by Forrest Reid
The loft was a long, low, whitewashed room, lit by a skylight and by a broad window facing the cobbled yard. They climbed up to it from the interior of the motor-house by means of a board with footholes in it, at the top of which was an open trap-door. Its only furniture was a plain solid kitchen table and a couple of chairs, but Pascoe’s attention was immediately caught by the railway spread out on the floor, and it was with some difficulty that Tom drew him from this to more important business. “There it is,” he said, pointing to the bath, “and what we’ve got to do is to get it down. I’ve tied ropes round it, because we’ll have to lower it out of the window; the trap-door’s too small.”
Even with the window pushed up as high as it would go, it looked as if it might be a narrow squeeze, though, as Pascoe observed, if it had been possible to get the bath into the loft, it must be equally possible to get it out again; and he examined the ropes himself, testing each knot carefully in spite of Tom’s repeated assurances. Fortunately the window-ledge was level with the floor, so there would be no hoisting to be done, for the bath was an old-fashioned iron one and remarkably heavy. They pushed it nearly half-way through the window, where it remained poised. “We’d better stand well back,” said the prudent Pascoe. “And jolly well mind what you’re doing, because it’ll give the most frightful jerk once it gets over.”
“We can’t both stand back, or how are we to push it?” Tom objected, and they were still discussing the problem when Phemie came out into the yard and saw them.
“What are you at now, Master Tom?” she cried in alarm “Don’t you push that bath another inch, or you’ll be down after it. . . . Do you hear what I’m telling you . . . ? Wait—I’m coming.”
They waited, and Phemie hurriedly crossed the yard and disappeared inside the motor-house. Next moment they heard her laboriously climbing the footboard, for the holes were far apart, and Phemie was stout and hampered by her skirts. Presently her head and shoulders emerged through the trap-door, and they both rushed to her assistance. “Get out of me way,” she snapped at them, “I can manage better by myself.”
Manage she did, though with much puffing and blowing; and the moment she recovered sufficient breath she began to scold them both impartially, regardless of the fact that she had never seen Pascoe before. Tom tried to explain why they wanted to get the bath down, but she continued to speak her mind, while Pascoe gazed at her with solemn blue eyes. He seemed surprised at Phemie’s extremely frank remarks, but Tom wasn’t, and moreover knew they wouldn’t prevent her from helping them, and that with this powerful aid the job of lowering the bath would be child’s play. It was at any rate successful, for there was not even a bump when it reached the ground. “Thanks awfully, Phemie dear,” Tom said affectionately, while Pascoe expressed a more reserved gratitude.
The task concluded, Phemie recovered her good humour. “We’ll help you down,” Tom assured her, but the proffered aid again was refused, though this time more graciously. “Run on now, the both of you—and don’t be waiting in the garridge eether, for I know I’ll be a sight, with them steps near a yard apart.” So they left her, and hovered discreetly just outside the door till she had accomplished the descent. “She’s frightfully decent, isn’t she?” Tom whispered to Pascoe. “Of course we could have got it down by ourselves in the long run, but it was decent of her all the same, and it saved a lot of bother.”
Possibly Phemie overheard these commendations, or guessed them; at all events she continued her good offices by helping them to convey the bath—balanced on the largest wheelbarrow—to its destination. There she left them, amid a shower of renewed thanks. “She’s as strong as a horse,” Tom murmured in admiration, as he gazed after her broad back. “She’s got arms like the Japanese wrestlers in Granny’s picture. She broke the kitchen range one day when she was cleaning it, and it’s solid iron.”
This feat—much, if less appreciatively, commented on at the time by Mother—had greatly impressed him, but Pascoe received it absent-mindedly, for he was thinking of the aquarium. The dogs had already examined this in their own fashion.
“We’ll get a spade—two spades—and the thing William uses for cutting edges—it’s as sharp as a knife.”
They ran to the tool-house, accompanied by Roger and Pincher, while lazy old Barker stretched himself alongside the upturned bath, knowing very well they would soon come back.
“We’d better use the wheelbarrow, “Pascoe deliberated, “and put the sods and earth in that. It’ll save time and won’t make a mess of the grass all round.”
