“Wuph!” and lurched over sidewise up against his companion, but jerked himself up again, and said in a gruff whisper full of reproach, “Don’t go to sleep, Master Tom.”
“No. All right, I’m awake,” replied the boy, laughing to himself, and the watching went on again, the time passing very slowly, and the earth which had felt so soft beneath the knees gradually turning hard.
There was not a sound to be heard now, till the heavy breathing on his left suggested that David was dozing off again, and set him thinking that one was enough to keep vigil, and that he could easily rouse his companion if the thief came.
He felt a little vexed at first that David, who had been so eager to watch, should make such a lapse; but just in his most indignant moments, when he felt disposed to give a sudden lurch sidewise to knock the gardener over like a skittle, and paused, hesitating, he had an admonition, which showed him how weak human nature is at such times, in the shape of a sudden seizure. One moment he was wakeful and thinking, the next he was fast asleep, dreaming of being back at Gray’s Inn—soundly asleep, in fact.
This did not last while a person could have counted ten. Then he was wide-awake again, ready to continue the watch, and let David rest.
“It’s rum though,” he said to himself, as he crouched there, and now softly picked a leaf to nibble, and feel suggestions of taking a powder in a spoonful of black-currant jelly, so strong was the flavour in the leaf. “Very rum,” he thought. “One’s wide-awake, and the next moment fast asleep.”
He started then, for he fancied that he heard a sound, but though he listened attentively he could distinguish nothing; and the time went on, with David’s breathing growing more deep and heavy; and upon feeling gently to his left, it was to find that the gardener was now right down with his elbows on the ground and his face upon his hands.
“Any one might come and clear all the pears away if I were not here.”
But Tom felt very good-humoured over the business, as he thought of certain remarks he would be able to make to the gardener next day; and he was running over this, and wishing that some one would come to break the monotonous vigil, when there was the sound of a door opening up at the cottage, and then steps on the gravel path. Directly after Uncle Richard’s voice was heard.
“Now, Tom, my lad, just ten o’clock; give it up for to-night. Where are you?”