Where there were no gooseberries or currants, the rows of rhubarb plants
used to send up their red stems and great green leaves; and in other
places there would be great patches of wallflowers, from which wafts of
delicious scent would come in at the open window. In the spring there
would be great rows of red and yellow tulips, and later on sweet-william
and rockets, and purple and yellow pansies in great beds.
I used to wonder that such a boy was allowed to go loose in such a
garden as that, among those flowers and strawberry beds, and, above all,
apples, and pears, and plums, for in the autumn time the trees trained
up against the high red-brick wall were covered with purple and yellow
plums, and the rosy apples peeped from among the green leaves, and the
pears would hang down till it seemed as if the branches must break.
But that boy went about just as he liked, and it often seemed very hard
that such a shaggy-looking wild fellow in rags should have the run of
such a beautiful garden, while I had none.
There was a little single opera-glass on the chimney-piece which I used
to take down and focus, so that I could see the fruit that was ripe, and
the fruit that was green, and the beauty of the flowers. I used to
watch the birds building through that glass, and could almost see the
eggs in one little mossy cup of a chaffinch's nest; but I could not
quite. I did see the tips of the young birds' beaks, though, when they
were hatched and the old ones came to feed them.
It was by means of that glass that I could see how the boy fastened up
his trousers with one strap and a piece of string, for he had no braces,
and there were no brace buttons. Those corduroy trousers had been made
for somebody else, I should say for a man, and pieces of the legs had
been cut off, and the upper part came well over his back and chest. He
had no waistcoat, but he wore a jacket that must have belonged to a man.
It was a jacket that was fustian behind, and had fustian sleeves, but
the front was of purple plush with red and yellow flowers, softened down
with dirt; and the sleeves of this jacket were tucked up very high,
while the bottom came down to his knees.
He did not wear a hat, but the crown of an old straw bonnet, the top of
which had come unsewed, and rose and fell like the lid of a round box
with one hinge, and when the lid blew open you could see his shaggy
hair, which seemed as if it had never been brushed since it first came
up out of his skin.