The following day was eventful. To begin with, after Andrew had discharged his early morning duties, he was to appear before his grandma for the execution of the sentence she had passed upon him the night before. I was assisting him to dry the parts of the cream-separator, a task which had become chronic with me, when Carry shouted from the kitchen, where she was putting in her week—
"Your grandma says not to be long; she's waiting for you."
Andrew unburdened his soul to me.
"Lord, ain't I just in for it! I'll hear how me grandma rared me since I was born! I'm dead sick of this born and rared business. It would give a bloke the pip. I didn't make meself born, nor want any one else to do it; there ain't much in bein' alive," he said with that pessimism which, like measles and whooping-cough, is indigenous to extreme youth.
"How could I help being rared? I didn't ask 'em to rare me. I didn't make meself a little baby that couldn't help itself, and they needn't have rared me unless they liked. Goodness knows, I'd have rather died like a little pup before his eyes were opened," he continued so tragically that I took the opportunity of smiling behind his back as he threw out the dish-water.
"Hurry up! your grannie is waiting!" called Carry once more.
"Blow you! you'll have to wait till I'm done," retorted the boy in a tone the reverse of genial.
"People is always chuckin' at their kids how much they owe them. I'm blowed if ever I can see it. I didn't want 'em to have me, and don't see why it should be everlasting threw at me."
It is a wise provision that youth cannot see what it owes the previous generation. This is a chicken that comes back to roost in heavier years.
"I wish I had a grandma like Jack Bray's ma. He nicked over to me w'en I was after the cows, an' Mrs Bray ain't goin' to kick up any row about the oranges. She says she never knew of a boy that didn't go into orchards in their young days, and that his dad did, and people don't think no more of a boy pickin' up a little fruit than they do of pickin' up a stick. Yet grandma will tan the hide off of me. She done it once before, and I was stiff for a week."