Some Everyday Folk and Dawn | Page 7

go in her."
"She'd require inoculating with a little of yours," said I, watching with
what enviable vigour the girl's work sped before her as though afraid. I
also retired to my room for a rest, intending to come out and pave the
way for friendship with Dawn by-and-by, for I quickly perceived she
was not the character to go out of her way to make the first overture.
Some time after, when strolling around in an unwonted fashion, I was
pleased to again encounter my friend Andrew. Evidently he had been
set to clean out the fowl-houses, for a wheelbarrow half full of manure
stood at the door of a wire-netted shed, and in the middle of this task he
had sought diversion by shooting rats from among the straw in a big
old barn, where a great heap of unused hay made them a harbour. In
this warm valley, carpeted in the irrepressible couch-grass, there was
no lack of fodder that season, and even the lanes and byways would
have served as fattening paddocks. Andrew leant upon his gun, and
having delivered himself of certain statistics in rat mortality, and
exhibiting some specimens by the tail, he began a conversation.
"Say, what did you think of Miss Thing-amebob, Miss Flipp I mean?"
"I didn't bother thinking anything at all about her."
Andrew looked interrogatively at me and broke into a grin.
"Well, I reckon she's the silliest goat I ever came across. She came out
to me and asked did I think she looked pretty, as her uncle is coming up
to-night, and if she looks nice he'll give her a present or something. I
reckon she'd have to look not such a mad-headed rabbit before I'd give

her anything but some advice to bag her head. And he must be a
different uncle to Uncle Jake; I reckon he wouldn't give you nothing if
you had on two heads at once. Here's Larry Witcom coming back from
his rounds, and he promised me a bit of meat for Whiskey! Here,
Whiskey! Whiskey!" he roared, and a small canine pet that had been
hunting rats desisted from the fray and ran with his master. I also
walked with him--this without exception, even in slum scenes on the
stage, being the dirtiest escort I ever had had. His face was grimed, his
shirt like an engine-rag, and his trousers dusty, while from a hole in the
seat thereof fluttered a flag of garment--such an ingratiatingly
wholesome blunderbuss of a boy!
"Here, you Larry," he yelled, "you promised me! Come on, Whiskey!
Why, ain't he a bosker!" he enthusiastically exclaimed, as the hideously
unprepossessing little mongrel stood on his hind legs and yelped in
excited begging.
"Hullo, Andrew! Don't bust! Who's that you had with you?--(I had
turned a corner)--a new boarder, I suppose? Rather an old piece!"
"Yes," said Andrew. "Her hair is a little white, but she ain't sour and
stuck up."
"A chance for you to hang your hat up, Jake," said Larry.
"No, thanks! I'm cautious of them old maids. If you say a pleasant word
to 'em they can't be shook off, and might have you up for breach of
promise like with Tom Dunstan."
"I suppose there is a danger, you being so fascinating," chuckled the
butcher as I went inside, with a premonition that should it come to
taking sides in the Clay household, if avoidable I would not be on
Uncle Jake's.
"Who is Uncle Jake?" said Carry in response to my inquiry, as she
prepared four o'clock tea; "he's Uncle Jake, that's what he is, and
enough for me too, that he is. The old swab wants hanging up by the
beard."

"Yes, but what place does he hold in the house?"
"Place! that of walking round poking his nose in everywhere and
growling about things that don't concern him. Mrs Clay keeps
him--gives him fifteen shillings a-week--because he's her brother, and
you'd think he owned everything. If you want to know what he is, he's a
terribly bad example to Andrew. He's the greatest clumsy, lumbering,
dirty lump (oh, you should see his clothes, what they are like to wash,
and the only way to keep him clean would be to stuff him in a glass
case!), but for all that he's a very fair kid. You can't expect much of
boys, you know, and have to be thankful for any good points at all. O
Lord!" she here exclaimed, looking out a window, where along a path
through the orchard she descried approaching a fine buxom dame in a
fashionably cut dress, "here's Mrs Bray in full sail. I suppose she saw
the 'busman leaving you here to-day, and her curiosity couldn't stand
any longer without coming on a tour of