"A young dog!" cried the Vicar. "I'll talk to him again."

"Labour in vain," said Uncle Richard. "As you know, I tried over and over again to make something of him, but he would not stay. He hates work. Wild as one of the rabbits he poaches."

"But we tame rabbits, Brandon, and I don't like seeing that boy gradually go from bad to worse."

"It's the gipsy blood in him, I'm afraid," said Uncle Richard.

"Yes, and I don't know what to do with him."

"A good washing wouldn't be amiss."

"No," sighed the Vicar; "but he hates soap and water as much as he does work. What am I to do? The boy is on my conscience. He makes me feel as if all my teaching is vain, and I see him gradually developing into a man who, if he does what the boy has done, must certainly pa.s.s half his time in prison."

"Yes, it is a problem," said Uncle Richard. "Boys are problems.

Troublesome young cubs, aren't they, Tom?"

"Horrible, uncle," said Tom dryly.

"But to begin with: a boy is a boy," said the Vicar firmly, "and he has naturally the seeds of good and evil in him."

"Pete Warboys had all the good left out of him," said Uncle Richard.

"No, I deny that," said the Vicar decisively.

"Well, I've seen him about for some time now, and I've never seen any of the good, Maxted."

"Ah, but I have," said the Vicar, while Tom busied himself doing nothing to the telescope, and began to take a good deal of interest in the discussion about his enemy. "You will grant, I suppose, that Mother Warboys is about as unamiable, cantankerous an old woman as ever breathed?"

"Most willingly," said Uncle Richard, smiling. "She leads that boy quite a dog's life. I've seen her thump him quite savagely with her stick."

"And he deserved it," said Uncle Richard.

"No doubt; but instead of showing resentment, the boy is devoted to her; and I know for a fact he is always bringing her rabbits and hares to cook for herself."

"Poached."

"Yes, I'm afraid so; but I'm firmly convinced that he would fight to the death for the poor old creature."

"Nature," said Uncle Richard; "she is his grandmother."

"Then there is some good in him," cried the Vicar; "and what I want is to make it grow. The only question is, how it is to be done."

"Don't you think I have got problems enough over my telescope, without your setting me fresh ones? Get some recruiting serjeant to carry him off for raw material to turn into a soldier."

"Hopeless," said the Vicar. "Too loose and shambling. As it is, metaphorically, every one throws stones at the lad; no one ever gives him a kind word."

"No, but who can? I'm afraid you must give him up, Maxted, as a hopeless case."

"I will not," said the Vicar firmly. "It's my duty to try and make a decent member of society of the lad if I can, and I'm sorry you cannot give me a hint."

"So am I," said Uncle Richard seriously, "but I look upon him as hopeless. I tried again and again, till I felt that the only thing was to chain him up, and beat and starve him into submission, and it seemed to me that it would be better to let him run wild than attempt to do that."

"Yes; I agree with you," said the Vicar. "Tom. Come, Tom, you're a boy. Boys understand one another better than men understand them.

Can't you help me?"

"I wish I could, sir," said Tom, shaking his head, "but I'm afraid I can't."

Then the conversation turned to astronomical matters, and soon after the Vicar left.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

That conversation took root in Tom's mind. He found himself thinking a good deal about Pete Warboys and his devotion to his hideous old grandmother; but it was hard work to believe that he had any of the good in him that the Vicar talked about.

"Wonder whether he really has," Tom said to himself. "He might have."

The idea began to grow, and it spread.

"What would they say if I tried to alter him, and got him to turn into a decent chap?"

He laughed at his own conceit directly after.

"He'd laugh at me too," thought Tom; and then something else took his attention. But the idea was there, and was always cropping up. He found himself talking to David about the lad one day when he was down the garden, and David left off digging potatoes, took a big kidney off one of the p.r.o.ngs of the potato fork, upon which it was impaled, split it in two, and began thoughtfully to polish the tool with the piece he retained.

"Do I think as you might make a decent chap out of Pete Warboys, Master Tom, by being kind to him?"

"Yes."

"Do I think as you could make a silk puss out of a sow's ear, Master Tom; and then cut this here yellow bit o' tater into sovereigns and put in it? No, sir, I don't. Pete's a bad 'un, and you can't make a good 'un out of him."

"Not if he was properly taught?"

"Tchah! you couldn't teach a thing like him. It'd all run through him like water through a sieve."

"But he has never been taught better."

"More was I, sir, but I don't go poaching, and stealing apples and eggs, and ducks and chickens. Why, he makes that wicked old woman his grandam fat with the things he steals and takes to her."

"Well, that shows there's some good in him," cried Tom, basing himself upon the Vicar's speech.

"Master Tom," cried David, digging his fork down into the earth as if to impale fierce, evil thoughts with its tines, "I'm surperrised at you.

Good! What, to go stealing an' portching to feed up a wicked old woman, who spends all her time trying to curse. That's a shocking sentiment, sir, and one that arn't becoming. It arn't good, and there arn't no good in Pete Warboys, and never will be. He's a bad stock, and if you was to take him and plant him in good soil, and then work him with a scion took off a good tree, and put on some graftin' wax to keep out all the wet and cold, do you think he'd ever come to be a decent fruit tree?

Because if you do, you're wrong. He never could, and never would, come to anything better than a bad old cankering crab sort o' thing. No, my lad, it would just be waste of time, and nothing else."

Still Tom did not feel at all convinced, but said no more.

David did though. It was pleasant to the back standing there, with one foot resting upon the great five-p.r.o.nged fork; and as he stood with his fingers on the handle, he kept his left arm across his loins, and gave Tom a cunning leer.