the five bells was asleep; asleep, at least, was the face with which it met the world. in the brick-floored kitchen, out of sight and hearing of the road, the maid was singing as she sluiced the bricks with a white mop; but if she and her mop had been state secrets, matters of life and death, they could not have been more safely hidden from any chance passer. in the bar the landlord was asleep behind the lewes gazette and south coast journal. in the parlor the landlady was asleep behind a screen of geraniums and campanulas. the ornamental clock on the mantelpiece said, most untruly, ten minutes to eight. really it was four o'clock, the sleepiest hour in the day. the flies buzzed in the parlor window; in the bar the wasps buzzed in the bottle that had seemed so sweet a bourn to each as it drifted in from the out-of-door heat to the cool darkness of the sanded bar.
on the broad, white door-step the old cat slept, his person nicely adjusted to the sun and shade, his flanks in the sunshine and his head in the shadow of the porch. the white blind of the window swelled out, now and then, like a sail, because in this sort of weather one leaves all doors and windows open. in the yard some one had drawn a bucket of water—the brown oak and the brown iron of the bucket were still wet, and still wet the trail it had made where it was carried to the old bath that the chickens drank from. but the trail was drying quickly, and the hens, having had their drink, had gone to sleep in the hollows they had scooped for themselves in the dust of their inclosure. some one had been chopping wood, for a few chips lay round the block, in which the bill was stuck by its sharp edge. the man who attended to the wood and water was asleep, standing against the ladder that led from the stable to the hay-loft—a convenient position, and, if you were wanted in a hurry, not compromising, as lying down would be.
to right and left the road stretched, very white and shining, between dusty hedgerows and scattered cottages whose drawn blinds looked like the eyelids of sleepers. the whole village was asleep, it seemed—only a boy and a dog were awake. the boy had not gone to school because he had torn his every-day trousers on a nail in the stable. to wear his sunday trousers was, of course, out of the question. and to mend the every-day trousers would take time. so tommy was put to bed, nominally as a punishment for not looking where he was going—a most unfair implication, for the nail had attacked him in the rear. children do not go to sleep when they are put to bed as a punishment. they cry, if their spirit has been broken by unkindness; if not, they lie and meditate mischief. tommy waited till the afternoon silence settled on the house, and then very carefully and slowly crept down the stairs in his nightshirt, dodged gladys and the mop, and reached the larder. here he secured a flead-cake, a raisin-cake, and an apple, dodged gladys again, and reached the back door, where he stood looking out at the yard. it would be silly to go back to bed. mother would not be awake for a good half-hour yet. there would be time to get to the stable, climb into the loft, and eat his booty there. it would be safer, in one way, and in another more adventurous.
he stooped till his head was below the kitchen window and crept by, skirting the walls of the yard till he reached the stable door, and next moment was safe in the half-darkness where the sunlight through the cracks of the door made dusty shafts of radiance. the familiar smell of hay and horses charmed him, as it always did. ah, there was robert, asleep as usual. well, even if robert woke, he could be trusted not to tell. tommy climbed into the manger of one of the empty stalls, and just as he got his knee on it some one behind pushed him with sudden and incredible violence. he fell heavily, dropped his plunder, and found himself involved in the enthusiastic embraces of a large, strange, white dog, which in one breathless instant licked his face all over, trampled on his stomach, made two mouthfuls of the flead-cake and the raisin-cake, rolled the apple in the muck of the stable, snorted in a sort of brutal ecstasy, and bolted heavily out into the sunshine.
it was too much. the sudden and brutal attack overcame all considerations of prudence. tommy forgot where he was, and why; the dangers of his situation were nothing beside the outrage of this unprovoked assault and theft. robert was awakening slowly. if he had been awake before he might have repulsed the enemy. tommy opened his mouth to howl, but the howl changed to a scream, for there was the dog back again, snuffing loudly in the straw and fawning at tommy as on an old and valued friend.
"charles!" a stern voice called from the yard, "come here, sir."
the dog wagged a muscular tail and grinned at tommy, as though inviting him to share the joke. the stable door was darkened by a form. even in the difficulties of repulsing the dog's attention without irritating it, the child found time to be glad that the darkening form was that of a stranger.
"call him off, if he's your dog," tommy urged, thickly, backing against the manger.
"might as well call him off, sir," robert—now almost awake—conceded.
the stranger stepped forward, a snap clicked, and charles, still widely smiling, was straining at the end of a leathern thong.
