“Come, you sir, get out,” said the commanding voice of the visitor, as the cane which he carried in his hand, paid round with wax-end for some three inches at the extremity, began switching his little legs smartly.
“Oh, sir, for the love of God!” cried Marjory, clinging to his hand. “Oh, sir, he’s the gentlest little creature, and he’ll do whatever he’s bid, and the lovingest child in the world.”
The boy had got out by this time, and looking wonderingly in the man’s face, was unconsciously, with the wincing of pain, lifting his leg slightly, for the sting of the cane was quite new to him.
“If I catch you at that work again I’ll give you five dozen,” said his new acquaintance.
“Is this his?” said he, touching the carpetbag with his cane.
“Yes, sir, please.”
He took it in his hand, and glanced at the boy—I think it was in his mind to make him carry it. But the child was slender, and the bag, conscientiously packed with everything that had ever belonged to him, was a trifle too heavy.
“Anything else?” demanded the Sergeant-Major.
“This—this, God bless him.”
It was the little box with his ships.
“And this;” and she thrust the griddle cake, broken across and rolled up in brown paper, into the boy’s pocket.
“And these;” and three apples she had ready, she thrust after them.
“And ho! my blessed darlin’, my darlin’, darlin’, darlin’.”
He was lifted up against her heart, folded fast, and hugging her round the neck, they kissed and cried and cried and kissed, and at last she let him down; and the Sergeant-Major, with the cane under his arm, the carpetbag in one hand, and the boy’s wrist firmly held in the other, marched out of the door.
“That’s enough—don’t follow, woman,” said he, after they had gone about twenty yards on the path; “and I’ll report you,” he added with a nod which, with these pleasant words, she might take as a farewell or not as she pleased.
She stood on the little rising ground by the hawthorn-tree, kissing her hands wildly after him, with streaming eyes.
“I’ll be sure to see you soon. I’d walk round the world barefoot to see my pretty man again,” she kept crying after him; “and I’ll bring the ninepins, I’ll be sure. Mammy’s comin’, my darlin’.”
And the receding figure of the little boy was turned toward her all it could. He was gazing over his shoulder, with cheeks streaming with tears, and his little hand waving yearningly back to her until he was out of sight. And after a while she turned back, and there was their ninepins’ ground, and the tarn, and her sobs quickened almost to a scream; and she sat down on the stone bench under the window—for she could not bear to enter the dark cottage—and there, in Irish phrase, she cried her fill.
In the meantime Archdale and his companion, or prisoner—which you will—pursued their march. He still held the boy’s wrist, and the boy cried and sobbed gently to himself all the way.
When they came down to the little hamlet called Maple Wickets he hired a boy to carry the carpetbag to Wunning, four miles further on, where the Warhampton bus passes, as everybody knows, at half-past twelve o’clock daily.
They resumed their march. The Sergeant was a serenely taciturn man. He no more thought of addressing the boy than he did of apostrophising the cane or the carpetbag. He let him sob on, and neither snubbed nor consoled him, but carried his head serene and high, looking straight before him.
At length the novelty of the scene began to act upon the volatility of childhood.
As he walked by the Sergeant he began to prattle, at first timidly, and then more volubly.
The first instinct of the child is trust. It was a kind of consolation to the boy to talk a great deal of his home, and Tom Orange was of course mentioned with the usual inquiry, “Do you know Tom Orange?”
“Why so?”
Then followed the list of that facetious and brilliant person’s accomplishments.
“And are we to go near a place called Wyvern or Carwell Grange?” asked the boy, whose memory, where his fancy was interested, was retentive.
“Why so?” again demanded the Sergeant, looking straight before him.
“Because Tom Orange told me there’s the biggest mushroom in the world grown up there, and that the owner of the house can’t get in, for it fills up the door.”
“Tom Orange told you that?” demanded the Sergeant in the same way.
And the boy, supposing it incredulity on his part, assured him that Tom, who was truth itself, had told him so only yesterday.
The Sergeant said no more, and you could not have told in the least by his face that he had made a note of it and was going to “report” Tom Orange in the proper quarter. And in passing, I may mention that about three weeks later Tom Orange was peremptorily dismissed from his desultory employments under Mr. Archdale, and was sued for stealing apples from Warhampton orchard, and some minor peccadillos, and brought before the magistrates, among whom sat, as it so happened, on that occasion, Squire Fairfield of Wyvern, who was “precious hard on him,” and got him in for more than a month with hard labour. The urchin hireling with the carpetbag trudged on in front as the Sergeant-Major had commanded.
Our little friend, with many a sobbing sigh, and a great load at his heart, yet was looking about him.
They were crossing a moor with beautiful purple heather, such as he had never seen before. The Sergeant had let go his wrist. He felt more at his ease every way.
There were little pools of water here and there which attracted the boy’s attention, and made him open his box of cork boats and peep at them. He wondered how they would sail in these dark little nooks, and at last, one lying very conveniently, he paused at its margin, and took out a ship and floated it,
