Great Uncle Hoot-Toot
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He did not sleep much that night. He was so anxious to be off early that he kept waking up every hour or two. At last, after striking a match to see what o'clock it was for perhaps the twentieth time, his watch told him it was past six. He got up and dressed, then he shouldered his bag, and made his way as quickly as he could downstairs. He could not resist lingering a moment outside his mother's door; it was slightly ajar, and there was a faint light within. Elsa's voice came to him as he stood there.
"I am so glad you are better this morning, dear mamma," she was saying. "I hoped you would be when I went to bed, at three o'clock. You were sleeping so peacefully. I am sure you will be quite well again soon, if we can manage to keep you quiet, and if you won't worry yourself. Everything is quite right."
Geoff's face hardened again.
"I know what all that means," he thought. "Yes, indeed, everything is so right that I, I, have to run away like a thief, because I am too miserable to bear it any more."
And he lingered no longer.
He made his way out of the house without difficulty. It was getting light after a fashion by this time, though it was quite half an hour earlier than he usually started for school. He felt chilly – chillier than he had ever felt before, though it was not a very cold morning. But going out breakfastless does not tend to make one feel warm, and of this sort of thing Geoff had but scant experience. His bag, too, felt very heavy; he glanced up and down the street with a vague idea that perhaps he would catch sight of some boy who, for a penny or two, would carry it for him to the omnibus; but there was no boy in sight. No one at all, indeed, except a young man, who crossed the street from the opposite side while Geoff was looking about him, and walked on slowly a little in front. He was a very respectable-looking young man, far too much so to ask him to carry the bag, yet as Geoff overtook him – for, heavy though it was, the boy felt he must walk quickly to get off as fast as possible – the young man glanced up with a good-natured smile.
"Excuse me, sir," he said civilly, "your bag's a bit heavy for you. Let me take hold of it with you, if we're going the same way."
Geoffrey looked at him doubtfully. He was too much of a Londoner to make friends hastily.
"Thank you," he said. "I can manage it. I'm only going to the corner to wait for the omnibus."
"Just precisely what I'm going to do myself," said the other. "I'm quite a stranger hereabouts. I've been staying a day or two with a friend of mine who keeps a livery stable, and I'm off for the day to Shalecray, to see another friend. Can you tell me, sir, maybe, if the omnibus that passes near here takes one to the railway station?"
"Which railway station?" said Geoff, more than half inclined to laugh at the stranger's evident countrifiedness.
"Victoria Station, to be sure. It's the one I come by. Isn't it the big station for all parts?"
"Bless you! no," said Geoff. "There are six or seven as big as it in London. What line is this place on?"
"That's more nor I can say," said the stranger, looking as if he would have scratched his head to help him out of his perplexity if he had had a hand free. But he had not, for he had caught up the bag, and was walking along beside Geoff, and under his arm he carried a very substantial alpaca umbrella. And in the interest of the conversation Geoff had scarcely noticed the way in which the stranger had, as it were, attached himself to him.
"Ah, well! never mind. I'm going to Victoria myself, and when we get there I'll look up your place and find you your train," said Geoff, patronizingly.
He had kept looking at the stranger, and as he did so, his misgivings disappeared.
"He is just a simple country lad," he said to himself. And, indeed, the young man's blue eyes, fresh complexion, and open expression would have reassured any but a most suspicious person.
"You're very kind, sir," he replied. "You see, London's a big place, and country folk feels half stupid-like in it."
"Yes, of course," said Geoff. "For my part, I often wonder any one that's free to do as they like cares to live in London. You're a great deal better off in the country."
"There's bads and goods everywhere, I take it, sir," said the young man, philosophically.
But by this time they had reached the corner where the omnibus started, and Geoff's attention was directed to hailing the right one. And an omnibus rattling over London stones is not exactly the place for conversation, so no more passed between them till they were dropped within a stone's throw of Victoria Station.
Geoff was beginning to feel very hungry, and almost faint as well as chilly.
"I say," he said to his companion, "you're not in any very desperate hurry to get off, are you? For I'm frightfully hungry. You don't mind waiting while I have some breakfast, do you? I'll look you out your train for that place as soon as I've had some."
