“We must get another cottage added to the new row. Easily done! Cottages so healthy as these new ones pay well. Good rents are offered for them,—to save doctors’ bills and loss of time from sickness;—and, when once a system of house-drainage is set a-going, it costs scarcely more in adding a cottage to a group, to make it all right, than to run it up upon solid clay as used to be the way here. Well, I have a good mind to write to Harry to-day. What do you think of it,—all of you?”
Fortified by the opinion of all his children, Mr. Woodruffe wrote to Harry. Meantime, Allan and Becky went to cut the vegetables that were for sale that day; and Moss delighted himself in running after and catching the pony in the meadow below. The pony was not very easily caught, for it was full of spirit. Instead of the woolly insipid grass that it used to crop, and which seemed to give it only fever and no nourishment, it now fed on sweet fresh grass, which had no sour stagnant water soaking its roots. The pony was so full of play this morning that Moss could not get hold of it. Though much stronger than a year ago, he was not yet anything like so robust as a boy of his age should be; and he was growing heated, and perhaps a little angry, as the pony galloped off towards some distant trees, when a boy started up behind a bush, caught the halter, brought the pony round with a twitch, and led him to Moss. Moss fancied he had seen the boy before, and then his white teeth reminded Moss of one thing after another.
“I came for some marsh plants,” said the boy. “You and I got plenty once somewhere hereabouts, but I cannot find them now.”
“You will not find any now. We have no marsh now.”
The stranger said he dared not go back without them; mother wanted them badly. She would not believe him if he said he could not find any. There were plenty about two miles off, along the railway, among the clay-pits, he was told; but none nearer. The boy wanted to know where the clay-pits hereabouts were. He could not find one of them.
“I will show you one of them,” said Moss; “the one where you and I used to hunt rats.” And, leading the pony, he showed his old gypsy play-fellow all the improvements, beginning with the great ditch,—now invisible from being covered in. While it was open, he said, it used to get choked, and the sides were plastered after rain, and soon became grass-grown, so that it was found worth while to cover it in; and now it would want little looking to for years to come. As for the clay-pit, where the rats used to pop in and out,—it was now a manure-pit, covered in. There was a drain into it from the pony’s stable and from the pig-styes; and it was near enough to the garden to receive the refuse and sweepings. A heavy lid, with a ring in the middle, covered the pit, so that nobody could fall in in the dark, and no smell could get out. Moss begged the boy to come a little further, and he would show him his own flower-bed; and when the boy was there, he was shown everything else: what a cart-load of vegetables lay cut for sale; and what an arbor had been made of the pent-house under which Moss used to take shelter, when he could do nothing better than keep off the birds; and how fine the ducks were,—the five ducks that were so serviceable in eating off the slugs; and what a comfortable nest had been made for them to lay their eggs in, beside the water-tank in the corner; and what a variety of scarecrows the family had invented,—each having one, to try which would frighten the sparrows most. While Moss was telling how difficult it was to deal with the sparrows, because they could not be frightened for more than three days by any kind of scarecrow, he heard Allan calling him, in a tone of vexation, at being kept waiting so long. In an instant the stranger boy was off,—leaping the gate, and flying along the meadow till he was hidden behind a hedge.
Two or three days after this one of the ducks was missing. The last time that the five had been seen together was when Moss was showing them to his visitor. The morning after Moss finally gave up hope, the glass of Allan’s hotbed was found broken, and in the midst of the bed itself was a deep foot-track, crushing the cucumber plants, and, with them, Allan’s hopes of a cucumber prize at the Horticultural Exhibition in the summer. On more examination, more mischief was discovered, some cabbages had been stolen, and another duck was missing. In the midst of the general concern, Woodruffe burst out a-laughing. It struck him that the chief of the scarecrows had changed his hat; and so he had. The old straw hat which used to flap in the wind so serviceably was gone, and in its stead appeared a helmet,—a saucepan full of holes, battered and split, but still fit to be a helmet to a scarecrow.
“I could swear to the old hat,” observed Woodruffe, “if I should have the luck to see it on anybody’s head.”
“And so could I,” said Becky, “for I mended it,—bound it with black behind, and green before, because I had not green ribbon enough. But nobody would wear it before our eyes.”
“That is why I suspect there are strangers hovering about. We must watch.”