"None of yer cheek to me, young man! You're getting too big for yer boots since you left school. If in five minutes you don't tell me where you've been an' who you was with, I'll screw the neck off of you. Nice thing while you're a child an' looking to me for everythink that goes into your stummick an' is put on your back, an' I'm responsible for you, that you can't answer me civil. Your actions can't bear lookin' into, it seems. I'll go over an' see Mr Bray about it this afternoon if you don't tell me at once."
"I ain't been anywhere, only pokin' up an' down the lanes with Jack Bray."
"Well, why couldn't you say so at once without raisin' this rumpus. Them as has rared any boys don't know what it is to die of idleness an' want of vexation."
"It wasn't me rose the rumpus. Some people always blames others for what they do themselves: it 'u'd give a bloke th' pip," grumbled Andrew, as I put the last stitch in his trousers and his grandma departed. Her black Sunday dress rustled aggressively, and her plain bibless holland apron, which she never took off except when her bonnet went on for street appearance or when she went to bed, and her little Quaker collars and cuffs of muslin edged with lace, were even more immaculate than on week-days. She scorned a cap, and her features were so well cut that she looked well with the grey hair—wonderfully plentiful and wavy for one of her years,—simply parted and tidily coiled at the back. This costume or toilet, always fresh and never shabby, was invariably completed by a style of light house-boots, introduced to me as "lastings"; and there was an unimpaired vigour of intellect in their wearer good to contemplate in a woman of the people aged seventy-five.
It came on to rain after dinner and confined us all to the house.
Dawn borrowed an exciting love-story from Miss Flipp; grandma read a "good" book; Uncle Jake still pored over the 'Noonoon Advertiser,' while Andrew repaired a large amount of fishing-tackle, with which during the time I knew him I never knew him to catch a fish, and Carry grumbled about the rain.
"Poor Carry!" sympathised Andrew, "she can't git out to do a spoon with Larry, an' the poor bloke can't come in—he's so sweet, you know, a drop of rain would melt him."
"It would take something to melt you," retorted Carry. "The only thing I can see good in the rain is that it will keep Mrs Bray away."
And thus passed my first full day at Clay's.