“Here, I say! Hold hard there!” he cried. “What are you doing with my ladder? Let it be! I don’t want that broke.”
He turned to Waller as if to ask him to put a stop to it, but the boy avoided his gaze, thrust his hands deeply into his pockets, and stood frowning.
“Here, don’t you interfere, Joe Hanson; you will be getting yourself into trouble,” spluttered Gusset, in his husky voice; and he unconsciously blew out his cheeks and opened his eyes wider as he took a fresh breath. “This here’s all in the King’s name.”
“King’s name!” cried the gardener sharply as he lifted his blue serge apron and began to twist it up in a tail to tuck up round his waist. “What’s the King’s name got to do with it? I am talking about my ladder.”
“There, there, gardener,” said the sergeant, “don’t stop us. I want to get this job done. My boys don’t understand ladders like you do; perhaps you wouldn’t mind pitching it up against the roof?”
“Oh, very well, sergeant,” replied the gardener; “I don’t mind when I am asked civilly, but I am not going to have all the country cobblers in Hampshire coming into my yard and meddling with the tools as is in my charge. Here, that’s not the way, swaddy,” he continued, joining the two soldiers, who, each still holding his musket in his hand, were fumbling awkwardly with the long ladder in carrying it across the yard.
He smiled good-humouredly at the two stiff-strapped and buckled-up men, and took hold of the ladder about the middle.
“There, drop its heel on the ground,” he said, “and one of you put your foot on the bottom round.”
The soldier promptly obeyed, and the next minute, as the straddling bottom of the ladder was kept down, the gardener ran his hands along beneath it, thrusting it upward round by round till it was perpendicular, when, grasping it firmly, one hand low down and arms outstretched to the fullest extent, he walked quickly across the yard, planted the ladder down close to the house, and let the top fall away from him with a gentle whish amongst the ivy.
“Well done!” cried the two soldiers admiringly; and the gardener came away smiling with self-satisfaction at the men’s admiration of his skill.