POOR GEOFF!

He drove into the yard, where Matthew’s disagreeable face and voice soon greeted him. Half forgetting himself, Geoff threw the reins on to the pony’s neck and jumped out of the cart, with his carpet-bag. He was making his way into the house, feeling as if even the old bag was a kind of comfort in its way, when the farm-man called him back.

“Dost think I’s to groom pony?” he said ill-naturedly. “May stand till doomsday afore I’ll touch him.”

Geoff turned back. Of course, he ought to have remembered it was his work, and if Matthew had spoken civilly he would even have thanked him for the reminder-more gratefully, I dare say, than he had often thanked Elsa or Frances for a hint of some forgotten duty. But, as it was, it took some self-control not to “fly out,” and to set to work, tired as he was, to groom the pony and put him up for the night. It was all so strange and new too; at Colethorne’s he had watched the stablemen at their work, and thought it looked easy and amusing, but when it came to doing it, it seemed a very different thing, especially in the dusk, chilly evening, and feeling as he did both tired and hungry. He did his best, however, and the old pony was very patient, poor beast, and Geoff’s natural love of animals stood him in good stead; he could never have relieved his own depression by ill temper to any dumb creature. And at last old Dapple was made as comfortable as Geoff knew how, for Matthew took care to keep out of the way, and to offer no help or advice, and the boy turned towards the house, carpet-bag in hand.

The fire was blazing brightly in the kitchen, and in front of it sat the farmer, smoking a long clay pipe, which to Geoff smelt very nasty. He coughed, to attract Mr. Eames’s attention.

“I’ve brought my bag from the station,” he said. “Will you tell me where I’m to sleep?”

The farmer looked up sharply.

“You’ve brought the milk-cans back, too, I suppose? Your bag’s not the principal thing. Have you seen to Dapple?”

“Yes,” said Geoff, and his tone was somewhat sulky.

Eames looked at him again, and still more sharply.

“I told you at the first you were to keep a civil tongue in your head,” he said. “You’ll say ‘sir’ when you speak to me.”

But just then Mrs. Eames fortunately made her appearance.

“Don’t scold him-he’s only a bit strange,” she said. “Come with me, Jim, and I’ll show you your room.”

“Thank you,” said the boy, gratefully.

Mrs. Eames glanced at her husband, as much as to say she was wiser than he, and then led the way out of the kitchen down a short, flagged passage, and up a short stair. Then she opened a door, and, by the candle she held, Geoff saw a very small, very bare room. There was a narrow bed in one corner, a chair, a window-shelf, on which stood a basin, and a cupboard in the wall.

Mrs. Eames looked round. “It’s been well cleaned out since last boy went,” she said. “Master and me’ll look in now and then to see that you keep it clean. Cupboard’s handy, and there’s a good flock mattress.” Then she gave him the light, and turned to go.

“Please,” said Geoff, meekly, “might I have a piece of bread? I’m rather hungry.” It was long past his usual tea-time.

“To be sure!” she replied. “You’ve not had your tea? I put it on the hob for you.” And the good woman bustled off again.

Geoff followed her, after depositing his bag in the cupboard. She poured out the tea into a bowl, and ladled in a good spoonful of brown sugar. Then she cut a hunch off a great loaf, and put it beside the bowl on the dresser. Geoff was so hungry and thirsty, that he attacked both tea and bread, though the former was coarse in flavour, and the latter butterless. But it was not the quality of the food that brought back again that dreadful choking in his throat, and made the salt tears drop into the bowl of tea. It was the thought of tea-time at home-the neat table, and Vicky’s dear, important-looking little face, as she filled his cup, and put in the exact amount of sugar he liked-that came over him suddenly with a sort of rush. He felt as if he could not bear it. He swallowed down the tea with a gulp, and rammed the bread into his pocket. Then, doing his utmost to look unconcerned, he went up to the farmer.

“Shall I go to bed now, please, sir?” he said, with a little hesitation at the last word. “I’m-I’m rather tired.”

“Go to bed?” repeated Eames. “Yes, I suppose so. You must turn out early-the milk must be at the station by half-past five.”

