Brownsmith's Boy: A Romance in a Garden

by George Manville Fenn

Then I woke to think of Mr Solomon and the garden, and fell asleep again. And then I recall trying to rouse up Shock, who seemed to be always sleeping; and while I was trying feebly to get him to speak to me again I seem to have gone to sleep once more, and everything was like being at an end.

At first I had suffered agonies of fear and horror. At last all seemed to fade, as it were, into a dreamless sleep.

“It was like this here,” Ike told me afterwards. “I lay down and made myself comfortable, and then after smoking a pipe I went off asleep. When I woke up I heerd you two a chiveying about and shouting, but it was too soon to move, so I went asleep again.

“Then I woke up and looked about for you, and shouted for you to come down and have something to eat, and bring up the horse again, for I thought by that time he’d have had a good rest.

“I shouted again, but I couldn’t make you hear, so I went up higher and hollered once more, and then Juno came trotting up to me and looked up in my face.

“I asked her where you two was, but she didn’t say anything of course, so I began to grow rough, and I said you might find your way back, my lads; and I went down to the public, ordered some tea and some briled ham; see to my horse having another feed and some water, and then, as you hadn’t come down, I had my tea all alone in a huff.

“Then I finished, and you hadn’t come, so I says, ‘Well, that’s their fault, and they may go without.’ But all the same I says to myself, ‘Well, poor chaps, they don’t often get a run in the country!’ and that made me a bit soft like, and I pulled a half-quartern loaf in two and put all the briled ham that was left in the middle, and tied it up in a clean hankychy for you to eat going home.

“Then I pays for the eating and the horse, harnessed him up, after a good rub down his legs, and whistled to Juno, who was keeping very close to me, and we went up the hill to the sand-pit again.

“I shouted and hollered again, and then, as it was got to be quite time we started, I grew waxy, and pulls out my knife and cuts a good ash stick out of the hedge for Master Shock, for I put it down to him for having led you off.

“Still you didn’t come, and though I looked all about there was nothing fresh as I could see, only sand everywhere; and at last I says to myself, ‘I sha’n’t wait with that load to get out of the pit here,’ and so I started.