"Shall I get a pail of water for him, sir?" I said.
He looked at me and nodded, and I went out to a great pump in the middle
of the yard with a hook on its spout, upon which I was able to hang the
stable pail as I worked hard to throw the long handle up and down.
"Wages!" said Mr Solomon, taking the pail from me and holding it for
the horse to drink.
For the moment I felt confused, not knowing whether he meant that as a
question about what wages I required, but he turned his back, and by
degrees I found that he meant that the corn and water were the horse's
wages.
He busied himself about the horse for some minutes in a quiet
punctilious way, for the sour-looking man had gone, and as I waited
about, the great yard seemed with its big wall and gates, and
dog-kennels, such a cold cheerless place that the trees had all turned
the shabby parts of their backs to it and were looking the other way.
Everything was very prim and clean and freshly painted, and only in one
place could I see some short grass peeping between the stones. There
was a patch of moss, too, like a dark green velvet pin-cushion on the
top of the little penthouse where the big bell lived on the end of a
great curly spring, otherwise everything was carefully painted, and the
row of stabling buildings with rooms over looked like prisons for horses
and their warders, who must, I felt, live very unhappy lives.
There was one door up in a corner of the great yard, right in the wall,
and down towards this, from where it had grown on the other side, there
hung a few strands of ivy in a very untidy fashion, and it struck me
that this ivy did not belong to the yard, or else it would have been
clipped or cut away.
In summer, with the warm glow of the setting sun in the sky, the place
looked shivery and depressing, and as I waited for Mr Solomon I found
myself thinking what a place it must be in the winter when the snow had
fallen and drifted into the corners, and how miserable the poor dogs
must be.
Then as I stood looking at my box and wondering what Shock was doing,
and whether he had gone to his home or was sleeping in the loft, and why
Ike was so surly to me, and what a miserable piece of business it was
that I should have to leave that pleasant old garden and Old Brownsmith,
I suddenly felt a hand laid upon my shoulder.
I started and stared as I saw Mr Solomon's cold, stern face.