“Shall I get a pail of water for him, sir?” I said.
He looked at me and nodded, and I went out to a great pump in the middle of the yard with a hook on its spout, upon which I was able to hang the stable pail as I worked hard to throw the long handle up and down.
“Wages!” said Mr Solomon, taking the pail from me and holding it for the horse to drink.
For the moment I felt confused, not knowing whether he meant that as a question about what wages I required, but he turned his back, and by degrees I found that he meant that the corn and water were the horse’s wages.
He busied himself about the horse for some minutes in a quiet punctilious way, for the sour-looking man had gone, and as I waited about, the great yard seemed with its big wall and gates, and dog-kennels, such a cold cheerless place that the trees had all turned the shabby parts of their backs to it and were looking the other way. Everything was very prim and clean and freshly painted, and only in one place could I see some short grass peeping between the stones. There was a patch of moss, too, like a dark green velvet pin-cushion on the top of the little penthouse where the big bell lived on the end of a great curly spring, otherwise everything was carefully painted, and the row of stabling buildings with rooms over looked like prisons for horses and their warders, who must, I felt, live very unhappy lives.
There was one door up in a corner of the great yard, right in the wall, and down towards this, from where it had grown on the other side, there hung a few strands of ivy in a very untidy fashion, and it struck me that this ivy did not belong to the yard, or else it would have been clipped or cut away.
In summer, with the warm glow of the setting sun in the sky, the place looked shivery and depressing, and as I waited for Mr Solomon I found myself thinking what a place it must be in the winter when the snow had fallen and drifted into the corners, and how miserable the poor dogs must be.
Then as I stood looking at my box and wondering what Shock was doing, and whether he had gone to his home or was sleeping in the loft, and why Ike was so surly to me, and what a miserable piece of business it was that I should have to leave that pleasant old garden and Old Brownsmith, I suddenly felt a hand laid upon my shoulder.
I started and stared as I saw Mr Solomon’s cold, stern face.
“Come along,” he said; and he led the way to that door in the corner that seemed to me as if it led into an inner prison.