“How shall I wake?” asked Geoff, timidly.

“Wake? You’ll have to learn to wake like others do. However, for the first, I’ll tell Matthew to knock you up.”

“Thank you. Good-night, sir.”

“Good-night.” And the farmer turned again to the newspaper he was reading.

“You’ll find your bed well aired. I made Betsy see to that,” called out Mrs. Eames.

“Thank you,” said Geoff again, more heartily this time. But he overheard Eames grumbling at his wife as he left the room, telling her “he’d have none of that there coddling of the lad.”

“And you’d have him laid up with rheumatics-dying of a chill? That’d be a nice finish up to it all. You know quite well-” But Geoff heard no more. And he was too worn-out and sleepy to think much of what he had heard.

He got out what he required for the night. He wondered shiveringly how it would be possible to wash with only a basin. Water he was evidently expected to fetch for himself. He tried to say his prayers, but fell asleep, the tears running down his face, in the middle, and woke up with a sob, and at last managed somehow to tumble into bed. It was very cold, but, as Mrs. Eames had said, quite dry. The chilly feeling woke him again, and he tried once more to say his prayers, and this time with better success. He was able to add a special petition that “mother” might soon be well again, and that dear Vicky might be happy. And then he fell asleep-so soundly, so heavily, that when a drumming at the door made itself heard, he fancied he had only just begun the night. He sat up. Where was he? At first, in the darkness, he thought he was in his own bed at home, and he wondered who was knocking so roughly-wondered still more at the rude voice which was shouting out-

“Up with you there, Jim, d’ye hear? I’m not a-going to stand here all day. It’s past half-past four. Jim-you lazy lout. I’ll call master if you don’t speak-a-locking of his door like a fine gentleman!”

Gradually Geoff remembered all-the feeling of the things about him-the coarse bed-clothes, the slightly mildewy smell of the pillow, helped to recall him to the present, even before he could see.

“I’m coming, Matthew!” he shouted back. “I’ll be ready in five minutes;” and out of bed he crept, sleepy and confused, into the chilly air of the little room. He had no matches, but there was a short curtain before the window, and when he pulled it back the moonlight came faintly in-enough for him to distinguish the few objects in the room. He dared not attempt to wash, he was so afraid of being late. He managed to get out his oldest pair of trousers, and hurried on his clothes as fast as he could, feeling miserably dirty and slovenly, and thinking to himself he would never again be hard on poor people for not being clean! “I must try to wash when I come back,” he said to himself. Then he hurried out, and none too soon.

Matthew was in the yard, delighted to frighten him. “You’ll have to look sharp,” he said, as Geoff hurried to the stable. “Betsy’s filling the cans, and rare and cross she is at having to do it. You should have been there to help her, and the missis’ll be out in a minute.”

The harnessing of Dapple was not easy in the faint light, and he could not find the stable lantern. But it got done at last, and Geoff led the cart round to the dairy door, where Betsy was filling the last of the cans. She was not so cross as she might have been, and Mrs. Eames had not yet appeared. They got the cans into the cart, and in a minute or two Geoff found himself jogging along the road, already becoming familiar, to the station.

It seemed to grow darker instead of lighter, for the moon had gone behind a cloud, and sunrise was still a good time off. Geoff wondered dreamily to himself why people need get up so early in the country, and then remembered that it would take two or three hours for the cans to get to London. How little he or Vicky had thought, when they drank at breakfast the nice milk which Mrs. Tudor had always taken care to have of the best, of the labour and trouble involved in getting it there in time! And though he had hurried so, he was only just at the station when the train whizzed in, and the one sleepy porter growled at him for not having “looked sharper,” and banged the milk-cans about unnecessarily in his temper, so that Geoff was really afraid they would break or burst open, and all the milk come pouring out.

“You’ll have to be here in better time for the twelve train,” he said crossly. “I’m not a-going to do this sort o’ work for you nor no chap, if you can’t be here in time.”

