Jesse beamed with pleasure.
"I'll see if I can't do something better for you, Master Ferdy," he said.
And to himself he added, "It's a deal sensibler, after all, than knocking up after mischief all the evening—a-shamming to smoke and a-settin' trees on fire." For this had been one of his worst misdeeds in the village not many months before, when he and some other boys had hidden their so-called "cigars" of rolled-up leaves, still smouldering, in the hollow of an old oak, and frightened everybody out of their wits in the night by the conflagration which ended the days of the poor tree and threatened to spread farther.
Still more pleased would he have been could he have overheard Ferdy's words after he had gone.
"Isn't it really capital, Dr. Lilly? I don't believe I could ever do anything so like real as this old Jerry."
[CHAPTER IX]
"MY PUPILS"
That summer was a very, very lovely one. It scarcely rained, and when it did, it was generally in the night. If it is "an ill wind that brings nobody any good," on the other hand I suppose that few winds are so good that they bring nobody any harm, so possibly in some parts of the country people may have suffered that year for want of water; but this was not the case at Evercombe, where there were plenty of most well-behaved springs, which—or some of which at least—had never been known to run dry.