"No, George. Sometimes as evenings get longer we may make little excursions together: go across the river to Greenwich and spend two or three hours in the park, or take a steamer and go up the river to Kew; but as a general thing you had better take your rambles together. I have my front garden to look after, the vegetables are your work, you know, and if I like I can go out and do whatever shopping I have to do while you two are away."
So the boys took to going out walks, which got longer and longer as the evenings drew out, and when they were not disposed for a long ramble they would go down to a disused wharf and sit there and watch the barges drifting down the river or tacking backwards and forwards, if there was a wind, with their great brown and yellow sails hauled tautly in, and the great steamers dropping quietly down the river, and the little busy tugs dragging great ships after them. There was an endless source of amusement in wondering from what ports the various craft had come or what was their destination.
"What seems most wonderful to me, George," Bill said one day, "when one looks at them big steamers——"
"Those," George corrected.
"Thank ye—at those big steamers, is to think that they can be tossed about, and the sea go over them, as one reads about, just the same way as the wave they make when they goes down——"
"Go down, Bill."
"Thank ye—go down the river, tosses the little boats about; it don't seem possible that water can toss itself about so high as that, does it?"
"It does seem extraordinary, Bill; we know that it is so because there are constantly wrecks; but looking at the water it does not seem possible that it should rise up into waves large enough to knock one of those great steamers in pieces. Some day, Bill, not this year, of course, because the house isn't finished, but next year, I hope we shall be able all of us to go down for a trip to the sea. I have seen it stuck up you can go to Margate and back for three or four shillings; and though Bob Grimstone says that isn't regular sea, it would be enough to show us something of what it's like."
The garden occupied a good deal of the boys' time. Bill's long experience in the market had given him an interest in vegetables, and he was always ready for an hour's work in the garden after tea. The results of much labor and plenty of manure were not unsatisfactory, and Mrs. Andrews was delighted with her regular supply of fresh vegetables. Bill's anticipation, however, of the amount that could be grown in a limited space were by no means fulfilled, and seeing the small amount which could be daily gathered, and recalling the countless piled-up wagons which he had been accustomed to see in Covent Garden, he was continually expressing his astonishment at the enormous quantity of ground which must be employed in keeping up the supply of the market.
They did not that year get the trip to Margate; but in the autumn, after the great work of furnishing was finished, they did get several long jaunts, once out to Epping Forest on an omnibus, once in a steamer up to Kew, and several times across to Greenwich Park. Mrs. Andrews found it a very happy summer, free from the wear of anxiety, which, more even than the work, had brought on her long illness. She grew stronger and better than she had ever expected to be again, and those who had only known the pale, harassed-looking needlewoman of Croydon would not have recognized her now; indeed, as George said sometimes, his mother looked younger and younger every day. She had married very young, and was still scarcely five-and-thirty, and although she laughed and said that George was a foolish boy when he said that people always took her for his sister, she really looked some years younger than she was. Her step had regained its elasticity, and there was a ring of gladness and happiness in her voice which was very attractive, and even strangers sometimes looked round as they passed the bright, pleasant-looking woman chatting gayly with the two healthy, good-looking young fellows.