Then I felt frightened as I heard some laughing and shouting, and started and listened, for it struck me that Courtenay and Philip might be going down the garden, and if they should see poor Ike in such a state, I knew that they would begin baiting and teasing him, when he would perhaps fly in a passion such as I had seen him in once before, when he abused me, and apologised the next day, saying that it wasn’t temper, but beer.
The sound died away, and then it seemed to rise again nearer to us.
“Ah!” said Mr Solomon, “I’m sorry for those who have boys.”
“No, you are not, Solomon,” said his wife, cutting the bread and butter.
“Well, such boys as them.”
“Ah!” said Mrs Solomon. “That’s better.”
That seemed a long tea-time, and it appeared to be longer still before I could get away, for Mr Solomon had a lot of things to ask me about the grape-house and pit. I kept glancing at the wall where the key hung on a nail, and though another time I might easily have taken it, on this particular occasion it seemed as if I could not get near the place unobserved.
At last my time came; Mrs Solomon had gone into the back kitchen, and Mr Solomon to his desk in the parlour. I did not lose a moment, but, snatching the key from the nail, I slipped it in my pocket, caught my cap from the peg, and slipped out.
I was not going to do any wicked act, but somehow I felt as if all this was very wrong, and I found myself running along the grass borders, leaping over the gravel paths, so that my footsteps should not be heard, and in this way I reached the tool-house, where, quite at home in the darkness, and making no more noise than jingling a hanging spade against the bricks, I reached up on to the corner shelf and found my lantern and matches.
There was the little lamp inside already trimmed, and I soon had it alight and darkened by the shade, slipped it in my pocket, and then started down the long green walk by the big wall where the espaliers were trained, and the wall was covered with big pear-trees.