yellow with rage
at the cold bitter words Mr Solomon used. "Take away your pauper--take
care of your gentleman--go and chain him up, and give him his skilly.
Go on! take him to his kennel. Oh, I say, Courtenay--a gentleman! What
a game!"

I followed Mr Solomon with my face wrinkled and lips tightened up, till
he turned round and looked at me and then clapped his hand on my
shoulder.

"Bah!" he said laughing; "you are not going to mind that, my lad. It
isn't worth a snap of the fingers. I wish, though, you hadn't said
anything about being a gentleman."

"So do I, sir," I said. "It slipped out, though, and I was sorry when
it was too late."

"Never mind; and don't you leave your work for them. Now come and have
a look at my cucumber house, and then--ha, ha, ha! there's something
better than skilly for dinner, my boy."

I found out that Mr Solomon had another nature beside the one that
seemed cold.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

SIR FRANCIS AND A FRIEND.

The next few days passed pleasantly enough, for I saw very little of the
two young gentlemen, who spent a good deal of their time in a meadow
beyond the garden, playing cricket and quarrelling. Once there seemed
to have been a fight, for I came upon Philip kneeling down by a
watering-pot busy with his handkerchief bathing his face, and the state
of the water told tales of what had happened to his nose.

As he seemed in trouble I was about to offer him my services, but he
turned upon me so viciously with, "Hullo! pauper, what do you want?"
that I went away.

The weather was lovely, and while it was so hot Mr Solomon used to do
the principal part of his work in the glass houses at early morn and in
the evening.

"Makes us work later, Grant," he used to say apologetically; "but as
it's for our own convenience we ought not to grumble."

"I'm not going to grumble, sir," I said laughing; "all that training and
tying in is so interesting, I like it."

"That's right," he said, patting me on the shoulder; "always try and
like your work; take a pride in it, my man, and it will turn up trumps
some time or another. It means taking prizes."

I had not seen Sir Francis yet, for he had been away, and I could not
help feeling a little nervous about our first meeting. Still I was
pretty happy there, and I felt that in spite of a few strong sensations
of longing to be back at the old garden with Ike and Shock, I was
getting to like my new life very much indeed, a