A Rough Shaking Part 23

"Leave go, Tommy," he said, "or I'll tumble you right in."

Tommy yielded, his will overcome by a greater fear. Clare let him hang for a moment over the black water, and slowly lowered him. Tommy clung to the side of the b.u.t.t. Clare let go one leg, and taking hold of his hands pulled them away. Tommy's terror would have burst in a frenzied yell, but the same instant he was down to the neck in the water, and lifted out again. He spluttered and gurgled and tried to scream.

"Now, Tommy," said Clare, "don't scream, or I'll put you in again."

But Tommy never believed anything except upon compulsion. The moment he could, that moment he screamed, and that moment he was in the water again. The next time he was taken out, he did not scream. Clare laid him on the wall, and he lay still, pretending to be drowned. Clare got up, set him on his feet in front of him, and holding him by the collar, trotted him round the top of the wall to the door, and dropped him into the garden. He was quiet enough now--more than subdued--incapable even of meditating revenge. But when they entered the nursery, the dog, taking Tommy for a worse sort of rat, made a leap at him right off the bed, as if he would swallow him alive, and the start and the terror of it brought him quite to himself again.

"Quiet, Abdiel!" said Clare.

The dog turned, jumped up on the bed, and lay down again close to the baby.

Clare, who, I have said, was in old days a reader of _Paradise Lost_, had already given him the name of _Abdiel_.

"Please, I couldn't help yelling!" said Tommy, very meekly. "I didn't know you'd got _him_!"

"I know you couldn't help it!" answered Clare. "What have you had to eat to-day?"

"Nothing but a beastly turnip and a wormy beet," said Tommy. "I'm awful hungry."

"You'd have had something better if you'd stuck by the baby, and not left her to the rats!"

"There ain't no rats," growled Tommy.

"Will you believe your own eyes?" returned Clare, and showed him the skin of the rat Abdiel had slain. "I've a great mind to make you eat it!" he added, dangling it before him by the tail.

"Shouldn't mind," said Tommy. "I've eaten a rat afore now, an' I'm that hungry! Rats ain't bad to eat. I don't know about their skins!"

"Here's a piece of bread for you. But you sha'n't sleep with honest people like baby and Abdiel. You shall lie on the hearth-rug. Here's a blanket and a pillow for you!"

Clare covered him up warm, thatching all with a piece of loose carpet, and he was asleep directly.

The next day all terror of the water-b.u.t.t was gone from the little vagabond's mind. He was now, however, thoroughly afraid of Clare, and his conceit that, though Clare was the stronger, he was the cleverer, was put in abeyance.

Chapter x.x.xIV.

How things went for a time.

Clare's next day went much as the preceding, only that he was early at the shop. When his dinner-hour came, he ran home, and was glad to find Tommy and the dog mildly agreeable to each other. He had but time to give baby some milk, and Tommy and Abdiel a bit of bread each.

His look when he returned, a look of which he was unaware, but which one of the girls, who had a year ago been hungry for weeks together, could read, made her ask him what he had had for dinner. He said he had had no dinner.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because there wasn't any."

"Didn't your mother keep some for you?"

"No; she couldn't."

"Then what will you do?"

"Go without," answered Clare with a smile.

"But you've got a mother?" said the girl, rendered doubtful by his smile.

"Oh, yes! I've got two mothers. But their arms ain't long enough,"

replied Clare.

The girl wondered: was he an idiot, or what they called a poet?

Anyhow, she had a bun in her pocket, which she had meant to eat at five o'clock, and she offered him that.

"But what will you do yourself? Have you another?" asked Clare, unready to take it.

"No," she answered; "why shouldn't I go without as well as you?"

"Because it won't make things any better. There will be just as much hunger. It's only shifting it from me to you. That will leave it all the same!"

"No, not the same," she returned. "I've had a good dinner--as much as I could eat; and you've had none!"

Clare was persuaded, and ate the girl's bun with much satisfaction and grat.i.tude.

When he had his wages in the evening, he spent them as before--a penny for the baby, and fivepence at Mr. Ball's for Tommy, Abdiel, and himself.

Observing that he came daily, and spent all he earned, except one penny, on bread; seeing also that the boy's cheeks, though plainly he was in good health, were very thin, Mr. Ball wondered a little: a boy ought to look better than that on five pennyworth of bread a day!

They were a curious family--Clare, and Tommy, and the baby, and Abdiel. But the only thing sad about it was, that Clare, who was the head and the heart of it, and provided for all, should be upheld by no human sympathy, no human grat.i.tude; that he should be so high above his companions that, though he never thought he was lonely, he could not help feeling lonely. Not once did he wish himself rid of any single member of his adopted family. It was living on his very body; he was growing a little thinner every day; if things had gone on so, he must before long have fallen ill; but he never thought of himself at all, body or soul.

He had no human sympathy or grat.i.tude, I say, but he had both sympathy and grat.i.tude from Abdiel. The dog never failed to understand what Clare wished and expected him to understand. In Clare's absence he took on himself the protection of the establishment, and was Tommy's superior.

Though Tommy was of no use to earn bread, Clare did not therefore allow him to be idle. He insisted on his keeping the place clean and tidy, and in this respect Tommy was not quite a failure. He even made him do some washing, though not much could be accomplished in that way where there was so little to wash. Now that Abdiel was nurse, Tommy had the run of the garden, and often went beyond it for an hour or two without Clare's knowledge, but always took good care to be back before his return.

A bale of goods happening to be unpacked in his presence one day, Clare begged the head-shopman, who was also a partner, for a piece of what it was wrapped in; and he, having noted how well he worked, and being quite aware they could not get another such boy at such wages, gave him a large piece of the soiled canvas. Now Mrs. Person had taught Clare to work,--as I think all boys ought to be taught, so as not to be helpless without mother or sister,--and with the help of a needle and some thread the friendly girl gave him, he soon made of the packing-sheet a pair of trousers for Tommy, of a primitive but not unserviceable cut, and a shirt for himself, of fashion more primitive still. He managed it this way: he cut a hole in the middle of a piece of the stuff, through which to put his head, and another hole on each side of that, through which to put his arms, and hemmed them all round. Then, having first hemmed the garment also, he indued it, and let the voluminous ma.s.s arrange itself as it might, under as much of his jacket and trousers as cohered.

My reader may well wonder how, in what was called a respectable shop, he could be permitted to appear in such poverty; but Mr. Maidstone disliked the boy so much that he meant to send him away the moment he found another to do his work, and gave orders that he should never come up from the bas.e.m.e.nt except when wanted to carry a parcel. The fact was that his still, solemn, pure face was a haunting rebuke to his master, although he did not in the least recognize the nature, or this as the cause, of his dislike.

Chapter x.x.xV.

Clare disregards the interests of his employers.

Things went on for nearly a month, every one thriving but Clare. Yet was Clare as peaceful as any, and much happier than Tommy, to whose satisfaction adventure was needful.

One day, a lady, attracted by a m.u.f.f in the shop-window labelled with a very low price, entered, and requested to see it.