Part 23 (1/2)

”Leave go, Tommy,” he said, ”or I'll tumble you right in.”

Tommy yielded, his will overcome by a greater fear. Clare let him hang for a moment over the black water, and slowly lowered him. Tommy clung to the side of the b.u.t.t. Clare let go one leg, and taking hold of his hands pulled them away. Tommy's terror would have burst in a frenzied yell, but the same instant he was down to the neck in the water, and lifted out again. He spluttered and gurgled and tried to scream.

”Now, Tommy,” said Clare, ”don't scream, or I'll put you in again.”

But Tommy never believed anything except upon compulsion. The moment he could, that moment he screamed, and that moment he was in the water again. The next time he was taken out, he did not scream. Clare laid him on the wall, and he lay still, pretending to be drowned. Clare got up, set him on his feet in front of him, and holding him by the collar, trotted him round the top of the wall to the door, and dropped him into the garden. He was quiet enough now--more than subdued--incapable even of meditating revenge. But when they entered the nursery, the dog, taking Tommy for a worse sort of rat, made a leap at him right off the bed, as if he would swallow him alive, and the start and the terror of it brought him quite to himself again.

”Quiet, Abdiel!” said Clare.

The dog turned, jumped up on the bed, and lay down again close to the baby.

Clare, who, I have said, was in old days a reader of _Paradise Lost_, had already given him the name of _Abdiel_.

”Please, I couldn't help yelling!” said Tommy, very meekly. ”I didn't know you'd got _him_!”

”I know you couldn't help it!” answered Clare. ”What have you had to eat to-day?”

”Nothing but a beastly turnip and a wormy beet,” said Tommy. ”I'm awful hungry.”

”You'd have had something better if you'd stuck by the baby, and not left her to the rats!”

”There ain't no rats,” growled Tommy.

”Will you believe your own eyes?” returned Clare, and showed him the skin of the rat Abdiel had slain. ”I've a great mind to make you eat it!” he added, dangling it before him by the tail.

”Shouldn't mind,” said Tommy. ”I've eaten a rat afore now, an' I'm that hungry! Rats ain't bad to eat. I don't know about their skins!”

”Here's a piece of bread for you. But you sha'n't sleep with honest people like baby and Abdiel. You shall lie on the hearth-rug. Here's a blanket and a pillow for you!”

Clare covered him up warm, thatching all with a piece of loose carpet, and he was asleep directly.

The next day all terror of the water-b.u.t.t was gone from the little vagabond's mind. He was now, however, thoroughly afraid of Clare, and his conceit that, though Clare was the stronger, he was the cleverer, was put in abeyance.

Chapter x.x.xIV.

How things went for a time.

Clare's next day went much as the preceding, only that he was early at the shop. When his dinner-hour came, he ran home, and was glad to find Tommy and the dog mildly agreeable to each other. He had but time to give baby some milk, and Tommy and Abdiel a bit of bread each.

His look when he returned, a look of which he was unaware, but which one of the girls, who had a year ago been hungry for weeks together, could read, made her ask him what he had had for dinner. He said he had had no dinner.

”Why?” she asked.

”Because there wasn't any.”

”Didn't your mother keep some for you?”

”No; she couldn't.”