"All right, sir," said the stranger. "If it wouldn't be making too free, I'd be pleased to join you. But I suppose you'll be going into the first-class?"
"Oh no," said Geoff. "I don't mind the second-class."
And into the second-class refreshment-room they went. They grew very friendly over hot coffee and a rasher of bacon, and then Geoff laid out threepence on a railway guide, and proceeded to hunt up Shalecray.
"Here you are!" he exclaimed. "And upon my word, that's a good joke. This place – Shalecray – is on the very line I'm going by. I wonder I never noticed it. I came up that way not long ago, from Entlefield."
"Indeed, sir; that's really curious," said the countryman. "And are you going to Entlefield to-day?"
"Well," said Geoff, "I fancy so. I've not quite made up my mind, to tell the truth. I know the country about there. I want to find some – some farmhouse."
"Oh, exactly – I understand," interrupted the young man. "You want somewhere where they'll put you up tidily for a few days – just for a breath of country air."
"Well, no; not exactly," said Geoffrey. "The fact is, I'm looking out for – for some sort of situation about a farm. I'm very fond of country life. I don't care what I do. I'm not a fine gentleman!"
The countryman looked at him with interest.
"I see," he said. "You're tired of town, I take it, sir. But what do your friends say to it, sir? At sixteen, or even seventeen, you have still to ask leave, I suppose?"
"Not always," said Geoff. "I've made no secret of it. I've no father, and – I'm pretty much my own master."
"'I care for nobody, and nobody cares for me,' eh?" quoted the young man, laughing.
"Something like it, I suppose," said Geoff, laughing too, though rather forcedly. For a vision of Vicky, sobbing, perhaps, over her lonely breakfast, would come before him – of Elsa and Frances trying how to break to their mother the news that Geoff had really run away. "They'll soon get over it," he said to himself. "They've got that old curmudgeon to console them, and I don't want to live on his money."
"Do you think I can easily find a place of some kind?" he went on, after a pause.
The countryman this time did scratch his head, while he considered.
"How old may you be, sir? Sixteen or seventeen, maybe?" he inquired.
"I'm not so much; I'm only fourteen," said Geoff, rather reluctantly.
"Really! now, who'd 'a' thought it?" said his new friend, admiringly. "You'll be just the man for a country life when you're full-grown. Not afraid of roughing it? Fond of riding, I dare say?"
"Oh yes," said Geoff. "At least, in town of course I haven't had as much of it as I'd like." He had never ridden in his life, except the previous summer, on a peculiarly gentle old pony of Mrs. Colethorne's.
"No, in course not. Well now, sir, if you'd no objection to stopping at Shalecray with me, it strikes me my friend there, Farmer Eames, might likely enough know of something to suit you. He's a very decent fellow – a bit rough-spoken, maybe. But you're used to country ways – you'd not mind that."
"Oh, not a bit!" said Geoff. "I'm much obliged to you for thinking of it. And you say it's possible – that this Farmer Eames may perhaps have a place that I should do for?"
"Nay, sir, I can't say that. It's just a chance. I only said he'd maybe know of something."
"Well, I don't see that it will do any harm to ask him. I'll only take a ticket to Shalecray, then. I can go on farther later in the day if I don't find anything to suit me there. We'd better take the first train – a quarter to nine. We've still twenty minutes or so to wait."
"Yes, there's plenty of time – time for a pipe. You don't object, sir? But, bless me" – and he felt in his pockets one after the other – "if I haven't forgotten my 'bacca! With your leave, sir, I'll run across the street to fetch some. I saw a shop as we came in."
"Very well," said Geoff; "I'll wait here. Don't be too late."
He had no particular fancy for going to buy cheap tobacco in the company of the very rustic-looking stranger. Besides, he thought it safer to remain quiet in a dark corner of the waiting-room.
It was curious that, though the countryman came back with a well-filled tobacco-pouch, he had not left the station! He only disappeared for a minute or two into the telegraph office, and the message he there indited was as follows: —
"Got him all safe. Will report further this evening."
And ten minutes later the two were ensconced in a third-class carriage, with tickets for Shalecray.
