“I’ll pay you for this,” cried the boy, who had recovered his cane; and, giving it a swish through the air, he raised it as if about to strike Mr Solomon across the face.
I saw Mr Solomon colour up of a deeper red as he looked at the boy very hard; and then he said softly, but in a curious hissing way:
“I shouldn’t advise you to do that, young sir. If you did I might forget you were Sir Francis’ boy, and take and pitch you into the gold-fish pond. I feel just as if I should like to do it without.”
The boy quailed before his stern look, and uttered a nasty sniggering laugh.
“I can get in any of the houses when I like, and I can take the fruit when I like, and I’ll let papa know about your beggars of friends meddling with the peaches.”
“There, you be off,” said the gardener. “I’ll tell Sir Francis too, as sure as my name’s Brownsmith.”
“Ha—ha—ha! There’s a name!” cried the boy jeeringly. “Brownsmith. What a name for a cabbage-builder, who pretends to be a gardener, and is only an old woman about the place! Roberts’s gardener is worth a hundred Sol Brownsmiths. He grows finer fruit and better flowers, and you’ll soon be kicked out. Perhaps papa will send you away now.”
Mr Solomon bit his lips as he locked the door, for he was touched in a tender place, for, as I found out afterwards, he was very jealous of the success of General Roberts’s gardener.
His back was turned, and, taking advantage of this, the boy made a dash at me with his cane.
This was too much in my frame of mind, and I went at him, when the head gardener turned sharply and stood between us.