"Wood, so much; bolts, so much; nails; time;" Ted heard him half whispering to himself. Then he looked up.
"A matter of three shilling or so, sir," he replied. "I'll try that it shan't be more. But you see the bolts I have to buy, they're not things as we use every day. And for the time, sir, I'm not thinking much of that. The evenings are light now. I'll try and see to it myself after work's over."
"Thank you very much, Mr. Newton," said Ted. "I think it'll be all right. But I'd like first to tell my mother how much it will cost, and then I'll run back and settle about it."
"All right, sir," the carpenter replied; and after pausing a moment at the door to pat the great big gentle dog, that was lying there blinking in the sunshine, and thinking to himself that its eyes somehow reminded him of long ago Cheviott whom Ted still remembered, though Newton's dog wasn't at all the same kind, the boy ran off again, whistling as he went, with light dancing steps down the in-and-out zigzag streets of the old town, stopping a moment, eager as he was, to admire the peeps of lovely view he came upon now and then as he turned a corner, or crossed the open market-place.
He was in great spirits. Fivepence short he felt sure could easily be made up.
"Either mother will give it me," he thought, "or she'll find some way of my earning it. I'm sure she'd like it properly done, and there'll be no fear of Cissy or me hurting ourselves."
On he danced again, for now he was in more open ground, running along the country highroad where was his home. A few cottages stood not far from where he was passing—cottages of respectable people, with several of whom sociable Ted was on friendly terms, and just as he was nearing the first of these, a boy about his own age came out, a basket on his arm and in his hands something tied up in a cloth which he was carrying carefully. But boys will be boys!
"Good morning, Jamie," said Ted as they met, for he recognised the boy as the son of a man living farther down the road, who had sometimes worked for his father; "where have you been, and what's that you've got?" and in pure fun Ted tapped with a switch he was carrying on the mysterious bundle.
Jamie looked up laughingly.
"O Master Ted," he was just beginning, but somehow—how I cannot tell, and I feel pretty sure that neither Ted nor Jamie could have told either—Ted's friendly tap had either distracted his attention so that he trod on a stone and lost his balance, or else it had destroyed the equilibrium of the bundle itself, so that almost before he had time even to say "O Master Ted," the mischief was done. Down plumped the bundle, with a crash of broken crockery, and a brown liquid at once oozed out through the cloth, making a melancholy puddle on the road. Jamie's half-spoken words changed into a cry of despair. It was the Sunday's dinner which had come to grief, the pie which his poor mother had prepared so carefully, and which he was taking home from his grandmother's, in whose oven it had been baking.