Chapter 11

"HOOT-TOOT" BEHIND THE HEDGE.

That first day at the farm was a pretty fair specimen of those that followed. The days grew into weeks and the weeks into one month, and then into two, and Geoff went on with his self-chosen hard and lonely life. The loneliness soon came to be the worst of it. He got used to the hardships so far, and after all they were not very terrible ones. He was better taken care of than he knew, and he was a strong and healthy lad. Had he felt that he was working for others, had he been cheered by loving and encouraging letters, he could have borne it all contentedly. But no letters came, no answer to his note to Vicky begging her to write; and Geoff's proud heart grew prouder and, he tried to think, harder.

"They would let me know, somehow, I suppose, if there was anything much the matter--if--mamma had not got much better yet." For even to himself he would not allow the possibility of anything worse than her not being "much better." And yet she had looked very ill that last evening. He thought of it sometimes in the middle of the night, and started up in a sort of agony of fright, feeling as if at all costs he must set off there and then to see her--to know how she was. Often he did not fall asleep again for hours, and then he would keep sobbing and crying out from time to time, "Oh, mamma, mamma!" But there was no one to hear. And with the morning all the proud, bitter feelings would come back again. "They don't care for me. They are thankful to be rid of me;" and he would picture his future life to himself, friendless and homeless, as if he never had had either friends or home. Sometimes he planned that when he grew older he would emigrate, and in a few years, after having made a great fortune, he would come home again, a millionaire, and shower down coals of fire in the shape of every sort of luxury upon the heads of his unnatural family.

But these plans did not cheer him as they would have done some months ago. His experiences had already made him more practical--he knew that fortunes were not made nowadays in the Dick Whittington way--he was learning to understand that not only are there but twenty shillings in a pound, but, which concerned him more closely, that there are but twelve pence in a shilling, and only thirty in half-a-crown! He saw with dismay the increasing holes in his boots, and bargained hard with the village cobbler to make him cheap a rough, strong pair, which he would never have dreamt of looking at in the old days; he thanked Mrs. Eames more humbly for the well-worn corduroy jacket she made down for him than he had ever thanked his mother for the nice clothes which it had _not_ always been easy for her to procure for him. Yes, Geoff was certainly learning some lessons.

Sundays were in one way the worst, for though he had less to do, he had more time for thinking. He went twice to church, where he managed to sit in a corner out of sight, so that if the tears did sometimes come into his eyes at some familiar hymn or verse, no one could see. And no more was said about the Sunday school, greatly to his relief, for he knew the clergyman would have cross-questioned him. On Sunday afternoons he used to saunter about the park and grounds of Crickwood Bolders. He liked it, and yet it made him melancholy. The house was shut up, but it was easy to see it was a dear old place--just the sort of "home" of Geoff's wildest dreams.

"If we were all living there together, now," he used to say to himself--"mamma quite well and not worried about money--Elsa and Frances would be so happy, we'd never squabble, and Vicky----" But at the idea of _Vicky's_ happiness, words failed him.

It was, it must be allowed, a come-down from such beautiful fancies, to have to hurry back to the farm to harness old Dapple and jog off to the station with the milk. For even on Sundays people can't do without eating and drinking.

One Sunday a queer thing happened. He was just turning home, and passing the lodge at the principal entrance to the Hall, as it was called, when behind the thick evergreen hedge at one side of the little garden he heard voices. They were speaking too low for him to distinguish the words; but one voice sounded to him very like Eames's. It might be so, for the farmer and the lodge-keeper were friends. And Geoff would have walked on without thinking anything of it, had not a sudden exclamation caught his ear--"Hoot-toot, hoot-toot! I tell you----" But instantly the voice dropped. It sounded as if some one had held up a warning finger. Geoff stood still in amazement. _Could_ Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot be there? It seemed too impossible. But the boy's heart beat fast with a vague feeling of expectation and apprehension mixed together.

"If he has come here accidentally, he must not see me," he said to himself; and he hurried down the road as fast as he could, determined to hasten to the station and back before the old gentleman, if it were he, could get there. But to his surprise, on entering the farm-yard, the first person to meet him was Mr. Eames himself.

"What's the matter, my lad?" he said good humouredly. "Thou'st staring as if I were a ghost."

"I thought--I thought," stammered Geoff, "that I saw--no, heard your voice just now at the lodge."

Eames laughed.

"But I couldn't be in two places at once, could I? Well, get off with you to the station."

All was as usual of a Sunday there. No one about, no passengers by the up-train--only the milk-cans; and Geoff, as he drove slowly home again, almost persuaded himself that the familiar "Hoot-toot, hoot-toot!" must have been altogether his own fancy.

But had he been at the little railway-station again an hour or two later, he would have had reason to change his opinion. A passenger did start from Shalecray by the last train for town; and when this same passenger got out at Victoria, he hailed a hansom, and was driven quickly westward. And when he arrived at his destination, and rang the bell, almost before the servant had had time to open the door, a little figure pressed eagerly forward, and a soft, clear voice exclaimed--

"Oh, dear uncle, is that you at last? I've been watching for you such a long time. Oh, do--do tell me about Geoff! Did you see him? And oh, dear uncle, is he very unhappy?"

"Come upstairs, my pet," said the old man, "and you shall hear all I can tell."

The three awaiting him in the drawing-room were nearly as eager as the child. The mother's face grew pale with anxiety, the sisters' eyes sparkled with eagerness.

"Did you find him easily, uncle? Was it where you thought?" asked Vicky.

