o’ their games!” remarked the old man with a tolerant smile, as he turned toward the door. “That was the person as said I’d catch it for gettin’ my clothes wet, as we came past the Dun Cow.”
The voices of the beanfeasters abated and ceased, and now Mr. Butson left no doubt of his readiness to depart. “Come,” he said, with chap-fallen briskness, “we’ll ‘ave to git back to the others; they’ll be goin’.” He took leave with so much less dignity and so much more haste than accorded with his earlier manner that Mr. May was a trifle puzzled, though he soon forgot it.
“Good-night, Mr. May, I wish you good-night,” said Uncle Isaac, shaking hands impressively. “I’ve greatly enjoyed your flow of conversation, Mr. May.” He made after the impatient Butson, stopped half-way to the gate and called gently:—“Nan!”
“Yes, uncle,” Mrs. May replied, stepping out to him. “What is it?”
Uncle Isaac whispered gravely in her ear, and she returned and whispered to the old man. “Of course—certainly,” he said, looking mightily concerned, as he re-entered the cottage.
Mrs. May reached a cracked cup from a shelf, and, turning over a few coppers, elicited a half-crown. With this she returned to Uncle Isaac.
“I’ll make a note of it,” said Uncle Isaac as he pocketed the money, “and send a postal-order.”
“O, don’t trouble about that, Uncle Isaac!” For Uncle Isaac, with the small property, must not be offended in a matter of a half-crown.
“What? Trouble?” he ejaculated, deeply pained. “To pay my—”
“‘Ere—come on!” growled Mr. Butson savagely from the outer gloom. “Come on!” And they went together, taking the lane in the direction opposite to that lately used by the noisy woman.
“Well,” old May observed, “we don’t often have visitors, an’ I was glad to see your Uncle Isaac, Nan. An’ Mr. Butson, too,” he added impartially.
“Yes,” returned Bessy’s mother innocently. “Such a gentleman, isn’t he?”
“There’s one thing I forgot,” the old man said suddenly. “I might ha’ asked ‘em to take a drop o’ beer ‘fore they went.”
“They had some while they was waitin’ for tea. An’—an’ I don’t think there’s much left.” She dragged a large tapped jar from under the breeding-box at the window, and it was empty.
“Ah!” was all the old man’s comment, as he surveyed the jar thoughtfully.
Presently he turned into the back-house and emerged with a tin pot and a brush. “I’m a goin’ treaclin’ a bit,” he said. “Come, Johnny?”
The boy pulled his cap from his pocket, fetched a lantern, and was straightway ready, while Bessy sat to her belated tea.
The last pale light lay in the west, and the evening offered up an oblation of sweet smells. All things that feed by night were out, and nests were silent save for once and again a sleepy twitter. Every moment another star peeped, and then one more. The boy and the old man walked up the slope among the trees, pausing now at one, now at another, to daub the bark with the mixture of rum and treacle that was in the pot.
“It’s always best to be careful where you treacle when there’s holiday folk about,” said Johnny’s grandfather. “They don’t understand it. Often I’ve treaded a log or a stump and found a couple sittin’ on it when I came back—with new dresses, and sich. It’s no good explainin’—they think it’s all done for practical jokin’. It’s best to go on an’ take no notice. I’ve heard ‘em say:—‘Don’t the country smell lovely?’—meanin’ the smell o’ the rum an’ treacle they was a-sittin’ on. But when they find it—lor, the language I have heard! Awful!”…
The boy was quiet almost all the round. Presently he said, “Gran’dad, do you really like that likeness I made of mother?”
“Like it, my boy? Why o’ course. It’s a nobby picture!”
“Uncle Isaac said it was bad.”
“O!” There was a thoughtful pause while they tramped toward the next tree. “That’s only Uncle Isaac’s little game, Johnny. You mustn’t mind that. It’s a nobby picture.”
“I don’t believe Uncle Isaac knows anything about it,” said the boy vehemently. “I think he’s ignorant.”
“Here, Johnny, Johnny!” cried his grandfather. “That won’t do, you know. Not at all. You mustn’t say things like that.”
“Well, that’s what I think, gran’dad. An’ I know he says things wrong. When he came before he said that ship I drew was bad—an’ I—I very near cried.” (He did cry, but that was in secret, and not to be confessed.) “But now,” Johnny went on, “I’m fourteen, an’ I know better. I don’t believe Uncle Isaac knows a bit about things.”
They had come again to the tree first treaded, and, leaving the pot and brush at its foot, the old man, by help of the lantern, took certain of the moths that had been attracted. From this he carried the lantern to the next tree in the round and then to the next, filling the intervals between his moth-captures with successive chapters of a mild and rather vague lecture on respect for elders.
It was dark night now, and the sky all a-dust with stars. The old man and the boy took their way more by use than by sight amid the spectral presences of the trees, whose infinite whispering filled the sharpening air. They emerged on high ground, whence could be seen, here the lights of Loughton and there the lights of Woodford, and others more distant in the flatter country. Here the night wind swept up lustily from all Essex, and away from far on the Robin Hood Road came a rumble and a murmur, and presently the glare of hand-lights red and green, the sign and token of homing beanfeasters.
CHAPTER II.
FOR some while a problem had confronted the inmates of the cottage, and now it was ever with them: the choice of a trade for Johnny. The situation of the cottage itself made the main difficulty. There was a walk of two miles to the nearest railway station, and then London was twelve miles off. It was in London that trades were learnt; but to get there? Here the family must stay, for here was the cottage, which cost no rent, for the old man had bought it with his little savings. Moreover, here also were the butterflies and the moths, which meant butter to the dry bread of the little pension; and here was the garden. To part with Johnny altogether was more than his mother could face, and, indeed, what was to pay for his lodging and keep?
The moths and butterflies could be no living for Johnny. To begin with, though he was always ready to help in the hatching, killing, setting, and what not, he was no born insect-hunter, like his grandfather; and then the old man had long realised that the forest was growing a poorer and poorer hunting-ground each year, and must some day (after he was dead, he hoped) be no longer worth working. People were hard on the hawks, so that insect-eating birds multiplied apace, and butterflies were fewer. And there was something else, or so it seemed—some subtle influence from the great smoky province that lay to the south-west. For London grew and grew, and washed nearer and still nearer its scummy edge of barren
