'Very well, sir-as you please, sir. You are the first gentleman as has objected, sir.'
'And, once for all, I give you warning,' added Norman, 'that if I have reason to believe you have been obliging the young gentlemen, the magistrates and the trustees of the road shall certainly hear of it.'
'You would not hurt a poor man, sir, as is drove to it--you as has such a name for goodness!'
'I have given you warning,' said Norman. 'The next time I find any of your bottles in the school fields, your licence goes. Now, there are your goods. Give Mr. Larkins back the fifteen-pence. I wonder you are not ashamed of such a charge!'
Having extracted the money, Norman turned to leave the shop. Larkins, triumphant, 'Ha! there's Harrison!' as the tutor rode by, and they touched their caps. 'How he stared! My eyes! June, you'll be had up for dealing with old Ball!' and he went into an ecstasy of laughing. 'You've settled him, I believe. Well, is justice satisfied?'
'It would be no use thrashing you,' said Norman, laughing, as he leaned against the parapet of the bridge, and pinched the boy's ear. 'There's nothing to be got out of you but chaff.'
Larkins was charmed with the compliment.
'But I'll tell you what, Larkins, I can't think how a fellow like you can go and give in to these sneaking, underhand tricks that make you ashamed to look one in the face.'
'It is only for the fun of it.'
'Well, I wish you would find your fun some other way. Come, Larkins, recollect yourself a little--you have a home not so far off. How do you think your father and mother would fancy seeing you reading the book you had yesterday, or coming out of Ballhatchet's with a bottle of spirits, called by a false name?'
Larkins pinched his fingers; home was a string that could touch him, but it seemed beneath him to own it. At that moment a carriage approached, the boy's whole face lighted up, and he jumped forward. 'Our own!' he cried. 'There she is!'
She was, of course, his mother; and Norman, though turning hastily away that his presence might prove no restraint, saw the boy fly over the door of the open carriage, and could have sobbed at the thought of what that meeting was.
'Who was that with you?' asked Mrs. Larkins, when she had obtained leave to have her boy with her, while she did her shopping.
'That was May senior, our dux.'
'Was it? I am very glad you should be with him, my dear George. He is very kind to you, I hope?'
'He is a jolly good fellow,' said Larkins sincerely, though by no means troubling himself as to the appropriateness of the eulogy, nor thinking it necessary to explain to his mother the terms of the conversation.
It was not fruitless; Larkins did avoid mischief when it was not extremely inviting, was more amenable to May senior, and having been put in mind by him of his home, was not ashamed to bring the thought to the aid of his eyes, when, on Sunday, during a long sermon of Mr. Ramsden's, he knew that Axworthy was making the grimace which irresistibly incited him to make a still finer one.
And Ballhatchet was so much convinced of 'that there young May' being in earnest, that he assured his persuasive customers that it was as much as his licence was worth to supply them.
Evil and insubordination were more easily kept under than Norman had expected, when he first made up his mind to the struggle. Firmness had so far carried the day, and the power of manful assertion of the right had been proved, contrary to Cheviot's parting auguries, that he would only make himself disliked, and do no good.
The whole of the school was extremely excited this summer by a proceeding of Mr. Tomkins, the brewer, who suddenly closed up the footway called Randall's Alley, declaring that there was no right of passage through a certain field at the back of his brewery. Not only the school, but the town was indignant, and the Mays especially so. It had been the doctor's way to school forty years ago, and there were recollections connected with it that made him regard it with personal affection. Norman, too, could not bear to lose it; he had not entirely conquered his reluctance to pass that spot in the High Street, and the loss of the alley would be a positive deprivation to him. Almost every native of Stoneborough felt strongly the encroachment of the brewer, and the boys, of course, carried the sentiment to exaggeration.
The propensity to public speaking perhaps added to the excitement, for Norman May and Harvey Anderson, for once in unison, each made a vehement harangue in the school-court--Anderson's a fine specimen of the village Hampden style, about Britons never suffering indignities, and free-born Englishmen swelling at injuries.
'That they do, my hearty,' interjected Larkins, pointing to an inflamed eye that had not returned to its right dimensions. However, Anderson went on unmoved by the under titter, and demonstrated, to the full satisfaction of all the audience, that nothing could be more illegal and unfounded than the brewer's claims.
Then came a great outburst from Norman, with all his father's headlong vehemence; the way was the right of the town, the walk had been trodden by their forefathers for generations past--it had been made by the good old generous-hearted man who loved his town and townspeople, and would have heard with shame and anger of a stranger, a new inhabitant, a grasping radical, caring, as radicals always did, for no rights, but for their own chance of unjust gains, coming here to Stoneborough to cut them off from their own path. He talk of liberalism and the rights of the poor! He who cut off Randall's poor old creatures in the almshouses from their short way! and then came some stories of his oppression as a poor-law guardian, which greatly aggravated the wrath of the speaker and audience, though otherwise they did not exactly bear on the subject.
'What would old Nicholas Randall say to these nineteenth-century doings?' finished Norman.
'Down, with them!' cried a voice from the throng, probably Larkins's; but there was no desire to investigate, it was the universal sentiment. 'Down with it! Hurrah, we'll have our footpath open again! Down with the fences! Britons never shall be slaves!' as Larkins finally ejaculated.
'That's the way to bring it to bear!' said Harvey Anderson, 'See if he dares to bring an action against us. Hurrah!'
'Yes, that's the way to settle it,' said Norman. 'Let's have it down. It is an oppressive, arbitrary, shameful proceeding, and we'll show him we won't submit to it!'
Carried along by the general feeling, the whole troop of boys dashed shouting up to the barricade at the entrance of the field, and levelled it with the ground. A handkerchief was fastened to the top of one of the stakes, and waved over the brewhouse wall, and some of the boys were for picking up stones and dirt, and launching them over, in hopes of spoiling the beer; but Norman put a stop to this, and brought them back to the school-yard, still in a noisy state of exultation.
It cooled a little by-and-by under the doubt how their exploit would be taken. At home, Norman found it already known, and his father half glad, half vexed, enjoying the victory over Tomkins, yet a little uneasy on his son's behalf. 'What will Dr. Hoxton say to the dux?' said he. 'I didn't know he was to be dux in mischief as well as out of it.'
'You can't call it mischief, papa, to resent an unwarranted encroachment of our rights by such an old ruffian as that. One's blood is up to think of the things he has done!'
'He richly deserves it, no doubt,' said the doctor, 'and yet I wish you had been out of the row. If there is any blame, you will be the first it will light on.'
'I am glad of it, that is but just. Anderson and I seem to have stirred it up--if it wanted stirring--for it was in every fellow there; indeed, I had no notion it was coming to this when I began.'
'Oratory,' said the doctor, smiling. 'Ha, Norman! Think a little another time, my boy, before you take the law into your own hands, or, what is worse, into a lot of hands you can't control for good, though you may excite them to harm.'
Dr. Hoxton did not come into school at the usual hour, and, in the course of the morning, sent for May senior, to speak to him in his study.
He looked very broad, awful, and dignified, as he informed him that Mr. Tomkins had just been with him to complain of the damage that had been done, and he appeared extremely displeased that the dux should have been no check on such proceedings.
'I am sorry, sir,' said Norman, 'but I believe it was the general feeling that he had no right to stop the alley, and, therefore, that it could not be wrong to break it down.'
'Whether he has a right or not is not a question to be settled by you. So I find that you, whose proper office it is to keep order, have been inflaming the mischievous and aggressive spirit amongst the others. I am surprised at you; I thought you were more to be depended upon, May, in your position.'
Norman coloured a good deal, and simply answered? 'I am sorry, sir.'
