Me and Nobbles | Page 4

with her machine, making some holland overalls for him, and she was glad to have the nursery to herself. Bobby was in the seventh heaven of delight. There was nothing he enjoyed so much as a talk with Tom.
'And what's the first thing nice to eat that's coming out of the ground?' he asked, his hands in his pockets and his legs well astride, as he watched Tom sowing some seed in long drills across the square of freshly dug ground.
Tom looked at him with a twinkle in his eye.
'Spring cabbages,' he said.
'But I mean fruit, not nasty vegtubbers! I sawed you taste a big white ball, and then you frew it over the wall.'
''Twas a turnip, likely.'
'Let me taste a turnip.'
But Tom shook his head.
'Shall have your nurse at me a-sayin' I'm a-upsettin' your little inside. Do you know who's a-comin' to-day?'
'No. Do tell me. Someone to the house?'
'It be Master Mortimer, the eldest son, who have been in furrin parts so long, him what hangs up in the hall along with the master. You've never seed him. He went off straight from school to India. He were a favourit' of mine were Master Mortimer.'
'And he's coming to-day? Oh, I do hope I shall see him.'
Bobby capered at the thought.
''Tis any time to-day may bring him. His ship comed in yester morn.'
'I wonder if he's seen my father anywheres.'
'Ah! Best ask of him. Master Mortimer be a merry young gen'leman, sure enough. But I reckon that time have sobered him!'
'Grown-up peoples aren't merry,' said the small boy, ''cept Sam Conway, when he's drunk!'
Sam Conway was the cobbler, who was the village drunkard. Tom shook his head reproachfully at the thought of him.
'And that there old soaker did marry my aunt's darter!' He continued a grumbling discourse upon the evils of drink as he turned to his sowing, and Bobby danced away down to the bottom of the garden, where he opened the door into the orchard and found his way to his favourite corner. This was an old apple-tree which grew close to the high wall that separated the orchard from the public road. It was an easy tree to climb, and from a comfortable perch upon the topmost bough he could look out along the high-road. It was a broad, white, dusty road; on market-days he was never absent from this seat; he loved watching the farmers' carts, and the carriers, and the droves of sheep and cattle that passed along to the town. There were other days when he watched there, days when only motors whizzed by, or a few carriages and an occasional cart rumbled along. But he never tired of his post, and his face was always full of patient expectancy. He got up in the tree now, and 'Nobbles' was tightly grasped in his hand.
'It may be "Nobbles" that they'll come together. It's a ship he'll come in same as Master Mortimer, and the ship comed in yesterday--Tom said so.'
His brown eyes scanned the horizon anxiously, and the hope that had never died yet in his childish heart leaped up anew. Nobbles was stuck into a crevice in the wall, and his smiling, ugly little head stared out in the same direction as his master's.
'It may be a station fly, and it may be our carriage, and it may be a motor,' pursued Bobby dreamily, 'but he's bound to come, I'm certain sure!'
He was called into his dinner before a single carriage or cart had passed him. But his little face was radiantly bright as he sat opposite his nurse and ate his hot mutton and rice pudding at the nursery table.
'I 'specs the House is very busy to-day,' he remarked with a knowing little nod of his head. 'Which is Master Mortimer's room, Nurse?'
'Master Mortimer, indeed! Who's been talking to you of him I'd like to know! You must be a good boy and stay quiet in the nursery. I've never seen your grandmother so upset. She's proper excited, and won't go out for her drive this afternoon, and I'm helping Jane get out all the old bits of furniture that used to belong in his room before ever he went abroad. 'Twas his only sending a telegram yesterday so sudden like, and no letter nor nothing to prepare us, that has taken us so aback. He's to have his old room, the one at end of the passage. It's going to rain, so you'd best stay in the nursery this afternoon, and I shall be busy.'
Bobby promised to be good, but with the sounds of such an unusual bustle in the house what small boy could resist peeping through the green baize door occasionally to see what was going on? And at last, thinking the coast quite clear, he made one of