Tom agreed; and Pascoe, with the edge-cutter, began at once to outline the cavity they had to dig. He did this with the greatest skill and neatness, as if he had been accustomed to such jobs all his life. Indeed, the superiority of his workmanship was so patent that Tom soon left all the nicer part to him, and even William, whom curiosity presently brought along to see what mischief they were up to, emitted a grunt of approval.
Pascoe alone was not satisfied. “What we need is a beetle, to pound the bottom firm and hard; and a spirit-level too, if we’re to get it really right.”
“I’ll get the——” Tom was beginning, when to his amazement William interrupted him with, “Bide you where you are;” and stalked off.
“He’s gone to get them!” Tom marvelled. “At least I believe he has. I bet he wouldn’t have got them for me.”
He was still pondering on this strange phenomenon when William returned with both beetle and spirit-level. These he handed to Pascoe: to Tom he merely gave instructions to put them back in the tool-house “when the young gentleman has finished with them.” After which, he left them to their labours, the most difficult of these being to graduate the slope of the sides to fit the shape of the bath.
It took time, but they both worked hard, and had practically completed the task when Mother came out to invite Pascoe to stay to lunch. “Well, I must say,” she exclaimed, “you’ve done it very neatly! I wonder how much of the neatness is due to—— You haven’t told me your friend’s name yet, Tom.”
“Pascoe,” said Tom, who had told her dozens of times.
“I don’t mean that. You can hardly expect me to call him Pascoe.”
This left Tom at a loss, for he had never thought of any other name. It turned out, too, to be an extremely footling one—Clement—though that of course wasn’t Pascoe’s fault.
Before she went, just to give Mother an idea of how spacious the aquarium was, Tom decided to put all three dogs in it together. “Look, Mother!”—and he called them.
Mother looked; so did Pascoe; both standing back in order to give Tom and his dogs a free field. The obliging animals immediately approached, wagging their tails. Standing in a row and regarding him with affection, they listened attentively to what he told them; but for all that, they paused on the brink. Tom was surprised. “Don’t be so silly,” he said; and to prove the aquarium was all right, got into it himself. The dogs watched him benevolently—Barker sitting down to do so—and Pascoe and Mother began to laugh.
If they hadn’t laughed Tom might have abandoned his attempt, but now he was determined. So, apparently, were the dogs, though they evinced the greatest good nature, and Barker, who was perhaps growing bored or absent-minded, offered a paw. Tom tried first persuasion and then physical force, but neither availed. He might lift them in, but while they permitted this with a touching docility, they jumped out again so quickly that still there was never more than one in at a time, and Pascoe, when called upon to help, proved useless. Very nervously he lifted Pincher, choosing him because he was the smallest; but at the first growl he hastily set him down again.
“I think you’d better leave them, dear, and come in and get ready for lunch,” Mother said. “They evidently don’t like it.”
“Wait just a minute,” Tom begged, but Mother had waited quite long enough, and since she now left them and returned to the house, there was no point in continuing the demonstration.
“I wonder why they won’t
get in?” Tom murmured, puzzled. Pascoe suggested that it was because they were stupid, but to this Tom shook his head. “Well—the next thing, I suppose, is to get water; and we’ll have to carry it in cans, for the hose wouldn’t reach half-way.”
Pascoe, who with his hands in his pockets was contemplating their morning’s work, did not at once reply, and when he did, it was to say that that wasn’t the next thing. “If you fill it with water now, you’ll only have to empty it again.”
“Why?” Tom asked, for he was impatient to see what it would look like. There could be no denying that it still closely resembled a bath; but by planting moss—Or perhaps stones, with rock plants, would be better. . . .
“I went down town on Saturday afternoon,” Pascoe continued—“to the library; and looked up aquariums in the Encyclopedia; and you ought to make a gravel bed at the bottom, and plant water weeds in it to keep the water pure. Real aquariums have running water, but it says the other will do; and snails help too. If the water isn’t kept fresh it gets an awful smell and all the things die. But it doesn’t do to change it; that’s just as bad; so we’ll plant weeds and get a lot of snails.”
