Volume One—Chapter Sixteen.
The Vicar’s Friends.
“What cheer, owd Tommy?” cried the stalwart figure, pulling a short black pipe out of his mouth.
“Hallo, Harry,” said Tom, quietly, at least as quietly as he could, for the words were jerked out of his mouth by the tremendous clap on the shoulder administered by the big hammerman.
“What’s going to be done, Tommy?” growled the great fellow. “I’m ’bout tired o’ this. I wants to hit something.”
He stretched out his great sinewy arm, and then drawing it back, let it fly again with such force that a man would have gone down before it like a cork.
“Come along,” said Tom, who wished to get away from the neighbourhood of Banks’s cottage for fear Mrs Banks should call to him.
Harry was a man whose brain detested originality. He was a machine who liked to be set in motion, so he followed Tom like a huge dog, and without a word.
As they came abreast of the vicarage they saw the vicar at work gardening, and Jacky Budd making believe to dig very hard in the wilderness still unreclaimed.