Mr Solomon bit his lips as he locked the door, for he was touched in a
tender place, for, as I found out afterwards, he was very jealous of the
success of General Roberts's gardener.
His back was turned, and, taking advantage of this, the boy made a dash
at me with his cane.
This was too much in my frame of mind, and I went at him, when the head
gardener turned sharply and stood between us.
"That'll do," he cried sternly to us both.
"All right!" said the boy in a cool disdainful manner. "I'll watch for
him, and if ever he comes in our garden again I'll let him know. I'll
pay the beggar out. He is a beggar, isn't he, old Solomon?"
"Well, if I was asked which of you was the young gentleman, and which
the ill-bred young beggar, I should be able to say pretty right,"
replied the gardener slowly.
"Oh! should you? Well, don't you bring him here again, or I'll let him
know."
"You'd better let him know now, boy, for he's going to stop."
"What's he, the new boy?" said the lad, as if asking a very innocent
question. "Where did you get him, Brownsmith? Is he out of the
workhouse?"
Mr Solomon smiled at the boy's malice, but he saw me wince, and he drew
me to his side in an instant. I had been thinking what a cold, hard man
he was, and how different to his brother, who had been quite fatherly to
me of late; but I found out now that he was, under his stern outward
seeming, as good-hearted as Old Brownsmith himself.
He did not speak, but he laid one hand upon my shoulder and pressed it,
and that hand seemed to say to me: "Don't take any notice of the little-minded, contemptible, spoiled cub;"
and I drew a deep breath and began to feel that perhaps after all I
should not want to go away.
"I thought so," cried the boy with a snigger--"he's a pauper then. Ha,
ha, ha! a pauper! I'll tell Courtenay. We'll call him pauper if he
stops here."
"And that's just what he is going to do, Master Philip," said the head
gardener, who seemed to have recovered his temper; "and that's what,
thank goodness, you are not going to do. And the sooner you are off
back to school to be licked into shape the better for you, that is if
ever you expect to grow into a man. Come along, my lad, it's getting
late."
"Yes, take him away," shouted the boy as I went off with Mr Solomon, my
blood seeming to tingle in my veins as I heard a jeering burst of
laughter behind me, and directly after the boy shouted: "Here, hi! Courtenay. Here's a game. We've got a new pauper in the
place."