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Brownsmith's Boy: A Romance in a Garden, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 13. Learning My Lessons |
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_ CHAPTER THIRTEEN. LEARNING MY LESSONS Next morning the old gentleman talked at breakfast-time about the police, and having the young scoundrels sent to prison. Directly after, he went down the garden with me and nine cats, to inspect the damages, and when he saw the trampling and breaking of boughs he stroked a tom-cat and made it purr, while he declared fiercely that he would not let an hour pass without having the young dogs punished. "They shall be caught and sent to prison," he cried. "Poor old Sammy then.--I'll have 'em severely punished, the young depredators.--Grant, you'd better get a sharp knife and a light ladder, and cut off those broken boughs--the young villains--and tell Ike to bring a big rake and smooth out these footmarks. No; I'll tell him. You get the knife. I shall go to the police at once." I cut out the broken boughs, and Ike brought down the ladder for me and smoothed over the footmarks, chatting about the events of the past night the while. "He won't get no police to work, my lad, not he. Forget all about it directly. Makes him a bit raw, o' course," said Ike, smoothing away with the rake. "Haw! haw! haw! Think o' you two leathering of 'em. I wish I'd been here, 'stead of on the road to London. Did you hit 'em hard?" "Hard as I could," I said. "I think Shock and I punished them enough." "So do I. So do he. Rare and frightened they _was_ too. Why, o' course boys will steal apples. I dunno how it is, but they always would, and will." "But these were pears," I said. "All the same, only one's longer than t'other. Apples and pears. He won't do nothing." Ike was right, for the matter was soon forgotten, and Mrs Dodley his housekeeper used the pillow-case as a bag for clothes-pegs. Those were bright and pleasant days, for though now and then some trouble came like a cloud over my life there was more often plenty of sunshine to clear that cloud away. My uncles came to see me, first one and then the other, and they had very long talks with Mr Brownsmith. One of them told me I was a very noble boy, and that he was proud of me. He said he was quite sure I should turn out a man. "Talks to the boy as if he felt he might turn out a woman," Old Brownsmith grumbled after he was gone. It was some time after before the other came, and he looked me all over as if he were trying to find a hump or a crooked rib. Then he said it was all right, and that I could not do better. One of them said when he went away that he should not lose sight of me, but remember me now and then; and when he had gone Old Brownsmith said, half aloud: "Thank goodness, I never had no uncles!" Then he gave me a comical look, but turned serious directly. "Look here, Grant," he said. "Some folk start life with their gardens already dug up and planted, some begin with their bit of ground all rough, and some begin without any land at all. Which do you belong to?" "The last, sir," I said. "Right! Well, I suppose you are not going to wait for one uncle to take a garden for you and the other to dig it up?" "No," I said sturdily; "I shall work for myself." "Right! I don't like boys to be cocky and impudent but I like a little self-dependence." As the time went on, Old Brownsmith taught me how to bud roses and prune, and, later on, to graft. He used to encourage me to ask questions, and I must have pestered him sometimes, but he never seemed weary. "It's quite right," he used to say; "the boy who asks questions learns far more than the one who is simply taught." "Why, sir?" I said. "Well, I'll tell you. He has got his bit of ground ready, and is waiting for the seed or young plant to be popped in. Then it begins to grow at once. Don't you see this; he has half-learned what he wants to know in the desire he feels. That desire is satisfied when he is told, and the chances are that he never forgets. Now you say to me--What is the good of pruning or cutting this plum-tree? I'll tell you." We were standing in front of the big red brick wall one bright winter's day, for the time had gone by very quickly. Old Brownsmith had a sharp knife in his hand, and I was holding the whetstone and a thin-bladed saw that he used to cut through the thicker branches. "Now look here, Grant. Here's this plum-tree, and if you look at it you will see that there are two kinds of wood in it." "Two kinds of wood, sir?" "Yes. Can't you tell the difference?" "No, sir; only that some of the shoots are big and strong, and some are little and twiggy." "Exactly: that is the difference, my lad. Well, can you see any more difference in the shoots?" I looked for some moments, and then replied: "Yes; these big shoots are long and smooth and straight, and the little twiggy ones are all over sharp points." "Then as there is too much wood there, which had we better cut out. What should you do?" "Cut out the scrubby little twigs, and nail up these nice long shoots." "That's the way, Grant! Now