‘All right,’ he remarked, and that was all. He was out of the hedge and over the ditch before me, and leading the way at a great pace across the pasture.
We did not keep to the path, but made off to the left, where an irregular fringe of trees grew along inside the hedge which cut off the pasture from the road leading between the Hall and the village. Great luck attended us. Beyond a few rabbits we saw no sign of life, and when we got close enough to the trees to take refuge if any danger approached I breathed more freely, and I feel sure that Rusty was equally relieved. Racing along among the rustling dead leaves, we crossed the brook near the culvert under the road. The rivulet was so small that it was no trouble to jump. Then we found ourselves in the park, and here we had to take to the open again. The fine clumps of timber which dotted it here and there were our islands of refuge, and we ran from one to the other, the same good fortune attending us during our whole journey. From the last tree we steered for the kitchen-garden wall, and keeping along the bottom of this, reached the sunk fence. Once up this, and I was on familiar ground.
A long narrow plantation of Kentish cob-nuts bordered the wall which divided the kitchen-garden from the lawns, and in this we were soon snugly ensconced.
‘My teeth! Did you ever see such nuts?’ exclaimed Rusty, staring in wide-eyed amazement at the great russet-coloured cobs which hung in profusion among the brilliantly tinted leaves.
‘Oh yes, I’ve eaten lots of them,’ replied I, with conscious superiority. ‘Try them. They’re uncommon good.’
Rusty needed no second bidding, but set to work, and cutting the tip off one of the largest nuts, was soon discussing its fat, white kernel with a gusto which proved that he thoroughly agreed with me in my estimate of the quality of cobs. I joined in, and we made a most delicious luncheon. From where we sat the lawn and part of the house were in full sight, and all the time I kept a watch fill eye upon the clump of evergreens where I had been used to play, in the hope that I might see the familiar figure of my dear master in his rough tweeds, and his cap on the back of his head, sauntering across the lawn.
Alas! there was no sign of him nor of any of the Fortescues. Had I known it, half the length of England separated me from the nearest of my old friends. After a time, however, some one did stroll out upon the terrace walk. He was a complete stranger—a short, fat man, with red cheeks and mutton-chop whiskers. He wore a grey bowler, tipped far back upon his head, his thumbs were stuck in the armholes of his gaudy waistcoat, and a long, black cigar was held between his thick lips. He was gazing round him with a complacent air of proprietorship which in some indefinable fashion annoyed me intensely.
Suddenly he took the cigar from his lips and shouted loudly, ‘Simpson!’ A man with a bill-hook in his hand came hurrying round from the shrubbery behind the house.
The stout man pointed to Jack’s and my pet clump of evergreens. ‘Those shrubs are untidy, Simpson. They want clipping up. Get to work on ’em at once!’ And, to my horror and disgust, Simpson began chopping and carving away at the deodars and arbor vitæ, lopping all the boughs up a man’s height from the ground, and turning the pretty shrubs into the stiff, unnatural likeness of the toy trees in Jack’s youngest brother’s Noah’s Ark.
Then, as I looked about me, I began to see that many things had been changed. The laurels were cut close and flat; a number of fine limbs had been sawn from the elms; several new beds of weird pattern had been cut in the splendid century-old turf of the lawn; the gravel paths were all fresh swept; everything had a painfully overtidy appearance.