"Yes, yes; I had no difficulty. I saw him, Vicky, but without his seeing me. He has grown, and perhaps he is a little thinner, but he is quite well. And I had an excellent account of him from the farmer. He is working steadily, and bearing manfully what, to a boy like him, cannot but be privations and hardships. But I am afraid he is very unhappy--his face had a set sad look in it that I do not like to see on one so young. I fear he never got your letters, Vicky. There must have been some mistake about the address. I didn't want to push the thing too far. You must write again, my little girl--say all you can to soften him. What I want is that it should come from _his_ side. He will respect himself all his life for overcoming his pride, and asking to be forgiven, only we must try to make it easy for him, poor fellow! Now go to bed, Vicky, child, and think over what you will write to him to-morrow. I want to talk it all over with your mother. Don't be unhappy about poor old Geoff, my dear."

Obedient Vicky jumped up at once to go to bed. She tried to whisper "Good night" as she went the round of the others to kiss them, but the words would not come, and her pretty blue eyes were full of tears. Still, Vicky's thoughts and dreams were far happier that night than for a long time past.

As soon as she had closed the door after her, the old gentleman turned to the others.

"She doesn't know any more than we agreed upon?" he asked.

"No," said Elsa; "she only knows that you got his exact address from the same person who has told you about him from time to time. She has no idea that the whole thing was planned and arranged by you from the first, when you found he was set upon leaving home."

Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot nodded his head.

"That is all right. Years hence, when he has grown up into a good and sensible man, we may, or if I am no longer here, _you_ may tell him all about it, my dears. But just now it would mortify him, and prevent the lesson from doing him the good we hope for. I should not at all like him to know I had employed detectives. He would be angry at having been taken in. That Jowett is a very decent fellow, and did his part well; but he has mismanaged the letters somehow. I must see him about that. What was the address Geoff gave in his note to Vicky? Are you sure she put it right?"

"Oh yes," said Frances; "I saw it both times. It was--

'TO MR. JAMES, CARE OF MR. ADAM SMITH, MURRAY PLACE MEWS.'"

"Hoot-toot!" said Mr. Byrne. He could not make it out. But we, who know in what a hurry Geoff wrote his note at the railway-station while Jowett was waiting to take it, can quite well understand why Vicky's letters had never reached him. For the address he _should_ have given was--

"ABEL SMITH, _Mowbray_ PLACE MEWS."

"This time," Mr. Byrne went on, "I'll see that the letter is sent to him direct. Jowett must manage it. Let Vicky address as before, and I'll see that it reaches him."

"What do you think she should write?" said Mrs. Tudor, anxiously.

"What she feels. It does not much matter. But let her make him understand that his home is open to him as ever--that he is neither forgotten nor thought of harshly. If I mistake not, from what I saw and what Eames told me, he will be so happy to find it is so, that all the better side of his character will come out. And he will say more to himself than any of us would ever wish to say to him."

"But, uncle dear," said Elsa, "if it turns out as you hope, and poor Geoff comes home again and is all you and mamma wish--and--if _all_ your delightful plans are realized, won't Geoff find out everything you don't want him to know at present? Indeed, aren't you afraid he may have heard already that you are the new squire there?"

"No," said Mr. Byrne. "Eames is a very cautious fellow; and from having known me long ago, or rather from his father having known me (it was I that got my cousin to give him the farm some years ago, as I told you), I found it easy to make him understand all I wished. Crickwood Bolders has stood empty so long, that the people about don't take much interest in it. They only know vaguely that it has changed hands lately, and Eames says I am spoken of as the new Mr. Bolders, and not by my own name."

"I see," said Elsa.

"And," continued Mr. Byrne, "of course Geoff will take it for granted that it was by the coincidence of his getting taken on at my place that we found him out. It _was_ a coincidence that he should have taken it into his head to go down to that part of the country, through its being on the way to Colethorne's."

"And you say that he is really working hard, and--and making the best of things?" asked Mrs. Tudor. She smiled a little as she said it. Geoff's "making the best of things" was such a _very_ new idea.

"Yes," replied Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot. "Eames gives him the best of characters. He says the boy is thoroughly to be depended upon, and that his work is well done, even to cleaning the pigs; and, best of all, he is never heard to grumble."

"Fancy Geoff cleaning the pigs!" exclaimed Elsa.

"I don't know that I find _that_ so difficult to fancy," said Frances. "I think Geoff has a real love for animals of all kinds, and for all country things. We would have sympathized with him about it if it hadn't been for his grumbling, which made all his likes and dislikes seem unreal. I think what I pity him the most for is the having to get up so dreadfully early these cold winter mornings. What time did you say he had to get up, uncle?"

"He has to be at the station with the milk before five every morning," said the old gentleman, grimly. "Eames says his good woman is inclined to 'coddle him a bit'--she can't forget who he really is, it appears. I was glad to hear it; I don't want the poor boy actually to suffer--and I don't want it to go on much longer. I confess I don't see that there can be much 'coddling' if he has to be up and out before five o'clock in the morning at this time of the year."

"No, indeed," said the girls. "And he must be _so_ lonely."

"Yes, poor fellow!" said the old gentleman, with a sigh, "I saw that in his face. And I was _glad_ to see it. It shows the lesson is not a merely surface one. You've had your wish for him to some extent, Elsa, my dear. He has at last known some hardships."

Elsa's eyes filled with tears, though Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot had had no thought of hurting her.

"Don't say that, please," she entreated. "I think--I am sure--I only wanted him to learn how foolish he was, for his own sake more than for any one's else even."

"I know, I know," the old gentleman agreed. "But I think he has had about enough of it. See that Vicky writes that letter first thing to-morrow."