Chapter I: That Dreadful Boy

"KITTY, fetch the rake from the tool-house, will you?"

"All right," responded Kitty; and dropping the fork with which she had been at work moving up the earth in her garden-plot, she hastened to do her brother's bidding.

Kitty and Bob Glanville were "putting in a morning gardening," as Bob would have expressed it. They were both enthusiastic gardeners, and had been allotted a few yards each in the long strip of ground which stretched at the back of the semi-detached villa in the small provincial town where they lived. And it being the Easter holidays—it was at the end of April—they had plenty of time to devote to tilling their respective garden-plots, and were enjoying their labours in anticipation of the fine show of flowers they would have later on from the seeds which they were now sowing. Kitty, who was a nice-looking little girl of ten years old, with blue eyes and fair, curly hair, was two years her brother's junior, and being extremely good-natured she allowed him to order her about, and rarely thought of refusing to do his will. Bob was very fond of his sister; but he presumed on his seniority in many ways and expected always to take the lead.

Kitty having procured the rake returned with it to her brother. "Bob," she said, "there's a boy next door—at Mr. Shuttleworth's."

"I know," Bob answered laconically. "I saw him arrive yesterday with a big portmanteau. He came in a cab with Mr. Shuttleworth."

"Then you may depend Mr. Shuttleworth met him at the station."

Mr. Shuttleworth was an elderly bachelor of studious habits, who lived next door. Being of a reserved disposition he had little to do with his neighbours, though sometimes he exchanged a few words with Mr. and Mrs. Glanville if they happened to be in their front garden when he was in his, and he always nodded to the children when he met them. Neither Kitty nor Bob remembered Mr. Shuttleworth ever having had a visitor before, and they had lived next door to him for several years now.

"Bob, I wonder who the boy can be," said Kitty, as her brother took the rake from her hand. "I saw him watching us from Mr. Shuttleworth's dining-room window. Such a very ugly-looking boy he is, with red hair, and green goggly eyes, and a snub nose, and a big mouth. He grinned at me."

"And did you grin back at him?" asked Bob with a laugh.

"No, certainly not," Kitty responded loftily; "as though I should do that! He's gone now," she added, with a furtive glance at their neighbour's house. "Oh," she exclaimed in accents of intense astonishment, a moment later, "why, there he is, staring at us over the wall! He must be standing on a ladder, I suppose."

Bob paused in the midst of raking his flower-bed smooth and looked at the wall which divided the two back gardens of the semi-detached villas. It was a brick wall of about six feet in height, and at the present minute the head and shoulders of a boy were visible above it. He had been watching the two young gardeners intently; but when he perceived they noticed him he looked a trifle embarrassed, and his freckled countenance deepened in colour.

"Yes, he must be on a ladder," Bob agreed. "The idea of his spying on us like that! I shall take no notice of him!"

"Nor I," said Kitty; and she turned her attention to her garden again; but she could not refrain from glancing at the partition wall frequently, and every time she did so there was still the ugly boy watching them.

"Do you think he wishes to speak to us?" she suggested to her brother at length. "Shall we ask him if he wants anything?"

"Most certainly not," Bob responded. "I call it cheek his perching himself there; if I spoke to him I should tell him so."

Meanwhile the boy next door—Tim Shuttleworth—who had come out in hopes of picking an acquaintance with his neighbours, saw that, though they had observed him, they had no intention of speaking to him, and was consequently disappointed. Although he had only arrived on a visit to his uncle, Mr. Shuttleworth, on the preceding day, time was hanging heavily on his hands already. At breakfast his uncle had told him he might go where he pleased and do exactly as he liked, and had remarked that no doubt he would find his own amusements—adding that there were young folks in the next house he could play with, but he had evidently not thought of introducing him to them. And then he had shut himself up in his study, leaving his nephew to his own devices.

From the dining-room window Tim had taken stock of the next door garden, and of Kitty and of Bob Glanville with their lemon-and-white fox-terrier, Snip, in close attendance upon them; and seeing that Bob was about his age and that Kitty looked a merry, nice little girl, he had thought how pleasant it would be for him to know them. Accordingly he had procured a short ladder, which he had found hanging against the tool-house wall, and had taken up a position where he could overlook the next door garden. He had seen Kitty call her brother's attention to him, and had observed them whispering together, and he deemed it almost unsociable for them not to speak.

By-and-by Snip trotted up the garden path nearest the partition wall, and suddenly paused, sniffing the air in a suspicious manner. Then he looked up and caught sight of the stranger; but instead of barking at him, he seated himself on his haunches and contemplated him with a world of perplexity in his brown eyes, into which there gradually crept the loveliest possible canine smile.

