We and the World, Part I | Page 6

but he had
certainly learned this; for when an hour later I went to look for him in
the garden, I found him panting with the exertion of having laid my
nice, thick, fresh green crop of mustard and cress flat with the back of
the coal-shovel, which he could barely lift, but with which he was still
battering my salad-bed, chanting triumphantly at every stroke, "I had
my bat, and I hit him as he lay on the mat." He was quite out of breath,
and I had not much difficulty in pummelling him as he deserved.
Which shows how true it is, as my dear mother said, that "you never
know what to do for the best in bringing up boys."
Just about the time that we outgrew Chick-seed, and that it was allowed
on all hands that even for quiet country-folk with no learned notions it
was high time we were sent to school, our parents were spared the
trouble of looking out for a school for us by the fact that a school came
to us instead, and nothing less than an "Academy" was opened within
three-quarters of a mile of my father's gate.

Walnut-tree Farm was an old house that stood some little way from the
road in our favourite lane--a lane full of wild roses and speedwell, with
a tiny footpath of disjointed flags like an old pack-horse track. Grass
and milfoil grew thickly between the stones, and the turf stretched
half-way over the road from each side, for there was little traffic in the
lane, beyond the yearly rumble of the harvesting waggons; and few
foot-passengers, except a labourer now and then, a pair or two of rustic
lovers at sundown, a few knots of children in the blackberry season,
and the cows coming home to milking.
Jem and I played there a good deal, but then we lived close by.
We were very fond of the old place and there were two good reasons
for the charm it had in our eyes. In the first place, the old man who
lived alone in it (for it had ceased to be the dwelling-house of a real
farm) was an eccentric old miser, the chief object of whose existence
seemed to be to thwart any attempt to pry into the daily details of it.
What manner of stimulus this was to boyish curiosity needs no
explanation, much as it needs excuse.
In the second place, Walnut-tree Farm was so utterly different from the
house which was our home, that everything about it was attractive from
mere unaccustomedness.
Our house had been rebuilt from the foundations by my father. It was
square-built and very ugly, but it was in such excellent repair that one
could never indulge a more lawless fancy towards any chink or cranny
about it than a desire to "point" the same with a bit of mortar.
Why it was that my ancestor, who built the old house, and who was not
a bit better educated or farther-travelled than my father, had built a
pretty one, whilst my father built an ugly one, is one of the many things
I do not know, and wish I did.
From the old sketches of it which my grandfather painted on the
parlour handscreens, I think it must have been like a larger edition of
the farm; that is, with long mullioned windows, a broad and gracefully
proportioned doorway with several shallow steps and

quaintly-ornamented lintel; bits of fine work and ornamentation about
the woodwork here and there, put in as if they had been done, not for
the look of the thing, but for the love of it, and whitewash over the
house-front, and over the apple-trees in the orchard.
That was what our ancestor's home was like; and it was the sort of
house that became Walnut-tree Academy, where Jem and I went to
school.
CHAPTER II.
Sable:--"Ha, you! A little more upon the dismal (_forming their
countenances_); this fellow has a good mortal look, place him near the
corpse; that wainscoat face must be o' top of the stairs; that fellow's
almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some strange misery)
at the end of the hall. So--but I'll fix you all myself. Let's have no
laughing now on any provocation."--_The Funeral_, STEELE.
At one time I really hoped to make the acquaintance of the old miser of
Walnut-tree Farm. It was when we saved the life of his cat.
He was very fond of that cat, I think, and it was, to say the least of it, as
eccentric-looking as its master. One eye was yellow and the other was
blue, which gave it a strange, uncanny expression, and its rust-coloured
fur was not common either as to