Tom felt a little annoyed that he hadn’t thought of looking up the Encyclopedia himself. He also felt, or was beginning to suspect, that his part in the aquarium was going to be a secondary one—that of assistant to the more efficient and thorough Pascoe. Not that he really minded. Pascoe wasn’t like Max Sabine; there was nothing bossy or superior about him. “We’ll get gravel from the stream in the glen after lunch,” he said; “and we’d better go in now, for I have to look after the dogs’ dinner.”
Later, when they were seated at the table, it became clear to him that Mother had taken a liking to Pascoe. Somehow this faintly amused him, he didn’t know why. He himself thought Pascoe was jolly decent, but at the same time there were certain things about him that made it quite easy to understand Brown’s attitude. Boys like Brown were bound to think him a bit of a squirt, and once or twice during the morning Tom had not been wholly exempt from this feeling himself. For one thing, Pascoe sometimes talked—was talking now for instance—in the most frightfully grown-up way; never raising his voice or getting excited; never interrupting, though Mother sometimes took a long time to say what she wanted to say, because this usually reminded her of a lot of other things which she had to deal with before getting back to the main thing, so that now and then she had to ask you what that was.
Daddy never interrupted her either, but it wasn’t the same. He simply sat there with a look of resignation on his face, as different as possible from Pascoe’s polite attention. Anyhow, Mother was growing more and more pleased with him. She hoped he would be able to spend the rest of the day with Tom, because she and Daddy were going out after tea and wouldn’t be back till fairly late in the evening. There wouldn’t be any regular dinner for them, but Phemie would see to it that at least they weren’t starved.
“High tea,” Tom thought; and it would be good fun having it by themselves. He would pour out. Mary of course would want to, but he wouldn’t let her. It was disappointing, therefore, when Pascoe said he must go home soon after lunch, because he was being taken into town to get a new suit of clothes. He promised, on the other hand, to stay as long as he could, and this so positively that it caused Mother to reverse her invitation. She now thought he ought to be home by three o’clock at the latest, since Mrs. Pascoe might have a number of things to do in town, and he certainly oughtn’t to keep her waiting.
“That means we’d better put off getting the gravel till to-morrow,” Tom said. “But I can show you the stream now; there’s tons of time for that.”
Out in the garden, he collected the dogs and took Pascoe through the side door leading to the glen, where they all scrambled down to the water’s edge. Here they followed the stream, through chequered sunlight and leafy shadows, noting where in its broken course there were beds of fine sand and gravel. “We’ll have to bring buckets, and it’ll take a good many journeys, for we won’t be able to carry more than half a bucketful at a time, gravel’s so heavy. . . .” Suddenly he broke off. “Oh, don’t let Pincher drink or he’ll be sick! Pincher! Pincher! Good dog . . . ! Now stay there or you’ll get a smack. . . . He always will drink after his dinner, and it gives him indigestion, and then he’s sick. It doesn’t matter so much at home, because later on he eats it up again, but here it would all be wasted.”
Pascoe looked disgusted, and Tom thought he must be terribly sensitive, for he himself could see nothing disgusting about it. To rectify matters, he hastened to explain what actually happened. “It’s quite clean: it comes out exactly the way it was when he swallowed it—perfectly smoothly—just the way meat comes out of a mincing-machine. And it’s only his dinner: you wouldn’t notice the slightest difference really, except that it’s perhaps a bit more mixed up and in the shape of a sausage.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake!” Pascoe exclaimed. “You’d make anybody ill the way you talk!”
“I wouldn’t,” Tom answered indignantly. “If you’re so easily made ill you won’t be much good as a scientist.”
“It’s nothing to do with science,” Pascoe returned disdainfully. “I’m not going to be a vet.”
Meanwhile Roger and Barker had been splashing up and down the stream—particularly Barker. Except in an occasional pool the water wasn’t deep enough for swimming, but they both liked wading, and nosing about after fugitive scents. “We’ll not bring them when we’re collecting,” Pascoe muttered, “or we won’t get a thing.” He sat down on a fallen tree-trunk and Tom sat beside him. “I don’t know that this stream will be much good anyhow,” Pascoe went on—“not nearly so good as a pond, or even the river. We want tadpoles for one thing, and there are none here.”
