
these tremendous aggressors, as they march through the kingdom of
nature, triumphantly bricklaying beauty wherever they go! What
dismantled castle, with the enemy's flag flying over its crumbling walls,
ever looked so utterly forlorn as a poor field-fortress of nature,
imprisoned on all sides by the walled camp of the enemy, and degraded
by a hostile banner of pole and board, with the conqueror's device
inscribed on it--"THIS GROUND TO BE LET ON BUILDING
LEASES?" What is the historical spectacle of Marius sitting among the
ruins of Carthage, but a trumpery theatrical set-scene, compared with
the mournful modern sight of the last tree left standing, on the last few
feet of grass left growing, amid the greenly-festering stucco of a
finished Paradise Row, or the naked scaffolding poles of a
half-completed Prospect Place? Oh, gritty-natured Guerilla regiments
of the hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln! the town-pilgrim of nature,
when he wanders out at fall of day into the domains which you have
spared for a little while, hears strange things said of you in secret, as he
duteously interprets the old, primeval language of the leaves; as he
listens to the death-doomed trees,