Great Uncle Hoot-Toot

"Yes, of course," said Geoff. "For my part, I often wonder any one that's free to do as they like cares to live in London. You're a great deal better off in the country."

"There's bads and goods everywhere, I take it, sir," said the young man, philosophically.

But by this time they had reached the corner where the omnibus started, and Geoff's attention was directed to hailing the right one. And an omnibus rattling over London stones is not exactly the place for conversation, so no more passed between them till they were dropped within a stone's throw of Victoria Station.

Geoff was beginning to feel very hungry, and almost faint as well as chilly.

"I say," he said to his companion, "you're not in any very desperate hurry to get off, are you? For I'm frightfully hungry. You don't mind waiting while I have some breakfast, do you? I'll look you out your train for that place as soon as I've had some."

"All right, sir," said the stranger. "If it wouldn't be making too free, I'd be pleased to join you. But I suppose you'll be going into the first-class?"

"Oh no," said Geoff. "I don't mind the second-class."

And into the second-class refreshment-room they went. They grew very friendly over hot coffee and a rasher of bacon, and then Geoff laid out threepence on a railway guide, and proceeded to hunt up Shalecray.

"Here you are!" he exclaimed. "And upon my word, that's a good joke. This place – Shalecray – is on the very line I'm going by. I wonder I never noticed it. I came up that way not long ago, from Entlefield."

"Indeed, sir; that's really curious," said the countryman. "And are you going to Entlefield to-day?"

"Well," said Geoff, "I fancy so. I've not quite made up my mind, to tell the truth. I know the country about there. I want to find some – some farmhouse."

"Oh, exactly – I understand," interrupted the young man. "You want somewhere where they'll put you up tidily for a few days – just for a breath of country air."

"Well, no; not exactly," said Geoffrey. "The fact is, I'm looking out for – for some sort of situation about a farm. I'm very fond of country life. I don't care what I do. I'm not a fine gentleman!"

The countryman looked at him with interest.

"I see," he said. "You're tired of town, I take it, sir. But what do your friends say to it, sir? At sixteen, or even seventeen, you have still to ask leave, I suppose?"

"Not always," said Geoff. "I've made no secret of it. I've no father, and – I'm pretty much my own master."

"'I care for nobody, and nobody cares for me,' eh?" quoted the young man, laughing.

"Something like it, I suppose," said Geoff, laughing too, though rather forcedly. For a vision of Vicky, sobbing, perhaps, over her lonely breakfast, would come before him – of Elsa and Frances trying how to break to their mother the news that Geoff had really run away. "They'll soon get over it," he said to himself. "They've got that old curmudgeon to console them, and I don't want to live on his money."

"Do you think I can easily find a place of some kind?" he went on, after a pause.

The countryman this time did scratch his head, while he considered.

"How old may you be, sir? Sixteen or seventeen, maybe?" he inquired.

"I'm not so much; I'm only fourteen," said Geoff, rather reluctantly.

"Really! now, who'd 'a' thought it?" said his new friend, admiringly. "You'll be just the man for a country life when you're full-grown. Not afraid of roughing it? Fond of riding, I dare say?"

"Oh yes," said Geoff. "At least, in town of course I haven't had as much of it as I'd like." He had never ridden in his life, except the previous summer, on a peculiarly gentle old pony of Mrs. Colethorne's.

"No, in course not. Well now, sir, if you'd no objection to stopping at Shalecray with me, it strikes me my friend there, Farmer Eames, might likely enough know of something to suit you. He's a very decent fellow – a bit rough-spoken, maybe. But you're used to country ways – you'd not mind that."

"Oh, not a bit!" said Geoff. "I'm much obliged to you for thinking of it. And you say it's possible – that this Farmer Eames may perhaps have a place that I should do for?"

"Nay, sir, I can't say that. It's just a chance. I only said he'd maybe know of something."

"Well, I don't see that it will do any harm to ask him. I'll only take a ticket to Shalecray, then. I can go on farther later in the day if I don't find anything to suit me there. We'd better take the first train – a quarter to nine. We've still twenty minutes or so to wait."

"Yes, there's plenty of time – time for a pipe. You don't object, sir? But, bless me" – and he felt in his pockets one after the other – "if I haven't forgotten my 'bacca! With your leave, sir, I'll run across the street to fetch some. I saw a shop as we came in."

"Very well," said Geoff; "I'll wait here. Don't be too late."

He had no particular fancy for going to buy cheap tobacco in the company of the very rustic-looking stranger. Besides, he thought it safer to remain quiet in a dark corner of the waiting-room.

It was curious that, though the countryman came back with a well-filled tobacco-pouch, he had not left the station! He only disappeared for a minute or two into the telegraph office, and the message he there indited was as follows: —

"Got him all safe. Will report further this evening."

And ten minutes later the two were ensconced in a third-class carriage, with tickets for Shalecray.

Geoff had often travelled second, but rarely third. He did not, truth to tell, particularly like it. Yet he could not have proposed anything else to his companion, unless he had undertaken to pay the difference. And as it was, the breakfast and his own third-class ticket had made a considerable hole in his thirty shillings. He must be careful, for even with all his inexperience he knew it was possible he might have to pay his own way for some little time to come.

"Still, the chances are I shall find what I want very easily," he reflected. "It is evidently not difficult, by what this fellow tells me."

It did not even strike him as in any way a very remarkable coincidence that almost on the doorstep of his own home he should have lighted upon the very person he needed to give him the particular information he was in want of. For in many ways, in spite of his boasted independence, poor Geoff was as innocent and unsuspicious as a baby.

CHAPTER VIII.

"HALF-A-CROWN A WEEK AND HIS VICTUALS."

Shalecray was a small station, where no very considerable number of trains stopped in the twenty-four hours. It was therefore a slow train by which Geoffrey Tudor and his new friend travelled; so, though the distance from London was really short, it took them fully two hours to reach their destination. And two hours on a raw drizzly November morning is quite a long enough time to spend in a third-class carriage, shivering if the windows are down, and suffering on the other hand from the odours of damp fustian and bad tobacco if they are up.

Cold as it was, it seemed pleasant in comparison when they got out at last, and were making their way down a very muddy, but really country lane. Geoff gave a sort of snort of satisfaction.

"I do love the country," he said.

His companion looked at him curiously.

"I believe you, sir," he replied. "You must like it, to find it pleasant in November," he went on, with a tone which made Geoff glance at him in surprise. Somehow in the last few words the countryman's accent seemed to have changed a little. Geoff could almost have fancied there was a cockney twang about it.

"Why, don't you like it?" said Geoff. "You said you were lost and miserable in town."

"Of course, sir. What else could I be? I'm country born and bred. But it's not often as a Londoner takes to it as you do, and it's not to say lively at this time, and" – he looked down with a grimace – "the lanes is uncommon muddy."

"How far is it to your friend's place?" Geoff inquired, thinking to himself that if he were to remark on the mud it would not be surprising, but that it was rather curious for his companion to do so.

"A matter of two mile or so," Jowett – for Ned Jowett, he had told Geoff, was his name – replied; "and now I come to think of it, perhaps it'd be as well for you to leave your bag at the station. I'll see that it's all right; and as you're not sure of stopping at Crickwood, there's no sense in carrying it there and maybe back again for nothing. I'll give it in charge to the station-master, and be back in a moment."

He had shouldered it and was hastening back to the station almost before Geoff had time to take in what he said. The boy stood looking after him vaguely. He was beginning to feel tired and a little dispirited. He did not feel as if he could oppose anything just then.

"If he's a cheat and he's gone off with my bag, I just can't help it," he thought. "He won't gain much. Still, he looks honest."