Boy Woodburn Part 46

Four years had pa.s.sed; but Maudie had not changed or aged.

She lay in the sun on a step on the ladder, languid, insolent, concerned only for herself. True the kennel beneath the ladder was empty now, and had a rusty and pathetic air as of long disuse; but the Monster-without-Manners was not dead, alas!--he had but changed his abode. Now and for some years past the Great Unspeakable had shared a kennel with the Four-Legs-Who-Might-Not-Walk-Alone; the one who there was all this foolish fuss about. There were many such Four-Legs about, each as a rule with a small Two-Legs in attendance or on top. As a whole, they were harmless. They lived and let live, and Maudie asked no more. But the Four-Legs with whom the Monster-without-Manners had entered on a sinister intimacy had been corrupted by his companion. He bounded, too, upon occasion. And when he bounded he was so big that he seemed to fill the yard, sprawling here and there and everywhere, till the walls bulged and burst, to the grave inconvenience of Maudie, the fan-tails, and all sober citizens; while the Monster-without-Manners _more suo_, encouraged him with coa.r.s.e laughter.

When the Four-Legs-Who-Might-Not-Walk-Alone bounded in the yard, Maudie retired indignantly and with the grand air to safety in the loft. She did not blame the Four-Legs. He was young, innocent, and the victim of the impossible M.-w.-M., who was still the villain of her piece and had not altered for the better with the years. Maybe he bounded less; but on the other hand age had brought with it cunning.

When Putnam's Only Gentleman had brought her a saucer of milk the M.-w.-M. would approach with a great air of gallantry and high breeding, and deliberately thrusting his great foot into the saucer, would upset it. That was what the M.-w.-M. thought a joke.

Apart from Maudie the yard was deserted now. The horses moved restlessly in their loose-boxes, but there was no bustle of s.h.i.+rt-sleeved urchins with buckets and pitchforks mucking them out. For it was Sunday morning, and the lads were elsewhere.

Arrayed on the long-backed roofs the fan-tails sidled, cooed, and blinked in the sun. In a sycamore in the Paddock Close a hedge-sparrow raised its thin sweet song, and the celandine lifted a pale and fragile face under the beeches on the hillside. Hope was everywhere except in Maudie's heart, for February was already on the wane.

The back door of the house opened, and Mrs. Woodburn, grayer than of old, stately and ap.r.o.ned, stood in it with a corn-measure in her hand, and tossed showers of golden grain for the fan-tails who came fluttering to her call.

Albert, busy on his chin with a shaving brush, peeped surrept.i.tiously round the door of the saddle-room, and seeing Ma opposite withdrew swiftly; but he kept the door ajar as though awaiting something he was determined not to miss.

Mrs. Woodburn retired indoors, and a few minutes later there came the noisy clacking of a horse and cart entering the cobbled yard.

Instantly Albert was all alert. He flung a towel about his neck and looked out.

An ostler from Lewes, known familiarly as Cherry, had pulled up a dog-cart opposite the pump. The old horse stretched his neck, shook his collar from his sweating shoulders, and, breathing on the water in the trough, drank delicately.

Mr. Silver descended from the cart.

He marked the fair lad in the door of the saddle-room and greeted him in his large and leisurely way:

"Good morning, Albert," he said.

"Morning, sir."

"Where are the other lads?"

"Where they ought to be, sir. In the Lads' Barn, waiting for Miss Boy."

"And why aren't you there?" asked the young man, amused.

Albert, in fact, spent all his spare time of late shaving. Indeed, he was in the habit of informing those he called his colleagues that unless he shaved three times a day he wasn't 'ardly decent.

"I got to keep at it, sir," he confided now to Mr. Silver. "Else I gets it from Miss Boy."

"What d'you get from her?" asked the young man blandly. "A razor?"

Old Cherry chuckled.

"'E larders his chin and then sc.r.a.pes the soap off," he said. "That amooses Albert, that does."

The insult left the lad cold; but that was less because the insult was a feeble one than because his mind was elsewhere.

His eyes and whole attention were on the back of the departing toff.

There was something fascinating to Albert about that back this morning.

He followed the young man with the interest and the undisguised admiration of a Paris gamin watching an aristocrat go to the guillotine.

As the long back disappeared round a corner, the lad turned to Cherry and winked.

"Guts," he said.

The ostler led the old horse with dripping muzzle away from the water-trough. The expression on his face seemed to suggest that the other was a vulgar fellow.

"Did he talk?" asked Albert.

"Talk!" said Cherry ironically. "To me? Likely, ain't it? He talked all right. Only he never let on."

Albert had picked up his towel, and was scrubbing away at his chin.

"Plucky little feller," he said. "You'd never know."

"He takes his gruel all right," admitted the other surlily, unharnessing.

"Yes, we've learned him his lesson since he's been at Putnam's,"

reflected Albert.

"'Ow long's he been training here then?" asked Cherry grudgingly, as he coiled the traces.

"Five year I've had him now," answered Albert. "He come to me the spring afore Four-Pound-the-Second was foaled."

Cherry led the old horse into the stable and put him into an empty stall.

"---- shame I call it," he said. "A nice feller like that."

Albert watched him with folded arms.

"I would, too," he said, "only it's Sunday, and Mar might hear."

Cherry smirked.

"Why ain't you at Bible Cla.s.s then?" he asked grimly.

The Bible Cla.s.s at Putnam's was a standing joke along the South Downs from Arunvale to Beachy Head.

Albert swaggered.

"I'm not takin' it this morning," he said. "I'm givin 'em a serees of addresses on the 'Igher Life when the jumpin' season's over."

The little ostler looked at his watch.

"You'd better step it," he said, "you and your Hired Life. It's past eleben and the bells have stopped. If you ain't there before her, you'll get the stick, you will."

Albert moved slowly up the gangway behind the loose-boxes, unheeding the other's taunts.