“Well, you are a one!” said Samson, looking at his young master, and laughing. “Think of a whipper-snapper like you trying to capture a big chap like me.”
Fred winced angrily.
“Well, not so much of a whipper-snapper as Master Scarlett, sir; but you haven’t got much muscle, you know.”
“Muscle enough to try.”
“Yes, sir,” said the ex-gardener, thoughtfully; “but it isn’t the muscle so much as the try. It’s the thinking like and scheming. You see a bit of rock stands up, and you can’t move it with muscle, but if you put a little bit of rock close to it, and then get a pole or an iron bar, and puts it under the big rock and rests it on the little, and then pushes down the end, why, then, over the big rock goes, and it’s out of your way.”
“Yes, Samson,” said Fred, thoughtfully, as he watched the advance; “and so you didn’t care to go to the attack?”
“No, sir, I wouldn’t; but it was tempting, though; ay, that it was.”
“Tempting?”
“Well, you see, Master Fred, Nat has got some chyce cabbage seed, and he’d never give me a pinch, try how I would; no, nor yet sell a man a pen’orth. He kept it all to himself, just out of a nasty greedy spirit, so that his cabbages might be bigger and heavier than ours at the Manor. I’d have had some of that seed if I’d gone, for he couldn’t have come and stopped me now.”
“No, poor fellow! I wonder how he is?”