“I don’t know when you went out with the carriage, and when you didn’t,” said Dan’l; “all I know is as my lawn didn’t get swept; and how the doctor expects a garden like this here to be kept tidy without help, I should be glad to know.”
“Well, you’d better go and grumble at him, and not worry me, and—pst! Lookye there.”
He pointed with his broom, and both men remained paralysed at the sight which met their eyes.
It was not so much from its extraordinary nature as from what Dan’l afterwards spoke of as its “imperence.” That last, he said, was what staggered him, that any human boy should, in the very middle of the day, dare to do such a thing in his garden.
He said his garden, for when speaking of it the doctor seemed to be only some one who was allowed to walk through it for a treat.
What the two men gazed at was the figure of a boy, in shirt and trousers, going up the vinery roof, between where the early and the late houses joined and there was a sloping brick coping. From this they saw him reach the big wall against which the vinery was built, and there he sat for a few moments motionless.
“Why, who is he?” said Peter, in a whisper. “He went up that vinery just like a monkey.”
Peter had never seen a monkey go up the roof of a vinery, but Dan’l did not notice that.
“Hold your row,” said Dan’l, in a low voice; “don’t speak, and we’ll ketch my nabs. Now we know where my peaches went last year.”
“But who is he!” whispered Peter.