Geoff had often travelled second, but rarely third. He did not, truth to tell, particularly like it. Yet he could not have proposed anything else to his companion, unless he had undertaken to pay the difference. And as it was, the breakfast and his own third-class ticket had made a considerable hole in his thirty shillings. He must be careful, for even with all his inexperience he knew it was possible he might have to pay his own way for some little time to come.
"Still, the chances are I shall find what I want very easily," he reflected. "It is evidently not difficult, by what this fellow tells me."
It did not even strike him as in any way a very remarkable coincidence that almost on the doorstep of his own home he should have lighted upon the very person he needed to give him the particular information he was in want of. For in many ways, in spite of his boasted independence, poor Geoff was as innocent and unsuspicious as a baby.
CHAPTER VIII.
"HALF-A-CROWN A WEEK AND HIS VICTUALS."
Shalecray was a small station, where no very considerable number of trains stopped in the twenty-four hours. It was therefore a slow train by which Geoffrey Tudor and his new friend travelled; so, though the distance from London was really short, it took them fully two hours to reach their destination. And two hours on a raw drizzly November morning is quite a long enough time to spend in a third-class carriage, shivering if the windows are down, and suffering on the other hand from the odours of damp fustian and bad tobacco if they are up.
Cold as it was, it seemed pleasant in comparison when they got out at last, and were making their way down a very muddy, but really country lane. Geoff gave a sort of snort of satisfaction.
"I do love the country," he said.
His companion looked at him curiously.
"I believe you, sir," he replied. "You must like it, to find it pleasant in November," he went on, with a tone which made Geoff glance at him in surprise. Somehow in the last few words the countryman's accent seemed to have changed a little. Geoff could almost have fancied there was a cockney twang about it.
"Why, don't you like it?" said Geoff. "You said you were lost and miserable in town."
"Of course, sir. What else could I be? I'm country born and bred. But it's not often as a Londoner takes to it as you do, and it's not to say lively at this time, and" – he looked down with a grimace – "the lanes is uncommon muddy."
"How far is it to your friend's place?" Geoff inquired, thinking to himself that if he were to remark on the mud it would not be surprising, but that it was rather curious for his companion to do so.
"A matter of two mile or so," Jowett – for Ned Jowett, he had told Geoff, was his name – replied; "and now I come to think of it, perhaps it'd be as well for you to leave your bag at the station. I'll see that it's all right; and as you're not sure of stopping at Crickwood, there's no sense in carrying it there and maybe back again for nothing. I'll give it in charge to the station-master, and be back in a moment."
He had shouldered it and was hastening back to the station almost before Geoff had time to take in what he said. The boy stood looking after him vaguely. He was beginning to feel tired and a little dispirited. He did not feel as if he could oppose anything just then.
"If he's a cheat and he's gone off with my bag, I just can't help it," he thought. "He won't gain much. Still, he looks honest."
And five minutes later the sight of the young man's cheery face as he hastened back removed all his misgivings.
"All right, sir," he called out. "It'll be quite safe; and if by chance you hit it off with Mr. Eames, the milk-cart that comes to fetch the empty cans in the afternoon can bring the bag too."
They stepped out more briskly after that. It was not such a very long walk to the farm, though certainly more than the two miles Jowett had spoken of. As they went on, the country grew decidedly pretty, or perhaps it would be more correct to say one saw that in summer and pleasant weather it must be very pretty. Geoff, however, was hardly at the age for admiring scenery much. He looked about him with interest, but little more than interest.
"Are there woods about here?" he asked suddenly. "I do like woods."
Jowett hesitated.
"I don't know this part of the country not to say so very well," he replied. "There's some fine gentlemen's seats round about, I believe. Crickwood Bolders, now, is a fine place – we'll pass by the park wall in a minute; it's the place that Eames's should by rights be the home farm to, so to say. But it's been empty for a many years. The family died down till it come to a distant cousin who was in foreign parts, and he let the farm to Eames, and the house has been shut up. They do speak of his coming back afore long."
Geoff looked out for the park of which Jowett spoke; they could not see much of it, certainly, without climbing the wall, for which he felt no energy. But a little farther on they came to gates, evidently a back entrance, and they stood still for a moment or two and looked in.