“There are spricks though,” Tom said, “and I know a pond where there are plenty of tadpoles. There are little eels, too, in the river—whole shoals of them—and they’re quite easy to catch if you don’t frighten them.”
“We’ll get some, but we chiefly want tadpoles, so that we can watch them changing into frogs. In a book called Pond Life it says there’s a kind that turns into newts, but I don’t expect you get them in this country. They’re quite common in England, but you never get anything in this country: it’s the worst possible country for naturalists. . . . Look!”
The last word came in so vehement a whisper that it would have been a hiss had it contained a sibilant. At the same time he had grabbed Tom by the arm and was staring up at the opposite bank of the glen. Tom, momentarily startled, also turned in that direction, and saw between the trees—about twenty yards away and at the very top of the bank—the figure of a man watching them. “It’s him,” Pascoe whispered. “Now, what do you say?”
Actually Tom said nothing, it was. Pincher who gave tongue. He remained where he was, however, pressed against Tom’s legs, and the other dogs didn’t even bark. Nevertheless, the man, who could only have been there for a minute or two, retreated out of sight.
So absorbed had both boys been in planning, making, and discussing their aquarium, that it had driven every other thought out of their heads and they had forgotten all about the burglar. But now even Tom could not help thinking there might be something in Pascoe’s idea. They sat in silence till the latter, still speaking in a whisper, asked: “Why has he been lurking about all this time? What has he been doing—or do you think he’s been away and come back again?”
Tom couldn’t imagine; it certainly looked queer; though he still had not quite adopted Pascoe’s sinister view. “He may have been over at Denny’s—doing some job—and they may have given him his dinner: they’re very decent—especially Mrs. Denny.”
“It’s taken him a long time to eat it then,” Pascoe replied. “But perhaps now he’s seen the dogs he’ll clear off permanently. . . . I wonder if he knows your father and mother are going out for the evening.”
“How could he know?” Tom exclaimed. “I didn’t even know myself. And if he was rea
lly spying, as you say, he must have seen the dogs before. Anyhow Phemie and Mary will be there; and I thought your idea was that he was going to break into the house in the middle of the night.”
Nevertheless, Pascoe’s last remark suggested to him a scheme, which he determined to put into practice. If nothing else, at least it would be good fun; and he might never have the opportunity, or at any rate so good an excuse, again.
“If I were you,” Pascoe was saying, “I’d tell your mother before she goes out. I’d come with you myself, only I ought to be going home. It must be precious near three o’clock already, if not after it.”
He got up as he spoke, and Tom and the dogs accompanied him to see him off. “I’ll come over to-morrow,” Pascoe promised, and finally, before mounting his bicycle, he repeated still more urgently his advice about telling Mother.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TOM waited until Pascoe was out of sight before turning away. But he did not go back to the house, he followed the road for some fifty yards till he reached a five-barred gate. This he climbed, and was in the fields.
The cool breeze which had freshened the morning had now died down, and the hot sun brought out powerfully the heavy drowsy scents of whin and meadow-sweet. It was a lazy, sleepy afternoon, Tom thought. And in harmony with it, he himself felt agreeably lazy, as he loitered along the deeply-rutted cart-track skirting the outlying fields of Denny’s farm. These stretched away on his right, while on his left was a broad ditch with a high bank topped by a tangled hedge of hawthorn, honeysuckle, and briar, broken at intervals by trees—ash, willow, or oak—and by rough grey boulders stained with moss and lichen. The dogs plunged in and out of the ditch, which was at present dry, innumerable plants having drawn up its moisture—vetches, cow-parsley, ragged-robbin and foxgloves. The ferns and ivy, which would gradually darken as summer advanced, were still vividly green; and the leaves of the trees had a similar freshness—narrow oval willow leaves, serrated oak leaves, shining beech leaves, and cool delicate ash sprays. A cawing of rooks floated from the direction of the farm-house half a mile away.