you'll know more about pruning after this than Shock has learned in two years. Look here, my lad; you've fallen into everybody's mistake, as a matter of course. Those fine long shoots will grow into big branches; those little twigs with the points, as you call them, are fruit spurs, covered with blossom buds. If I cut them out I should have no plums next year, but a bigger and a more barren tree. No, my boy, I don't want to grow wood, but fruit. Look here." I looked, and he cut out with clean, sharp strokes all those long shoots but one, carefully leaving the wood and bark smooth, while to me it seemed as if he were cutting half the tree away. "You've left one, sir," I said. "Yes, Grant, I've left one; and I'll show you why. Do you see this old hard bough?" I nodded. "Well, this one has done its work, so I'm going to cut it out, and let this young shoot take its place." "But it has no fruit buds on it," I said quickly. "No, Grant; but it will have next year; and that's one thing we gardeners always have to do with stone-fruit trees--keep cutting out the old wood and letting the young shoots take the old branches' place." "Why, sir?" I asked. "Because old branches bear small fruit, young branches bear large, and large fruit is worth more than twice as much as small. Give me the saw." I handed him the thin-bladed saw, and he rapidly cut out the old hard bough, close down to the place where it branched from the dumpy trunk, and then, handing me the tool, he knelt down on a pad of carpet he carried in his tremendous pocket. "Now look here," he said; and taking his sharp pruning-knife he cut off every mark of the saw, and trimmed the bark. I looked on attentively till he had ended. "Well," he said, "ain't you going to ask why I did that?" "I know, sir," I said. "To make it neat." "Only partly right, Grant. I've cut that off smoothly so that no rain may lodge and rot the place before the wound has had time to heal." "And will it heal, sir?" "Yes, Grant. In time Nature will spread a ring of bark round that, which will thicken and close in till the place is healed completely over." Then he busily showed me the use of the saw and knife among the big standard trees, using them liberally to get rid of all the scrubby, crowded, useless branches that lived upon the strength of the tree and did no work, only kept out the light, air, and sunshine from those that did work and bear fruit. "Why it almost seems, sir," I said one day, "as if Nature had made the trees so badly that man was obliged to improve them." "Ah, I'm glad to hear you say that, my lad," he said; "but you are not right. I'm only a gardener, but I've noticed these things a great deal. Nature is not a bungler. She gives us apple and plum trees, and they grow and bear fruit in a natural and sufficient way. It is because man wants them to bear more and bigger fruit, and for more to grow on a small piece of ground than Nature would plant, that man has to cut and prune." "But suppose Nature planted a lot of trees on a small piece of ground," I said, "what then?" "What then, Grant? Why, for a time they'd grow up thin and poor and spindly, till one of them made a start and overtopped the others. Then it would go on growing, and the others would dwindle and die away." The time glided on, and I kept learning the many little things about the place pretty fast. As the months went on I became of some use to my employer over his accounts, and by degrees pretty well knew his position. It seemed that he had been a widower for many years, and Mrs Dodley, the housekeeper and general servant all in one, confided to me one day that "Missus's" bonnets and shawls and gowns were all hanging up in their places just as they had been left by Mrs Brownsmith. "Which it's a dead waste, Master Grant," she used to finish by saying, "as there's several as I know would be glad to have 'em; but as to that--Lor' bless yer!" It was not often that Mrs Dodley spoke, but when she did it was to inveigh against some oppression or trouble. Candles were a great burden to the scrupulously clean woman. "Tens I says," she confided to me one day, "but he will have eights, and what's the consequence? If I want to do a bit of extry needle-work I might light up two tens, but I should never have the heart to burn two eights at once, for extravagance I can't abear. Ah! he's a hard master, and I'm sorry for you, my dear." "Why?" I said. "Ah! you'll find out some day," she said, shaking her head and then bustling off to her work. I had not much companionship, for Ike was generally too busy to say a word, and though after the pear adventure Shock did nothing more annoying to me than to stand now and then upon his head, look at me upside down, and point and spar at me with his toes, we seemed to get to be no better friends. He took to that trick all at once one day in a soft bit of newly dug earth. He was picking up stones, and I was sticking fresh labels at the ends of some rows of plants, when all at once he uttered a peculiar monkey-like noise, down went his head, up went his heels, and I stared in astonishment at first and then turned my back. This always annoyed Shock; but one day when he stood up after his quaint fashion I was out of temper and had a bad headache, so I ran to him, and he struck at me with his feet, just as if they had been hands, only he could not have doubled them up. I was too quick for him though, and with a push drove him down. 