The Obstacle Race | Page 6

a thing or two if he'd belonged to me." Again, vindictively, Mrs. Rickett wiped her eyes. "Believe me, miss, there's no martyrdom so bad as getting married to the wrong man. I've seen it once and again, and I knows."
"I quite agree with you," said Juliet. "But tell me some more! Who took the poor babies?"
"Oh, Mrs. Cross at the lodge took them. Mr. Fielding provided for 'em, and he helped young Dick along too. He's been very good to them always. He had young Jack trained, and now he's his chauffeur and making a very good living. The worst of Jack is, he ain't over steady, got too much of his father in him to please me. He's always after some girl--two or three at a time sometimes. No harm in the lad, I daresay. But he's wild, you know. Dick finds him rather a handful very often. Robin can't abide him, which perhaps isn't much to be wondered at, seeing as it was mostly Jack's fault that he is such a poor cripple. He was always sickly. It's often the way with twins, you know. All the strength goes to one. But he always had to do what Jack did as a little one, and Jack led him into all sorts of mischief, till one day when they were about ten they went off bird's-nesting along the cliffs High Shale Point way, and only Jack come back late at night to say his brother had gone over the cliff. Dick tore off with some of the chaps from the shore. It were dark and windy, and they all said it was no use, but Dick insisted upon going down the face of the cliff on a rope to find him. And find him at last he did on a ledge about a hundred feet down. He was so badly hurt that he thought he'd broke his back, and he didn't dare move him till morning, but just stayed there with him all night long. Oh, it was a dreadful business." A large tear splashed unchecked on to Mrs. Rickett's apron. "An ill-fated family, as you might say. They got 'em up in the morning o' course, but poor little Robin was very bad. He was on his back for nearly a year after, and then, when he began to get about again, them humps came and he grew crooked. Mr. Fielding were away at the time, hunting somewhere in the wilds of Africa, and when he came home he were shocked to see the lad. He had the very best doctors in the land to see him, but they all said there was nothing to be done. The spine had got twisted, or something of that nature, and he'd begun to have queer giddy fits too as made 'em say the brain were affected, which it really weren't, miss, for he's as sane as you or me, only simple you know, just a bit simple. They said, all of 'em, as how he'd never live to grow up. He'd get them abscies at the base of the skull, and they'd reach his brain and he'd go raving mad and die. And the squire--that's Mr. Fielding--was all for putting him away there and then. But Dick, he'd nursed him all through, and he wouldn't hear of it. 'The boy's mine,' he says, 'and I'm going to look after him.' Mr. Fielding was very cross with him, but that didn't make no difference. You see, Dick had got fond of him, and as for Robin, why, he just worshipped Dick. So there it was left, and Dick gave up all his prospects to keep the boy with him. He were reading for the law, you see, but he gave it all up and turned schoolmaster, so as he could live here and take care of young Robin."
"Turned schoolmaster!" Juliet repeated the words. "He's something of a scholar then!"
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Rickett. "It's only the village school, miss. Mr. Fielding got him the post. They're an unruly set of varmints here, but he keeps order among 'em. He's quite clever, as you might say, but no, he ain't a scholard. He goes in for games, you know, football and the like, tries to teach 'em to play like gentlemen, which he never will, for they're a low lot, them shore people, and that dirty! Well, he makes 'em bathe every day in the summer whether they likes it or whether they don't. Oh, he does his best to civilize 'em, and all them fisher chaps thinks a deal of him too. They've got a club in the village what Mr. Fielding built for 'em, and he goes along there and gives 'em musical evenings and jollies 'em generally. They'll do