"HOOT-TOOT" BEHIND THE HEDGE.
hat first day at the farm was a pretty fair specimen of those that followed. The days grew into weeks and the weeks into one month, and then into two, and Geoff went on with his self-chosen hard and lonely life. The loneliness soon came to be the worst of it. He got used to the hardships so far, and after all they were not very terrible ones. He was better taken care of than he knew, and he was a strong and healthy lad. Had he felt that he was working for others, had he been cheered by loving and encouraging letters, he could have borne it all contentedly. But no letters came, no answer to his note to Vicky begging her to write; and Geoff's proud heart grew prouder and, he tried to think, harder.
"They would let me know, somehow, I suppose, if there was anything much the matter—if—mamma had not got much better yet." For even to himself he would not allow the possibility of anything worse than her not being "much better." And yet she had looked very ill that last evening. He thought of it sometimes in the middle of the night, and started up in a sort of agony of fright, feeling as if at all costs he must set off there and then to see her—to know how she was. Often he did not fall asleep again for hours, and then he would keep sobbing and crying out from time to time, "Oh, mamma, mamma!" But there was no one to hear. And with the morning all the proud, bitter feelings would come back again. "They don't care for me. They are thankful to be rid of me;" and he would picture his future life to himself, friendless and homeless, as if he never had had either friends or home. Sometimes he planned that when he grew older he would emigrate, and in a few years, after having made a great fortune, he would come home again, a millionaire, and shower down coals of fire in the shape of every sort of luxury upon the heads of his unnatural family.
But these plans did not cheer him as they would have done some months ago. His experiences had already made him more practical—he knew that fortunes were not made nowadays in the Dick Whittington way—he was learning to understand that not only are there but twenty shillings in a pound, but, which concerned him more closely, that there are but twelve pence in a shilling, and only thirty in half-a-crown! He saw with dismay the increasing holes in his boots, and bargained hard with the village cobbler to make him cheap a rough, strong pair, which he would never have dreamt of looking at in the old days; he thanked Mrs. Eames more humbly for the well-worn corduroy jacket she made down for him than he had ever thanked his mother for the nice clothes which it had not always been easy for her to procure for him. Yes, Geoff was certainly learning some lessons.
Sundays were in one way the worst, for though he had less to do, he had more time for thinking. He went twice to church, where he managed to sit in a corner out of sight, so that if the tears did sometimes come into his eyes at some familiar hymn or verse, no one could see. And no more was said about the Sunday school, greatly to his relief, for he knew the clergyman would have cross-questioned him. On Sunday afternoons he used to saunter about the park and grounds of Crickwood Bolders. He liked it, and yet it made him melancholy. The house was shut up, but it was easy to see it was a dear old place—just the sort of "home" of Geoff's wildest dreams.
"If we were all living there together, now," he used to say to himself—"mamma quite well and not worried about money—Elsa and Frances would be so happy, we'd never squabble, and Vicky——" But at the idea of Vicky's happiness, words failed him.
It was, it must be allowed, a come-down from such beautiful fancies, to have to hurry back to the farm to harness old Dapple and jog off to the station with the milk. For even on Sundays people can't do without eating and drinking.