"Yes," said Geoff, gazing over the wide expanse of softly undulating ground, broken by clumps of magnificent old trees, which at one side extended into a fringe skirting the park for miles apparently, till it melted in the distance into a range of blue-topped hills – "yes, it must be a fine place indeed. That's the sort of place, now, I'd like to own, Jowett."
He spoke more cordially again, for Jowett's acquaintance with the neighbourhood had destroyed a sort of misgiving that had somehow come over him as to whether his new friend were perhaps "taking him in altogether."
"I believe you," said the countryman, laughing loudly, as if Geoff's remark had been a very good joke indeed. Geoff felt rather nettled.
"And why shouldn't I own such a place, pray?" he said haughtily. "Such things, when one is a gentleman, are all a matter of chance, as you know. If my father, or my grandfather, rather, had not been a younger son, I should have been – "
Ned Jowett turned to him rather gravely.
"I didn't mean to offend you, sir," he said. "But you must remember you're taking up a different line from that. Farmer Eames, or farmer nobody, wouldn't engage a farm hand that expected to be treated as a gentleman. It's not my fault, sir. 'Twas yourself told me what you wished."
Geoff was silent for a moment or two. It was not easy all at once to make up his mind to not being a gentleman any more, and yet his common sense told him that Jowett was right; it must be so. Unless, indeed, he gave it all up and went back home again to eat humble pie, and live on Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot's bounty, and go to some horrid school of his choosing, and be more "bullied" (so he expressed it to himself) than ever by his sisters, and scarcely allowed to see his mother at all. The silent enumeration of these grievances decided him. He turned round to Jowett with a smile.
"Yes," he said; "I was forgetting. You must tell Farmer Eames he'll not find any nonsense about me."
"All right, sir. But, if you'll excuse me, I'd best perhaps drop the 'sir'?"
Geoff nodded.
"And that reminds me," Jowett went on, "you've not told me your name – leastways, what name you wish me to give Eames. We're close to his place now;" and as he spoke he looked about him scrutinizingly. "Ten minutes past the back way through the park you'll come to a lane on the left. Eames's farm is the first house you come to on the right," he repeated to himself, too low for Geoff to hear. "Yes, I can't be wrong."
"You can call me Jim – Jim Jeffreys," said the boy. "He needn't be afraid of getting into any trouble if he takes me on. I've no father, and my mother won't worry about me," he added bitterly.
The entrance to the lane just then came in sight.
"This here's our way," said Jowett. "Supposing I go on a bit in front. I think it would be just as well to explain to Eames about my bringing you."
"All right," said Geoff. "I'll come on slowly. Where is the farm?"
"First house to the right; you can't miss it. But I'll come back to meet you again."
He hurried on, and Geoff followed slowly. He was hungry now as well as cold and tired – at least, he supposed he must be hungry, he felt so dull and stupid. What should he do if Farmer Eames could not take him on? he began to ask himself; he really felt as if it would be impossible for him to set off on his travels again like a tramp, begging for work all over the country. And for the first time it began faintly to dawn upon him that he had acted very foolishly.
"But it's too late now," he said to himself; "I'd die rather than go home and ask to be forgiven, and be treated by them all as if I deserved to be sent to prison. I've got enough money to keep me going for a day or two, anyway. If it was summer – haymaking-time, for instance, I suppose it would be easy enough to get work. But now – " and he shivered as he gazed over the bare, dreary, lifeless-looking fields on all sides, where it was difficult to believe that the green grass could ever spring again, or the golden grain wave in the sunshine – "I really wonder what work there can be to do in the winter. The ground's as hard as iron; and oh, my goodness, isn't it cold?"
Suddenly some little way in front he descried two figures coming towards him. The one was Jowett; the other, an older, stouter man, must be Farmer Eames. Geoff's heart began to beat faster. Would he be met by a refusal, and told to make his way back to the station? And if so, where would he go, what should he do? It had all seemed so easy when he planned it at home – he had felt so sure he would find what he wanted at once; he had somehow forgotten it would no longer be summer when he got out into the country again! For the first time in his life he realized what hundreds, nay, thousands of boys, no older than he, must go through every day – poor homeless fellows, poor and homeless through no fault of their own in many cases.
"If ever I'm a rich man," thought Geoff, "I'll think of to-day."
