“Now then, youngster, go and make a sight o’ yourself till noontime,” cried the carter, thrusting young Purvis forcibly through the open gate into the high road.
“Who cares for a pack of fools like you?” exclaimed the lad, walking rapidly away from the scene. A chorus of laughter reached his ears as he took his way along the road.
He was certainly under the impression that he cut a most ridiculous figure, adorned as he was with his furry companion, but there was no help for it; he was constrained to hear the sneering remarks passed on him by the passengers, equestrian and pedestrian, he met with on the road.
He had also to endure the jocose and playful cuts with the whip with which the carters saluted him as they went by with their long teams of horses. But he bore all these indignities with the greatest fortitude; nevertheless a burning spirit of revenge smouldered within his breast—a spirit which some day or other would burst into a flame.
He walked on without deigning to offer any reply to the vexatious and sneering observations with which he was greeted.
An hour or more had passed over without his meeting with anyone who would take compassion on him. Presently he espied, at some little distance ahead of him, a little boy coming in the opposite direction.
It suddenly occurred to him that he might make a friend of the urchin, but the latter, believing him to be one of those fabulous animals he had read of in children’s good story books, or fables, as they are sometimes termed, screamed, and attempted to fly.
“Come here. I want to speak to you,” cried Alfred Purvis. “Don’t run away. Come.”
But the little fellow was too much alarmed by the extraordinary appearance of the speaker to approach any nearer, and, after hesitating for a few seconds, he made off in the opposite direction.
“Don’t run away, you little fool,” cried the farmer’s boy; “I only want to speak to you for one moment—something of the utmost importance. Don’t run away, there’s a good fellow; you have no call to be frightened of me.”