Chapter Three.
Old Brownsmith’s Visitor.
The time glided on, but I did not go to the garden again, for my mother felt that we must not put ourselves under so great an obligation to a stranger. Neither did I take her over for a walk, but we sat at the window a great deal after lesson time; and whenever I was alone and Shock was within sight, he used to indulge in some monkey-like gesture, all of which seemed meant to show me what a very little he thought of me.
At the end of a fortnight, as I was sitting at the window talking to a boy who went to a neighbouring school, and telling him why I did not go, a great clod of earth came over the wall and hit the boy in the back.
“Who’s that!” he cried sharply. “Did you shy that lump?”
“No,” I said; and before I could say more, he cried:
“I know. It was Brownsmith’s baboon shied that. Only let us get him out in the fields, we’ll give it him. You know him, don’t you?”
“Do you mean Shock?” I said.