Vane turned to go back to the Little Manor, for, in spite of his defiant, careless way of treating Distin’s words, he could not help feeling too much stung to care about continuing his journey to the rectory, for the feeling would come to the front that his fellow-pupil had some excuse for what he had said.
“I suppose I did look like a blacksmith’s or bricklayer’s boy to-day,” he said to himself. “But if I did, what business is it of his? There’s nothing disgraceful in it, or uncle would soon stop me. And, besides, Gilmore and Macey don’t seem to mind, and their families are far higher than Distin’s. There: I don’t care. I was going to give up all kind of work that dirties one’s hands, but now I will not, just out of spite. Dirty work, indeed! I’ll swear I never looked half so dirty over my carpentering and turning and scheming as I’ve seen him look after a game at football on a wet day.”
But all the same, the evening at the Little Manor seemed to be a very dull one; and when, quite late, the carrier’s cart stopped at the gate, and cook got down, Vane felt no interest in knowing what she would say about the alterations in her kitchen, nor in knowing whether Aunt Hannah had spoken to her about not lighting the kitchen-fire.
But he revived a little after his supper, and was eager to take a candle and go out of the hall-door and along the gravel-path, shading the light, on his way to the greenhouse, where he had a good quiet inspection of his work, and was delighted to find that the india-rubber joints hardly leaked in the least, and no more than would be cured by the swelling of the caoutchouc, as soon as the pipes were made hot, and the rings began to fit more tightly, by filling up the uneven places in the rough iron.
Everything looked delightfully fresh and perfect; the pipes glistened of an ebon blackness; the two brass taps shone new and smooth; and the various plants and flowers exhaled their scent and began to master that of the Brunswick black.
Soon after satisfying himself that all was right, he made his way up to his bedroom, so thoroughly tired out by the bodily exertion of the two past days that he dropped off at once into a heavy, dreamless sleep, which was brought to an end about eight o’clock the next morning by a sensation of his having been seized by a pair of giant hands and thrown suddenly and heavily upon the bedroom floor.