"Good doggie," Tim murmured. "You're a jolly, friendly little chap." And Snip wagged his tail and wriggled with excitement, every nerve in his body on the twitch, for he liked the voice which addressed him, and he liked the countenance of the next door boy, which did not seem ugly to him at all.

"Look at Snip," said Kitty in an undertone. "The boy's speaking to him, and he's quite pleased."

"Little sniveller!" exclaimed Bob. He immediately called to the dog to come away; whereupon Tim made a grimace at him and descended the ladder in haste.

"What an impertinent boy!" cried Kitty. "But I don't think it was nice of you to call Snip away like that; he was doing no harm, and it seemed rather rude, I thought. I know you didn't mean it to be so," she added hastily, noticing that her brother's colour had risen.

"The fellow had no right there at all," Bob replied. "If any one was rude, he was. He is evidently full of cheek. Did you see what a face he made at me?"

"Yes, and didn't he look ugly?" cried Kitty, smiling at the remembrance of the distorted countenance which had disappeared so suddenly on the other side of the wall. "I wonder if he is a relation of Mr. Shuttleworth's, and if he will stay long?"

"You'd like to know all about him, wouldn't you, Kitty?" her brother said, laughing. "You wouldn't be a girl if you weren't curious."

"Boys are curious, too, only they never will own it," Kitty retorted.

"Some are," Bob admitted. "That red-headed chap is, I should think, or he wouldn't have looked at us over the wall like that."

Tim Shuttleworth watched the young folk next door constantly during the next day or two, for they spent much time in the back garden; but he always kept behind the lace curtains in the dining-room, and did not try to attract their notice again. Their doings interested him exceedingly. Sometimes they would place Snip on the wall to watch for cats, and on one occasion the little dog hunted one of his natural enemies all about Mr. Shuttleworth's garden, around the house, and out into the road. No one would have been more shocked and horrified than the two young Glanvilles had Snip really caught a cat; but he had never done so, and it was most unlikely he ever would, so his mistress and master saw no harm in permitting him to enjoy his little game, though they had several times been told by their father not to encourage him in his favourite pursuit.

Tim knew his visit to his uncle was to be of long duration. He was the eldest of several children, and as his father was only a clerk in a bank in Dublin, his home was a comparatively poor one. During the winter he had had a serious attack of pneumonia, and when his uncle had written and suggested that he should spend the summer with him in England, at the small country town where Mr. Shuttleworth had lived for many years, his parents had promptly accepted the invitation; for the doctor who had attended him during his illness had declared that a thorough change of air and scene, and an absence from school for a few months, would be to his ultimate benefit. Tim had known but little of his uncle up to the present, having only seen him on the rare occasions when he had come on a visit to Dublin, and when he found out how thoroughly engrossed his relative was in his books and his studies, he was dismayed at the prospect of the months of loneliness, he feared he must look forward to. If only the children next door would seek to know him! But he realized that they were not prepossessed with his appearance, and he was too shy and too proud to make any overtures of friendship to them, and determined to find his own amusements, as his uncle expected him to do.

Accordingly, he selected a sunny spot in the back garden—which was almost a wilderness, for Mr. Shuttleworth did not care for flowers, and bought his vegetables—and began to turn up the soil. It was hard work, for the ground had long been neglected, and the tools he found in the tool-house were blunt and heavy; but he persevered. He would have a garden of his own, he decided, which should rival those of the children next door; and at length he succeeded in getting the earth in fairly good condition, and planted it with the seeds of nasturtiums and mignonette and other hardy annuals which he purchased with his own pocket-money.

There came a night when Tim went to bed greatly pleased with the result of his finished labours; but the next morning he found they had been all in vain, for on going into the back garden after breakfast, he discovered that some animal—a dog, presumably—had been scratching and digging holes in the ground he had prepared so carefully for the reception of the seeds.

His indignation was intense; and fetching the ladder from the tool-house, he placed it against the partition wall, climbed it, and looked into the next garden. There were the sister and brother, their attention fixed on the contents of a big box which they had placed against the wall, and near them was Snip, his nose covered with earth.

Tim's wrath burst bounds as he regarded the trio, and he poured forth a volume of angry words, his Irish accent growing more and more pronounced as he proceeded, in which he accused Kitty and Bob of having deliberately put Snip in over the wall to destroy his garden. He vowed vengeance upon them, and at last, overcome with rage, he shook his fist at them and then abruptly quitted the scene.

"What a dreadful boy!" cried Kitty, who had turned quite pale. "What can he mean by speaking to us like that? What can Snip have done?"

"Destroyed his garden, he said," responded Bob. "I didn't put Snip over the wall, though. If he's been in there, he went by himself. My, what a temper that fellow has! I believe, as you say, he's a dreadful boy."