“Ah, Dexter,” he said, looking up and running his eye critically over the boy, the result being very satisfactory. “Let’s see, you are to be at Sir James’s by half-past twelve. Now only ten. Go and amuse yourself in the garden, and don’t get into mischief.”
Dexter went back into the hall, obtained his cap, and went out through the glass door into the verandah, where the great wisteria hung a valance of lavender blossoms all along the edge.
“He always says don’t get into mischief,” thought the boy. “I don’t want to get into mischief, I’m sure.”
Half-way across the lawn he was startled by the sudden appearance of Dan’l, who started out upon him from behind a great evergreen shrub.
“What are you a-doing of now?” snarled Dan’l.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” said Dexter, staring.
“Then you were going to do something,” cried the old man sharply. “Look here, young man; if you get meddling with anything in my garden there’s going to be trouble, so mind that. I know what boys is, so none of your nonsense here.”
He went off grumbling to another part of the garden, and Dexter felt disposed to go back indoors.
“He’s watching me all the time,” he thought to himself; “just as if I was going to steal something. He don’t like me.”
Dexter strolled on, and heard directly a regular rustling noise, which he recognised at once as the sound made by a broom sweeping grass, and sure enough, just inside the great laurel hedge, where a little green lawn was cut off from the rest of the garden, there was Peter Cribb, at his usual pursuit, sweeping all the sweet-scented cuttings of the grass.