"Them four lights from the cowcumber frames, Master Tom, lifted off,
carried eight-and-forty foot, dashed down and smashed, so as there arn't
a single whole pane o' glass left."
"That's a bad job, David," said Tom, as he stood looking about him at
the ruin caused by the hurricane; "but the telescope is all right."
"Yer can't grow cowcumbers with tallow-scoops, Master Tom. The first
thing I see as soon as I goes into the little vinery there was two big
slates off the top o' the house, blowed off like leaves, to go right
through the glass, and there they was sticking up edgeways in the vine
border."
"Well, only a job for the glazier," said Tom.
"Strikes me there won't be glass enough left in the village to do all
the mending. Mrs Bray's front window was blowed right in, and all the
sucker and lollypop glasses knocked into a mash o' glass splinters and
stick. There's a limb off the baking pear-tree; lots o' branches teared
loose from the walls; a big bit snapped off the cedar, and that there
arby whitey blowed right sidewise. It's enough to make a gardener as
has any respect for himself break his 'art."
"Never mind, David; I'll come out and help you try to put things
straight."
"Will you, Master Tom?"
"Of course I will."
"But we can't mend them there frame-lights. The wood's gone too."
"No, but I'll ask uncle to buy some new ones; they were very old."
"Well, if you come to that, sir, they was that touch-woody that if it
hadn't been for the thick paint I put on 'em every spring, till they had
quite a houtside skin o' white lead, they wouldn't ha' held together.
Stop, that arn't all: the tool-house door's blowed right off. Natur's
very well in some things, but I never could see what was the good o' so
much wind blustering and rampaging about. I was very nigh gettin' up
and coming to see how things was, on'y the tiles and pots was a-flying,
so that I thought I'd better stop in bed."
"I wish you had come," said Tom.
"Ay, that's all very well, Master Tom; but s'pose one o' they big ellums
as come down on the green--four on 'em--had dropped atop o' me, what
would master ha' done for a gardener? There's nobody here as could ha'
kept our garden as it ought to be."
"It was a terrible night, David."
"Terrible arn't the word for it, Master Tom. Why, do you know--Yah!
You there again. Here, stop a minute."
David ran to a piece of rock-work, picked up a great pebble, and trotted
to the side of the garden, whence a piteous, long-drawn howl had just
arisen--a dismal mournful cry, ending in a piercing whine, such as would
be given by a half-starved tied-up dog left in an empty house.
David reached the hedge, reached over, hurled the stone, and sent after
it a burst of objurgations, ending with--
"Yah! G'long home with yer. Beast!"
"That's about settled him," he said as he came back, smiling very
widely.
"Strange dog, David?"
"Strange, sir? Not him. It's that ugly, hungry-looking brute o' Pete
Warboys'. That's four times he's been here this morning, chyiking and
yelping. You must have been giving him bones."
"I? No, I never fed him."
"Then cook must. We don't want him here. But I don't think he'll come
again."
"Did you hit him?"
"Hit him, sir? What with that there stone? Not I. Nobody couldn't hit
him with stick or stone neither. Keepers can't even hit him with their
guns, or he'd been a dead 'un long ago. He's the slipperest dog as ever
was."
"_Hy--yow--ow--oo--ooo_!" came from a distance--a pitiful cry that was
mournful in the extreme.
"Hear that, sir?"