Mr. Shuttleworth was an elderly bachelor of studious habits, who lived next door. Being of a reserved disposition he had little to do with his neighbours, though sometimes he exchanged a few words with Mr. and Mrs. Glanville if they happened to be in their front garden when he was in his, and he always nodded to the children when he met them. Neither Kitty nor Bob remembered Mr. Shuttleworth ever having had a visitor before, and they had lived next door to him for several years now.
"Bob, I wonder who the boy can be," said Kitty, as her brother took the rake from her hand. "I saw him watching us from Mr. Shuttleworth's dining-room window. Such a very ugly-looking boy he is, with red hair, and green goggly eyes, and a snub nose, and a big mouth. He grinned at me."
"And did you grin back at him?" asked Bob with a laugh.
"No, certainly not," Kitty responded loftily; "as though I should do that! He's gone now," she added, with a furtive glance at their neighbour's house. "Oh," she exclaimed in accents of intense astonishment, a moment later, "why, there he is, staring at us over the wall! He must be standing on a ladder, I suppose."
Bob paused in the midst of raking his flower-bed smooth and looked at the wall which divided the two back gardens of the semi-detached villas. It was a brick wall of about six feet in height, and at the present minute the head and shoulders of a boy were visible above it. He had been watching the two young gardeners intently; but when he perceived they noticed him he looked a trifle embarrassed, and his freckled countenance deepened in colour.
"Yes, he must be on a ladder," Bob agreed. "The idea of his spying on us like that! I shall take no notice of him!"
"Nor I," said Kitty; and she turned her attention to her garden again; but she could not refrain from glancing at the partition wall frequently, and every time she did so there was still the ugly boy watching them.
"Do you think he wishes to speak to us?" she suggested to her brother at length. "Shall we ask him if he wants anything?"
"Most certainly not," Bob responded. "I call it cheek his perching himself there; if I spoke to him I should tell him so."
Meanwhile the boy next door—Tim Shuttleworth—who had come out in hopes of picking an acquaintance with his neighbours, saw that, though they had observed him, they had no intention of speaking to him, and was consequently disappointed. Although he had only arrived on a visit to his uncle, Mr. Shuttleworth, on the preceding day, time was hanging heavily on his hands already. At breakfast his uncle had told him he might go where he pleased and do exactly as he liked, and had remarked that no doubt he would find his own amusements—adding that there were young folks in the next house he could play with, but he had evidently not thought of introducing him to them. And then he had shut himself up in his study, leaving his nephew to his own devices.