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." "No," I said; "I've often wished we had a microscope." "A what, Grant?" "Microscope, sir, to look at the blight and the veins in the plants' leaves." "No, no; I mean greenhouses and forcing-houses, where fruit and vegetables and flowers are brought on early: but wait a bit." I did wait a bit, and went on learning, getting imperceptibly to know a good deal about gardening, and so a couple of years slipped away, when one day I was superintending the loading of the cart after seeing that it was properly supported with trestles. Ike was seated astride one of the large baskets as if it were a saddle, and taking off his old hat he began to indulge in a good scratch at his head. "Lookye here," he exclaimed suddenly, "why don't you go to market?" "Too young," I said, with a feeling of eagerness flashing through me. "Not you," he said slowly, as he looked down at me and seemed to measure me with his eye as one of my uncles did. "There's a much littler boy than you goes with one of the carts, and I see him cutting about the market with a book under his arm, looking as chuff as a pea on a shovel. He ain't nothing to you. Come along o' me. I'll take an old coat for wrapper, and you'll be as right as the mail. You ask him. He'll let you come." Ike was wrong, for when I asked Old Brownsmith's leave he shook his head. "No, no, boy. You're too young yet. Best in bed." "Too partickler by half," Ike growled when I let him know the result of my asking. "He's jealous, that's what he is. Wants to keep you all to hisself. Not as I wants you. 'Tain't to please me. You're young and wants eddicating; well, you wants night eddication as well as day eddication. What do you know about the road to London of a night?" "Nothing at all, Ike?" I said with a sigh. "Scholard as you are too," growled Ike. "Why, my figgering and writing ain't even worth talking about with a pen, though I am good with chalk, but even I know the road to London." "He'll let me go some day," I said. "Some day!" cried Ike in a tone of disgust. "Any one could go by day. It's some night's the time. Ah! it is a pity, much as you've got to learn too. There's the riding up with the stars over your heads, and the bumping of the cart, and the bumping and rattle of other carts, as you can hear a mile away on a still night before and behind you, and then the getting on to the stones." "On to the stones, Ike?" I said. "Yes, of course, on to the paving-stones, and the getting into the market and finding a good pitch, and the selling off in the morning. Ah! it would be a treat for you, my lad. I'm sorry for yer." Ike's sorrow lasted, and I grew quite uneasy at last through being looked down upon with so much contempt; but, as is often the case, I had leave when I least expected it. We had been very busy cutting, bunching, and packing flowers one day, when all at once Old Brownsmith came and looked at my slate with the total of the flower baskets set down side by side with the tale of the strawberry baskets, for it was in the height of the season. "Big load to-night, Grant," the old gentleman said. "Yes, sir; largest load you've sent up this year," I replied, in all my newly-fledged importance as a young clerk. "You had better go up with Ike to-night, Grant," said the old man suddenly. "You are big enough now, and a night out won't hurt you. Here, Ike!" "Yes, master." "You'll want a little help to-morrow morning to stand by you in the market. Will you have Shock?" "Yes, master, he's the very thing, if you'll send some one to hold him, or lend me a dog-collar and chain." "Don't be an idiot, Ike," said Old Brownsmith sharply. "No, master." "Would you rather have this boy?" "Would I rather? Just hark at him!" Ike looked round at me as if this was an excellent joke, but Old Brownsmith took it as being perfectly serious, and gave Ike a series of instructions about taking care of me. "Of course you will not go to a public-house on the road." "'Tain't likely," growled Ike, "'less he gets leading me astray and takes me there." "There's a coffee-shop in Great Russell Street where you can get your breakfasts." "Lookye here, master," growled Ike in an ill-humoured voice, "ain't I been to market afore?" "I shall leave him in your charge, Ike, and expect you to take care of him." "Oh, all right, master!" said Ike, and then the old gentleman gave me a nod and walked away. "At last, Ike!" I cried. "Hurrah! Why, what's the matter?" "What's the matter?" said Ike in tones of disgust; "why, everything's the matter. Here, let's have a look at you, boy. Yes," he continued, turning me round, and as if talking to himself, "it is a boy. Any one to hear him would have thought it was a sugar-stick." _ |
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