"i hope he didn't frighten you," said the stranger.
"he bunted at me with his great head," said tommy, with half a sob, "and then he eat up what i'd got, and hooked it off again afore you could say knife."
"what had you got?"
"nothing," said tommy, remembering caution, "at least—"
"the jingling of the guinea heals," said the stranger, incomprehensibly. "would sixpence be any comfort to you?"
tommy's eyes answered, and the stranger held it out.
"thank you, sir," said tommy, and added, in close imitation of his father's manner to thirsty travelers, "going far to-day, sir?"
"i was thinking," said the stranger, "of putting up here."
"then," said tommy, with great presence of mind, "please don't say anything to them about the dog eating—what he did eat—nor me being here in my shirt, nor about robert being asleep. if you'll go round to the front, sir, you'll find the bar, and that'll give me a chance to slip back to bed, sir, if you'd be so kind."
"i see," said the stranger, "you were sent to bed."
"in punishment like," said tommy, "so you see i don't want to. . . ."
"exactly. an unobserved retreat. i will draw the enemy's fire from the front premises. come, charles."
charles obeyed, only pausing to entangle the lead in the handle of a shovel and to bring this down upon the feet of robert, to upset a sieve of chaff and run between his master's legs with a sudden violence which, but for the support of the door-post, would have thrown him to the ground.
"nice-spoken young man," said robert. "now, young tommy, you cut along back where you belong. i'll be asking gladys the time to keep her off of the back door while you slips in, you young limb."
he strolled across to the window as tommy's bare feet trod the sun-warmed bricks to the back door. as the child crept up the stairs he heard the stranger's voice in the bar.
"sixpence," said tommy, in ecstasy, "and him going to put up here." he cuddled down into his bed well satisfied with the afternoon's adventure. adventures are, indeed, to the adventurous.
"if i'd 'a' bin a good boy and stayed in bed nothing wouldn't have happened," was how he put it to himself.
meanwhile the stranger, encumbered by the striving charles, was "being shown the rooms"—the bare, much-scrubbed bedroom, the all-too-full and too-carpeted parlor.
"they are exactly what i want," he said, and so won the heart of his hostess.
when tommy, his trousers restored, came down to tea he was warned not to go clamping about in his boots, because there was a gentleman in the parlor. tommy fingered the sixpence in his pocket and said nothing; his mouth was, indeed, far too full for words.
that evening in the parched orchard behind the house tommy came edging shyly toward the stranger as he lounged under the trees smoking a fat pipe.
"hullo, young man!" was the greeting. "come here and talk to me."
tommy dumbly drew near.
"got your trousers back, i see," said the stranger, genially.
tommy admitted it with a grunt. the stranger nodded and took his pipe out of his mouth.
"ever see a pig?" he asked.
tommy grunted again.
"i see you have. you speak their language awfully well." the stranger uttered a sound which tommy recognized and smiled to hear. "that's what the pigs say," said the stranger. "agreeable little boys who have recovered their trousers say 'yes' or 'no' when their friends ask them questions. don't they?"
"i dun'no'," said tommy.
"oh yes, you do. because i've told you. now what would you like to do?"
"i dun'no'."
"i can't tell you that you know, because i don't know myself. but i'll put it to you like this: if you can make up your mind to talk the language of agreeable little boys who have recovered their trousers, i am disposed to endure your company and even to assist you in any play you may have in hand. but i can't associate with a person who grunts at me. if you want to grunt, go and grunt at some one who likes it. i don't."
"i didn't go for to," tommy urged.
"handsomely admitted. i accept your apology. you don't know what you'd like to do, i say. well, is there anything you'd like to have? i'm living the idle life, tommy, and my hands are beginning to ache for want of something to do. i want to make something. ever make anything?"
"i made a rabbit-hutch, onst," tommy owned, "but the door warn't straight on her hinges. and i tried a kite—but it stuck to me and come to bits afore ever it was dry."
"look here," said the stranger, sitting up, "what about a kite? i could make you a kite as big as a house or a fire-balloon. would you like that?"
tommy began a grunt, pretended that it had been a cough, and turned that into, "yes, please, sir."
"we must restrain charles," said the stranger, turning to the large white dog, who sat with feet firmly planted, smiling a wide, pink smile, "or this kite will certainly stick to him and come to pieces afore it's dry. where's the shop?"
