“I don’t know,” said Singh, laughing, and then knitting his brows, “but I should like to give Wrench some. He’s such a good, hard-working fellow, and always does everything you tell him with such a pleasant smile. I wonder how he will get all he wants. Do you think he will find it some day in a garden or in the street?”
“Or have a big lump of it tumble out of the moon, or find that it’s been raining gold all over the Doctor’s lawn some morning when he gets up? No, I don’t—not a bit; and there goes the breakfast-bell, so come along.”
Chapter Twenty.
A Squabble.
“Anybody seen anything of Singh?” cried Glyn one day as he went out into the cricket-field, where Slegge was batting to the bowling of some of his little slaves and several of the older boys were looking on.
“Baa! Baa! Baa!” cried Slegge, imitating a sheep, and stopping to rest upon his bat. “Hark at the great lamb calling after its black shepherd! Go on, some of you, and help me,” and in answer to his appeal a chorus of bleating arose, in which, in obedience to a gesture made with the bat, the little bowlers and fielders were forced to join.
“Well, if I were a quarrelsome chap,” said Glyn to himself, “I should just go up to Master Slegge and put my fist up against his nose. Great, stupid, malicious hobbledehoy! But it’s very plain Singhy hasn’t been here. Now, where can he be? Gone down the town perhaps to buy something—cakes or fruit I suppose. How fond he is of something nice to eat? But there, he always gives a lot away to the little fellows. Well, so do I, if you come to that; but I don’t think it’s because I give them buns and suckers that they all like me as they do. Well, I suppose that’s where Singh’s gone; but he might have told me and asked me to go with him.”
The boy strolled back with the intention of going into the class-room, now empty, to sit down and have a good long read; but as he drew near the house he came upon the page, who, wonderful to relate, displayed a face without a vestige of blacking.