Part 9 (2/2)
”He'll think himself well rid of me,” returned Clare with a sigh. ”But there's no time to talk. If you're going, Tommy, come along.”
He turned to go.
”Where to?” asked Tommy, following.
”I don't know. Anywhere away,” answered Clare, quickening his pace.
In spite of his swollen visage, Tommy's eyes grew wider.
”You 'ain't cribbed nothing?” he said.
”I don't know what you mean.”
”You 'ain't stole something?” interpreted Tommy.
Clare stopped, and for the first time on his own part, lifted his hand to strike. It dropped immediately by his side.
”No, you poor Tommy,” he said. ”I don't steal.”
”Thought you didn't! What are you running away for then?”
”Because they don't want me.”
”Lord! what will you do?”
”Work.”
Tommy held his tongue: he knew a better way than that! If work was the only road to eating, things would go badly with _him_! But he thought he knew a thing or two, and would take his chance! There were degrees of hunger that were not so bad as the thras.h.i.+ngs he got, for in his granny's hands the rope might fall where it would; while all cripple Simpson cared for was to make him squeal satisfactorily. But work was worse than all! He would go with Clare, but not to work! Not he!
Clare kept on in silence, never turning his head--out into the untried, unknown, mysterious world, which lay around the one spot he knew as the darkness lies about the flame of the candle. They walked more than a mile before either spoke.
Chapter XIV.
Their first helper
It was a lovely spring morning. The sun was about thirty degrees above the horizon, s.h.i.+ning with a liquid radiance, as if he had already drawn up and was s.h.i.+ning through the dew of the morning, though it lay yet on all the gra.s.ses by the roadside, turning them into gem-plants.
Every sort of gem sparkled on their feathery or beady tops, and their long slender blades. At the first cottages they pa.s.sed, the women were beginning their day's work, sweeping clean their floors and door-steps. Clare noted that where were most flowers in the garden, the windows were brightest, and the children cleanest.
”The flowers come where they make things nice for them!” he said to himself. ”Where the flowers see dirt, they turn away, and won't come out.”
From childhood he had had the notion that the flowers crept up inside the stalks until they found a window to look out at. Where the prospect was not to their mind they crept down, and away by some door in the root to try again. For all the stalks stood like watch-towers, ready for them to go up and peep out.
They came to a pond by a farm-house. Clare had been observing with pity how wretched Tommy's clothes were; but when he looked into the pond he saw that his own shabbiness was worse than Tommy's downright miserableness. n.o.body would leave either of them within reach of anything worth stealing! What he wore had been his Sunday suit, and it was not even worth brus.h.i.+ng!
”I'm 'orrid 'ungry,” said Tommy. ”I 'ain't swallered a plug this mornin', 'xcep' a lump o' bread out o' granny's cupboard. That's what I got my weltin' for. It were a whole half-loaf, though--an' none so dry!”
<script>