And his anxiety grew so great that by the time the two men had come up to him his usually ruddy face had become almost white.
Jowett looked at him curiously.
"You look uncommon cold, Jim," he said. "This 'ere's Jim Jeffreys as I've been a-talking to you of, Mr. Eames," he said, by way of introduction to the farmer.
"Ah, indeed!" Farmer Eames replied; "seems a well-grown lad, but looks delicate. Is he always so white-like?"
"Bless you! no," said Jowett; "he's only a bit done up with – with one thing and another. We made a hearly start of it, and it's chilly this morning."
The farmer grunted a little.
"He'd need to get used to starting early of a morning if he was to be any use to me," he said half-grudgingly. But even this sounded hopeful to Geoff.
"Oh, I don't mind getting up early," he said quickly. "I'm not used to lying in bed late."
"There's early and early," said the farmer. "What I might take you on trial for would be to drive the milk-cart to and fro the station. There's four sendings in all – full and empty together. And the first time is for the up-train that passes Shalecray at half-past five."
Geoff shivered a little. But it would not do to seem daunted.
"I'll be punctual," he said.
"And of course, between times you'd have to make yourself useful about the dairy, and the pigs – you'd have to see to the pigs, and to make yourself useful," repeated the farmer, whose power of expressing himself was limited.
"Of course," agreed Geoff as heartily as he could, though, truth to tell, the idea of pigs had not hitherto presented itself to him.
"Well," Farmer Eames went on, turning towards Jowett, "I dunno as I mind giving him a trial, seeing as I'm just short of a boy as it happens. And for the station work, it's well to have a sharpish lad, and a civil-spoken one. You'll have to keep a civil tongue in your head, my boy – eh?"
"Certainly," said Geoff, but not without a slight touch of haughtiness. "Of course I'll be civil to every one who's civil to me."
"And who isn't civil to thee, maybe, now and then," said the farmer, with a rather curious smile. "'Twon't be all walking on roses – nay, 'twon't be all walking on roses to be odd boy in a farm. But there's many a one as'd think himself uncommon lucky to get the chance, I can tell you."
"Oh, and so I do," said Geoff, eagerly. "I do indeed. I think it's awfully good of you to try me; and you'll see I'm not afraid of work."
"And what about his character?" said the farmer, speaking again to Jowett. "Can you answer for his honesty? – that's the principal thing."
Geoff's cheeks flamed, and he was starting forward indignantly, when a word or two whispered, sternly almost, in his ear by Jowett, forced him to be quiet. "Don't be an idiot! do you want to spoil all your chances?" he said. And something in the tone again struck Geoff with surprise. He could scarcely believe it was the simple young countryman who was speaking.
"I don't think you need be uneasy on that score," he said. "You see it's all come about in a rather – uncommon sort of way."
"I should rather think so," said the farmer, shrugging his shoulders, but smiling too.
"And," pursued Jowett, "you'll have to stretch a point or two. Of course he'll want very little in the way of wages to begin."
"Half-a-crown a week and his victuals," replied the farmer, promptly. "And he must bind himself for three months certain – I'm not going to be thrown out of a boy at the orkardest time of the year for getting 'em into sharp ways. And I can't have no asking for holidays for three months, either."
Jowett looked at Geoff.
"Very well," said Geoff.
"And you must go to church reg'lar," added the farmer. "You can manage it well enough, and Sunday school, too, if you're sharp – there's only twice to the station on Sundays."
"On Sundays, too?" repeated Geoff. Sundays at worst had been a day of no work at home.
"To be sure," said Eames, sharply. "Beasts can't do for themselves on Sundays no more than any other day. And Londoners can't drink sour milk on Sundays neither."
"No," said Geoff, meekly enough. "Of course I'm used to church," he added, "but I think I'm rather too old for the Sunday school."
"I'll leave that to the parson," said the farmer. "Well, now then, we may as well see if dinner's not ready. It's quite time, and you'll be getting hungry, Mr. Jowett," he added, with a slight hesitation.
"Why not call me Ned? You're very high in your manners to-day, Eames," said the other, with a sort of wink.
Then they both laughed and walked on, leaving Geoff to follow. Nothing was said about his being hungry.
"Perhaps I shall be expected to dine with the pigs," he thought.