The Adventures of Harry Revel | Page 8

'ithout I lights a
furze-bush underneath to hurry them.'"
"I trust," put in Miss Plinlimmon, aghast, "you are jesting, Mr. Trapp?"
"Jesting, ma'am?"
"You do not really employ that barbarous method of acceleration?"
"Meaning furze-bushes? Why, no, ma'am; not often. Look ye here,

young sir," he continued, dismissing (as of no account) this subject, so
interesting to me; "you was wide awake, anyway, when you came
down, and that you can't deny."
"Harry," persisted Miss Plinlimmon, "has not been used to harsh
treatment. You will like his manners: he is a very gentlemanly boy."
Mr. Trapp stared at her, then at me, then slowly around the room.
"Gentlemanly?" he echoed at length, in a wondering way, under his
breath.
"I have used my best endeavours. Yes, though I say it to his face, you
will really--if careful to appeal to his better instincts--find him one of
Nature's gentlemen."
Mr. Trapp broke into a grin of relief; almost you could say that he
heaved a sigh.
"Oh, that's all?" said he. "Why, Lord love ye, ma'am, I've been called
that myself before now!"
So to Mr. Trapp I was bound, early next week, before the magistrates
sitting in petty sessional division, to serve him and to receive from him
proper sustenance and clothing until the age of twenty-one. And I (as
nearly as could be guessed, for I had no birthday) had barely turned ten.
Mr. Scougall arrived in time to pilot me through these formalities and
hand me over to Mr. Trapp: but at a parting interview, throughout
which we both wept copiously, Miss Plinlimmon gave me for souvenir
a small Testament with this inscription on the fly-leaf:
H. REVEL, from his affectionate friend, A. Plinlimmon.
O happy, happy days, when childhood's cares Were soon forgotten! But
now, when dear ones all around are still the same, Where shall we be
in ten years' time?
"They were my own composition," she explained. Mr. George bade me
a gloomier farewell. "You might come to some good," he said

contemplatively; "and then again you mightn't. I ain't what they call a
pessimist, but I thinks poorly of most things. It's safer."
Mr. Trapp was exceedingly jocose as he conveyed me home to his
house beside the Barbican, Plymouth; stopping on the way before every
building of exceptional height and asking me quizzically how I would
propose to set about climbing it. At the time, in the soreness of my
heart, I resented this heavy pleasantry, and to be sure, after the tenth
repetition or so, the diversity of the buildings to which he applied it but
poorly concealed its sameness. But, in fact, he was doing his best to be
kind, and succeeded in a sort; for it roused a childish scorn in me and
so fetched back my heart, which at starting had been somewhere in my
boots.
I took it for granted that a sweep must inhabit a dingy hovel, and
certainly the crowded filth of the Barbican promised nothing better as
we threaded our way among fishermen, fish-jowters, blowzy women,
and children playing hop-scotch with the heads of decaying fish. At the
seaward end of it, and close beside the bow-fronted Custom House, we
turned aside into an alley which led uphill between high blank walls to
the base of the Citadel: and here, stuck as if it were a marten's nest
under the shadow of the ramparts, a freshly whitewashed cottage
overhung the slope, with a sweep's brush dangling over its doorway and
the sign "S. Trapp, Chimney Sweep in Season."
While I wondered what might be the season for chimney-sweeps, a
small bead-eyed woman emerged from the doorway and shook a duster
vigorously: in the which act catching sight of us, she paused.
"I've a-got en, my dear," said Mr. Trapp much as a man might
announce the capture of a fish: and though he did not actually lift me
for inspection his hand seemed to waver over my collar.
But it was Mrs. Trapp, who, after a fleeting glance at me, caught her
husband by the collar.
"And you actilly went in that state, you nasty keerless hulks! O, you
heart-breaker!"

Mr. Trapp in custody managed to send me a sidelong, humorous grin.
"My dear, I thought 'twould be a surprise for you--business taking me
that way, and the magistrates being used to worse."
"You heart-breaker!" repeated Mrs. Trapp. "And me slaving morn and
night to catch up with your messy ways! What did I tell you the first
time you came back from the Hospital looking like a malkin, and with a
clean shift of clothes laid out for you and the water on the boil, that I
couldn't have taken more trouble, no, not for a funeral? Didn't I tell you
'twas positively lowering?"
"I ha'n't a