Geoff did not answer-he was getting used to sharp words and tones. He nearly fell asleep in the cart as he jogged home again, and to add to his discomfort a fine, small, chill, November rain began to fall. He buttoned up his jacket, and wished he had put on his overcoat; and then he laughed rather bitterly to think how absurd he would look with this same overcoat, which had been new only a month before, driving old Dapple in the milk-cart. He was wet and chilled to the bone when he reached the farm, and even if he had energy to drive a little faster he would not have dared to do so, after the farmer’s warning.

Mrs. Eames was in the kitchen when, after putting up the cart and pony, Geoff came in. There was a delicious fragrance of coffee about which made his mouth water, but he did not even venture to go near the fire. Mrs. Eames heard him, however, and looked up. She started a little at the sight of his pale, wan face.

“Bless me, boy!” she exclaimed, “but you do look bad. Whatever’s the matter?”

Geoff smiled a little-he looked very nice when he smiled; it was only when he was in one of his ill-tempered moods that there was anything unlovable in his face-and his smile made Mrs. Eames still more sorry for him.

“There’s nothing the matter, thank you,” he said; “I’m only rather cold-and wet. I’m strange to it all, I suppose. I wanted to know what I should do next. Should I feed the pigs?”

“Have you met the master?” said the farmer’s wife. “He’s gone down the fields with Matthew and the others. Didn’t you meet ’em?”

Geoff shook his head.

“No; I went straight to the stable when I came back from the station.”

“You’d better take off your wet jacket,” she said. “There-hang it before the fire. And,” she went on, “there’s a cup of coffee still hot, you can have for your breakfast this morning as you’re so cold-it’ll warm you better nor stir-about; and there’s a scrap o’ master’s bacon you can eat with your bread.”

She poured out the coffee, steaming hot, and forked out the bacon from the frying-pan as she spoke, and set all on the corner of the dresser nearest to the fire.

“Thank you, thank you awfully,” said Geoff. Oh, how good the coffee smelt! He had never enjoyed a meal so much, and yet, had it been at home, how he would have grumbled! Coffee in a bowl, with brown sugar-bread cut as thick as your fist, and no butter! Truly Geoff was already beginning to taste some of the sweet uses of adversity.

Breakfast over, came the pigs. The farmer had left word that the sty was to be cleaned out, and fresh straw fetched for the pigs’ beds; and as Betsy was much more good-natured than Matthew in showing the new boy what was expected of him, he got on pretty well, even feeling a certain pride in the improved aspect of the pig-sty when he had finished. He would have dearly liked to try a scrubbing of the piggies themselves, if he had not been afraid of Matthew’s mocking him. But besides this there was not time. At eleven the second lot of milk had to be carted to the station, and with the remembrance of the cross porter Geoff dared not be late. And in the still falling rain he set off again, though, thanks to Mrs. Eames, with a dry jacket, and, thanks to her too, with a horse-rug buckled round him, in which guise surely no one would have recognized Master Geoffrey Tudor.

After dinner the farmer set him to cleaning out the stables, which it appeared was to be a part of his regular work; then there were the pigs to feed again, and at four o’clock the milk-cans to fetch. Oh, how tired Geoff was getting of the lane to the station! And the day did not come to an end without his getting into terrible disgrace for not having rinsed out the cans with boiling water the night before, though nobody had told him to do it. For a message had come from London that the cans were dirty and the milk in danger of turning sour, and that if it happened again Farmer Eames would have to send his milk elsewhere. It was natural perhaps that he should be angry, and yet, as no one had explained about it to Geoff, it seemed rather hard for him to have to take the scolding. Very hard indeed it seemed to him-to proud Geoff, who had never yet taken in good part his mother’s mildest reprimands. And big boy though he was, he sobbed himself to sleep this second night of his new life, for it did seem too much, that when he had been trying his very best to please, and was aching in every limb from his unwonted hard work, he should get nothing but scolding. And yet he knew that he was lucky to have fallen into such hands as Farmer Eames’s, for, strict as he was, he was a fair and reasonable master.

“I suppose,” thought Geoff, “I have never really known what hardships were, though I did think I had plenty to bear at home.”

What would Elsa have said had she heard him?