CHAPTER VIII THROUGH THE CORN
According to Farmer Bandilow (who was now our last old tenant, striving to escape from the wreck of plough, by paddling with spade and trowel), the London season begins with turnip-tops, and ends with cabbage-grubs. But this year it must have lasted well into the time of turnip-bottoms; otherwise how could my sister, Lady Fitzragon, have been in London? Not that we knew very much about the movements of her ladyship, for she found our cottage beyond the reach of her fat and glittering horses; only that she must have been now in town, because our Grace was with her. And this was a lucky thing for me; for if Grace had been at home, she must have known all about my wounded arm, and a nice fuss she would have made of it. But my mother, though equally kind and good, was not very quick of perception; and being out of doors nearly all the day now, and keeping my own hours, I found it easy enough to avoid all notice and escape all questions. For the people at the cottage very seldom came to my special den, the harness-room; and I kept my own little larder in what had once been a kennel close at hand, and my own little bed up a flat-runged ladder, and so troubled none but a sweetly deaf old dame. And this arrangement grew and prospered, whenever there was no Grace to break through it.
However, there is no luck for some people. One night, when I felt sure that all the cottage was asleep, I had taken off the bandages, and was pumping very happily on my left forearm, where the flesh had been torn, when there in the stableyard before me, conspicuous in the moonlight, with a blazing satin waistcoat, stood the only man who could do justice to it. For this gallant fellow had a style of his own, which added new brilliance to the most brilliant apparel.
"Why, Tom," I cried, "where on earth do you come from? I can't shake hands, or I shall spoil some of your charms. Why, you must have been dining with the governor. New togs again! What a coxcomb it is!"
"Never would I have sported these, and indeed I would never have come down at all, if I had known Grace was out of the way."
He was allowed to call her Grace to me.
"How slow it is without her! But I say, old chap, what a frightful arm you've got! Pitchfork again, I suppose"—for I had received a scratch before—"only ten times as bad. Why, you mustn't neglect this. You'll have it off at the elbow, if you do. Why, even by this light—By Jove, what a whacking arm you've got! Why, it is twice the size of mine. I could never have believed it. Let me pull off my coat, and show you."
"But you cannot want one the size of mine"—I answered with a laugh, for it was thoroughly like Tom to fetch everything into his own person; "you could never put it into a waistcoat like that."