"down street," said tommy. "i could pop down street in a minute for the paper and things."
"sure you'd rather have a kite than anything else?"
tommy hesitated, and then said of course he'd rather have a hairyplane, but he supposed the stranger couldn't.
to which the stranger startlingly replied, "oh, couldn't i, my boy! father got a horse and trap?" he went on. and from that moment the most wonderful four days of tommy's life moved forward majestically without pause or let.
to drive into eastbourne with the gentleman—rather slow the old horse was, but it was the best trap—to hold the reins outside important and unusual shops, including the eastbourne motor-car company and the telegraph-office at the station; to be taken to dinner at a fine hotel with flowers in all the windows, and real waiters dressed exactly like the gentlemen who sang at the school concert, white ties and all—or just like the butler at mr. ferney's who had the training-stables—and such things to eat as tommy "never did."
the horse and trap were put up at mr. pettigrew's livery and bait stables, in itself an act of unheard-of daring and extravagance. and after dinner the stranger got a motor-car—a real private one—none of your red flags and mustn't ride on the front seat, where, in fact, he and the stranger did, with great dash and daring, actually ride. and they went to pevensy and hurstmonceau and hastings, and the stranger told tommy stories about the places, so that history was never quite itself again to tommy. then back to eastbourne, to call again at the unusual shops, as well as at one of the more usual character, where the stranger bought toffee and buns and cake and peppermint creams; to get a parcel from the station, and so home round the feet of the downs in the pleasant-colored evening, with the dust white on the hedges, and the furze in flower, and the skylarks singing "fit to bu'st theirselves," as tommy pointed out when the stranger called his attention to the little, dark, singing specks against the clear sky, the old white horse going at a spanking pace. no one would have believed he had it in him, compared to what he was in the morning; and drawing up very short and sharp in front of the porch—no driving into the yard and just calling for robert—and father himself coming out to take the reins. oh, that was a day!
to the stranger, also, whose name, it will surprise you little to learn, was edward basingstoke, the home-coming was not without charm. the day before he had been welcomed as a guest; now he was welcomed as a friend, one who had taken tommy for an outing and spent money on him like water. any one could see that from the parcels the child had his arms full of.
robert in the stable, hearing the return, and heartened by the unmistakable attitude of the family, loosened charles from the taut chain at whose end he had choked all day, and sent him flying like a large white bullet into the bar, where his master was standing. charles knocked over a table and three glasses, trod on the edge of a spittoon and upset it, and the landlord said it didn't matter! could any reception have been more warmly welcoming?
it charmed edward so much that he said, "when tommy's face is washed, might he have tea with me to finish up the day?"
and this, too, happened. and after tea, when charles had been partially calmed by five whole buns, eaten in five eager mouthfuls, they undid the parcels, and tommy reveled in the tools and metals, the wood, the canvas, the dozen other things he knew neither the names nor the uses of. and when it was time to say good night and they had said it, tommy wanted to say something else. he stood by the parlor door, shuffling his boots and looking with blue, adoring eyes at the stranger.
"i say," he said.
"well, what do you say?"
"i say," was still all that tommy said.
"yes, i hear you do. but what?"
"i'm right-down glad you come here to stay, instead of going on to wilmington, like what you might have," was the most tommy could do. then he added, after a fierce, brief struggle between affection and shyness: "i do take it very kind, sir—and the peppermints, and all. good night, sir."
it was the happiest day edward had spent since he left crewe.
and next day they began to make the aeroplane. i do not know how toy aeroplanes are made. there may be a hundred ways of making them. if there are, mr. basingstoke knew at least one of these ways, and it was quite a good way, too. the village carpenter and the village blacksmith each was visited—i know that—and a good deal of the work was done at the carpenter's bench. and at the end of the third day the toy was ready.
"we'll fly it in the morning," said mr. basingstoke. "are you glad it's done? sure you wouldn't have liked a kite better?"
"not by long chalks," was tommy's fervent answer.
the little aeroplane sat on the little stand the carpenter had made for it, shiny with varnish, white with canvas, glittering in all its metal mysteries.
"jiminy!" said tommy, awe-stricken at his own good fortune, "i didn't know anybody could be so clever as what you are."
edward basingstoke, as he went to bed, wondered whether, after all, he could spend his money to any better purpose than going about the country making aeroplanes to please little boys.