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 washing-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 glass."