Brownsmith's Boy Part 28

Then he busily showed me the use of the saw and knife among the big standard trees, using them liberally to get rid of all the scrubby, crowded, useless branches that lived upon the strength of the tree and did no work, only kept out the light, air, and suns.h.i.+ne from those that did work and bear fruit.

"Why it almost seems, sir," I said one day, "as if Nature had made the trees so badly that man was obliged to improve them."

"Ah, I'm glad to hear you say that, my lad," he said; "but you are not right. I'm only a gardener, but I've noticed these things a great deal.

Nature is not a bungler. She gives us apple and plum trees, and they grow and bear fruit in a natural and sufficient way. It is because man wants them to bear more and bigger fruit, and for more to grow on a small piece of ground than Nature would plant, that man has to cut and prune."

"But suppose Nature planted a lot of trees on a small piece of ground,"

I said, "what then?"

"What then, Grant? Why, for a time they'd grow up thin and poor and spindly, till one of them made a start and overtopped the others. Then it would go on growing, and the others would dwindle and die away."

The time glided on, and I kept learning the many little things about the place pretty fast. As the months went on I became of some use to my employer over his accounts, and by degrees pretty well knew his position.

It seemed that he had been a widower for many years, and Mrs Dodley, the housekeeper and general servant all in one, confided to me one day that "Missus's" bonnets and shawls and gowns were all hanging up in their places just as they had been left by Mrs Brownsmith.

"Which it's a dead waste, Master Grant," she used to finish by saying, "as there's several as I know would be glad to have 'em; but as to that--Lor' bless yer!"

It was not often that Mrs Dodley spoke, but when she did it was to inveigh against some oppression or trouble.

Candles were a great burden to the scrupulously clean woman.

"Tens I says," she confided to me one day, "but he will have eights, and what's the consequence? If I want to do a bit of extry needle-work I might light up two tens, but I should never have the heart to burn two eights at once, for extravagance I can't abear. Ah! he's a hard master, and I'm sorry for you, my dear."

"Why?" I said.

"Ah! you'll find out some day," she said, shaking her head and then bustling off to her work.

I had not much companions.h.i.+p, for Ike was generally too busy to say a word, and though after the pear adventure Shock did nothing more annoying to me than to stand now and then upon his head, look at me upside down, and point and spar at me with his toes, we seemed to get to be no better friends.

He took to that trick all at once one day in a soft bit of newly dug earth. He was picking up stones, and I was sticking fresh labels at the ends of some rows of plants, when all at once he uttered a peculiar monkey-like noise, down went his head, up went his heels, and I stared in astonishment at first and then turned my back.

This always annoyed Shock; but one day when he stood up after his quaint fas.h.i.+on I was out of temper and had a bad headache, so I ran to him, and he struck at me with his feet, just as if they had been hands, only he could not have doubled them up. I was too quick for him though, and with a push drove him down.

He jumped up again directly and repeated the performance.

I knocked him down angrily.

He stood up again.

I knocked him down again.

And so on, again and again, when he turned and ran off laughing, and I went on with my work, vexed with myself for having shown temper.

Every now and then a fit of low spirits used to attack me. It was generally on was.h.i.+ng-days, when Mrs Dodley filled the place with steam early in the morning by lighting the copper fire, and then seeming to be making calico puddings to boil and send an unpleasant soapy odour through the house.

Doors and chair backs were so damp and steamy then that I used to be glad to go out and see Shock, whom I often used to find right away in the little shed indulging in a bit of cookery of his own.

If Shock's hands had been clean I could often have joined him in his feasts, but I never could fancy turnips boiled in a dirty old sauce-pan, nor tender bits of cabbage stump. I made up my mind that I would some day try snails, but when I did join Shock on a soaking wet morning when there was no gardening, and he invited me in his sulky way to dinner, the only times I partook of his fare were on chat days.

What are chat days? Why, the days when he used to have a good fire of wood and stumps, and roast the chats, as they called the little refuse potatoes too small for seed, in the ashes.

They were very nice, though there was not much in one. Still they were hot and floury, and not bad with a bit of salt.

Wet days, though, were always a trouble to me, and I used to feel a kind of natural sympathy with Mr Brownsmith as he set his men jobs in the sheds, and kept walking to the doors to see if the rain had ceased.

"That's one thing I should like to have altered in nature," he said to me with one of his dry comical looks. "I should like the rain to come down in the night, my boy, so as to leave the day free for work. Always work."

"I like it, sir," I said.

"No, you don't, you young impostor!" he cried. "You want to be playing with tops or marbles, or at football or something."

I shook my head.

"You do, you dog!" he cried.

I shook my head again.

"No, sir," I said; "I like learning all about the plants and the pruning. Ike showed me on some dead wood the other day how to graft."

"Ah, I'll show you how to do it on live wood some day. There's a lot more things I should like to show you, but I've no gla.s.s."

"No," I said; "I've often wished we had a microscope."

"A what, Grant?"

"Microscope, sir, to look at the blight and the veins in the plants'

leaves."

"No, no; I mean greenhouses and forcing-houses, where fruit and vegetables and flowers are brought on early: but wait a bit."

I did wait a bit, and went on learning, getting imperceptibly to know a good deal about gardening, and so a couple of years slipped away, when one day I was superintending the loading of the cart after seeing that it was properly supported with trestles. Ike was seated astride one of the large baskets as if it were a saddle, and taking off his old hat he began to indulge in a good scratch at his head.

"Lookye here," he exclaimed suddenly, "why don't you go to market?"

"Too young," I said, with a feeling of eagerness flas.h.i.+ng through me.

"Not you," he said slowly, as he looked down at me and seemed to measure me with his eye as one of my uncles did. "There's a much littler boy than you goes with one of the carts, and I see him cutting about the market with a book under his arm, looking as chuff as a pea on a shovel.

He ain't nothing to you. Come along o' me. I'll take an old coat for wrapper, and you'll be as right as the mail. You ask him. He'll let you come."

Ike was wrong, for when I asked Old Brownsmith's leave he shook his head.

"No, no, boy. You're too young yet. Best in bed."

"Too partickler by half," Ike growled when I let him know the result of my asking. "He's jealous, that's what he is. Wants to keep you all to hisself. Not as I wants you. 'Tain't to please me. You're young and wants eddicating; well, you wants night eddication as well as day eddication. What do you know about the road to London of a night?"

"Nothing at all, Ike?" I said with a sigh.

"Scholard as you are too," growled Ike. "Why, my figgering and writing ain't even worth talking about with a pen, though I am good with chalk, but even I know the road to London."