"You bothering children! I wish you may all get a good ducking in the lake! Serve you right for making me lose a day's work, just to look after you little monkeys. I've a great mind to tell your mother I won't do it."
But he did not, being fond of his mistress. He was also fond of his work, but he had no notion of play. I think the saying of, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," must have been applied to him, for Gardener, whatever he had been as a boy, was certainly a dull and melancholy man. The children used to say that if he and idle Bill could have been kneaded into one, and baked in the oven—a very warm oven—they would have come out rather a pleasant person.
As it was, Gardener was any thing but a pleasant person; above all, to spend a long day with, and on the ice, where one needs all one's cheerfulness and good-humor to bear pinched fingers and numbed toes, and trips and tumbles, and various uncomfortablenesses.
"He'll growl at us all day long—he'll be a regular spoil-sport!" lamented the children. "Oh! mother, mightn't we go alone?"
"No!" said the mother; and her "No" meant no, though she was always very kind. They argued the point no more, but started off, rather downhearted. But soon they regained their spirits, for it was a bright, clear, frosty day—the sun shining, though not enough to melt the ice, and just sufficient to lie like a thin sprinkling over the grass, and turn the brown branches into white ones. The little people danced along to keep themselves warm, carrying between them a basket which held their lunch. A very harmless lunch it was—just a large brown loaf and a lump of cheese, and a knife to cut it with. Tossing the basket about in their fun, they managed to tumble the knife out, and were having a search for it in the long grass, when Gardener came up, grumpily enough.
"To think of trusting you children with one of the table-knives and a basket! what a fool Cook must be! I'll tell her so; and if they're lost she'll blame me: give me the things."
He put the knife angrily in one pocket. "Perhaps it will cut a hole in it," said one of the children, in rather a pleased tone than otherwise; then he turned the lunch all out on the grass and crammed it in the other pocket, hiding the basket behind a hedge.
"I'm sure I'll not be at the trouble of carrying it," said he, when the children cried out at this; "and you shan't carry it either, for you'll knock it about and spoil it. And as for your lunch getting warm in my pocket, why, so much the better this cold day."
It was not a lively joke, and they knew the pocket was very dirty; indeed, the little girls had seen him stuff a dead rat into it only the day before. They looked ready to cry; but there was no help for them, except going back and complaining to their mother, and they did not like to do that. Besides, they knew that, though Gardener was cross, he was trustworthy, and she would never let them go down to the lake without him.
So they followed him, trying to be as good as they could—though it was difficult work. One of them proposed pelting him with snowballs, as they pelted each other. But at the first—which fell in his neck—he turned round so furiously, that they never sent a second, but walked behind him as meek as mice.