Indeed it would be hard to say what time was not pleasant at the farm, for in such a large family of creatures there was always something happening of the very deepest interest to the children. In the spring they were quite as anxious and eager about successful broods of early ducklings, or the rearing of the turkeys as Mrs Solace was herself, and she was secure of their heartfelt sympathy when the fox made away with her poultry.
For unlike Mrs Broadbent, Mrs Solace not only knew all about such matters, but liked nothing so well as to talk of them.
“When I’m a man,” Dennis would say, “I mean to be a farmer.”
“So do I,” Maisie would answer.
“You couldn’t be,” Dennis would argue. “How could you go rook-shooting? You know you scream when a gun goes off; and besides, you’re afraid of the turkey-cock.”
“Well, then,” Maisie would conclude, deeply conscious that both these facts were true, “I’ll be a farmer’s wife, and rear turkeys; that’s quite as hard as shooting rooks, and much usefuller.”
“That it is, dearie,” Mrs Solace would agree, with her comfortable laugh. “Puley pingling things they are, and want as much care as children.”
But apart from the animals, there was to Dennis one corner at the Manor Farm which had special attractions, and that was where the wheelwright worked. It was a long narrow barn fitted up as a carpenter’s shop, with a bench and a lathe and all manner of tools: full of shavings and sawdust, planks of wood and half-finished farm implements. Here the wheelwright stood and worked all day. He made and mended carts, wheelbarrows, ladders, hay-rakes, and all sorts of things used in the farm, and had always as much as he could do. Dennis liked nothing better than a little quiet time with Tuvvy, as he was called, and though he did not talk much, he eyed all his movements with such earnest attention that it may be supposed he learned something of carpentering.
Tuvvy’s movements were nimble and neat, for he was a clever workman, and knew what he was about: now and then he would cast a swift glance round at Dennis out of his bright black eyes, but he never paused in his work to talk, and there was seldom any sound in the barn but that of the saw and hammer, or the whirring of the lathe. His skin was so very dark, and his hair so black and long, that people called him a gypsy, and Dennis knew that he was a little wild sometimes, because old Sally shook her head when she mentioned him.
That meant that Tuvvy was not always quite sober, which was a great pity, because he was so clever, that he could earn a great deal if he kept steady. In the barn, however, he was as steady and hard-working as a man could be, and what his conduct was out of it, did not at all affect Dennis’s attachment and admiration. Maisie always knew, if she missed her brother during one of their visits to the farm, that she should find him in the barn staring at Tuvvy at his work; and he had done this so much, that he began to feel as though he had helped to make Mr Solace’s carts and barrows.