Mrs. Chundle stitched away in silent graciousness.
"Tommy," cried a distant voice—it was the poet's—"Tommy, come here, I've just hit the bottle three times running."
Tommy grinned.
"I must go," he said. "I'm jolly glad you and Mrs. Berrill are pals," and he disappeared in the direction of the poet.
"Which I 'ope 'e won't turn out no worse than 'is dear father. God bless 'im," said Mrs. Berrill, as they discussed the tattered jacket.
And so the days tripped by, sunny and showery—true April days. Up in the downs was a new shrill bleating of lambs, and down in the valley rose the young wheat, green and strong and hopeful.
The water-meadows grew each day more velvety and luscious, as the young grass thickened, and between the stems, in the copse, came a shimmer of blue and gold, of blue-bell and primrose.
The stream sang buoyantly down to the mill, and Tommy wandered over the country-side, happy in it all—and indeed almost part of it.
Moreover, Madge and her governess would often come upon him, all unexpectedly, too, in some byway of their daily travel, and he would show them flowers and bird's-nests, and explain for their benefit the position of each farmhand and labourer in the commonwealth of Camslove, and thus the days went by so happily that they seemed to have vanished almost as they came, and on a morning Tommy woke up to the fact that the holidays had ended. A grim showery day it was, too—a day of driving wind and cold rain—and Tommy loitered dismally from arbour to house, and house to arbour.
The poet was busy on a new work, and Mrs. Chundle, too intent on marking and packing his clothes to be good company.