raw
whether his son associated with lords' sons, or ploughmen's sons,
provided they were brave and honest. He himself had played football and
gone birds'-nesting with the farmers whom he met at vestry and the
labourers who tilled their fields, and so had his father and grandfather
with their progenitors. So he encouraged Tom in his intimacy with the
boys of the village, and forwarded it by all means in his power, and
gave them the run of a close for a playground, and provided bats and
balls and a football for their sports.

Our village was blessed amongst other things with a well-endowed school.
The building stood by itself, apart from the master's house, on an angle
of ground where three roads met; an old grey stone building with a steep
roof and mullioned windows. On one of the opposite angles stood Squire
Brown's stables and kennel, with their backs to the road, over which
towered a great elm-tree; on the third stood the village carpenter and
wheelwright's large open shop, and his house and the schoolmaster's,
with long low eaves under which the swallows built by scores.

The moment Tom's lessons were over, he would now get him down to this
corner by the stables, and watch till the boys came out of school. He
prevailed on the groom to cut notches for him in the bark of the elm, so
that he could climb into the lower branches, and there he would sit
watching the school door, and speculating on the possibility of turning
the elm into a dwelling-place for himself and friends after the manner
of the Swiss Family Robinson. But the school hours were long and Tom's
patience short, so that soon he began to descend into the street, and go
and peep in at the school door and the wheelwright's shop, and look out
for something to while away the time. Now the wheelwright was a choleric
man, and, one fine afternoon, returning from a short absence, found Tom
occupied with one of his pet adzes, the edge of which was fast vanishing
under our hero's care. A speedy flight saved Tom from all but one sound
cuff on the ears, but he resented this unjustifiable interruption of his
first essays at carpentering, and still more the further proceedings of
the wheelwright, who cut a switch and hung it over the door of his
workshop, threatening to use it upon Tom if he came within twenty yards
of his gate. So Tom, to retaliate, commenced a war upon the swallows who
dwelt under the wheelwright's eaves, whom he harassed with sticks and
stones, and b