“Certainly not,” Lavendar had answered. “The plum tree is safeguarded in the agreement as I’m sure no plum tree ever was before. Waller R. A.’s no fool!”
Digesting this information and much else that he had gleaned, Carnaby now climbed to the top of a tree where he had a favourite perch, and did some serious and simple thinking.
“It’s a beastly shame,” he said to himself, “to turn that old woman out of her 276 cottage. Cousin Robin thinks it’s a beastly shame, and what’s more, Mark does, and he’s a man, and a lawyer into the bargain.”
Carnaby thought remorsefully of a pot of jam which old Mrs. Prettyman had given him once to take back to college. What good jam it had been, and how large the pot! He had never given her anything––he had never a penny to bless himself with; and now his grandmother was taking away from the poor old creature all that she had. “It’s regular covetousness,” he thought, “and that infernal plum tree’s at the bottom of it all. Naboth’s vineyard is a joke in comparison, and What’s-his-name and the one ewe lamb simply aren’t in it.” He grew hot with mortification. Then he reflected, “If the plum tree weren’t there, Waller R. A. wouldn’t want the cottage, and old Mrs. Prettyman could live in it till the end of the chapter.” A slow grin dawned upon his face, its most mischievous expression, the one which Rupert with canine sagacity had learned 277 to dread. He felt and pinched the muscle of his arm fondly. (Mussle he always spelled the word himself, upon phonetic principles.)
“I may be a fool and a minor” (generally spelt miner by him), he said, as he climbed down from his perch, “but at least I can cut down a tree!”
He became lost to view forthwith in the workshops and tool-sheds attached to the home premises of Stoke Revel, and presently emerged, furnished with the object he had made diligent and particular search for; this he proceeded to carry in an inconspicuous way to a distant cottage where he knew there was a grindstone. He spent a happy hour with the object, the grindstone, and a pail of water. Whirr, whirr, whirr, sang the grindstone, now softly, now loudly––“this is an axe, an axe, an axe, and a strong arm that holds it!”
“You be goin’ to do a bit of forestry on your own, Master Carnaby, eh?” suggested the grinning owner of the grindstone.
“I am; a very particular bit, Jones!” replied the young master, lovingly feeling the edge of the tool, which was now nearly as fine as that of a razor.
“You be careful, sir, as you don’t chop off one of your own toes with that there axe,” said the man. “It be full heavy for one o’ your age. But there! you zailor-men be that handy! ’Tis your trade, so to speak!”