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She said no; he was going up in them, contrary to rule, when she reminded him of it, and he took them off and put them in the rack in the wood-closet. I have seen the boot-boy, and he says he noticed when he went there this morning early to clean them, No. 6 rack was empty. So your brother must have come down, after he had gone up to the dormitory, and got his boots.
The problem now was what to do with the painted boot. It would take a lot of cleaning, he saw, even if he could get hold of the necessary implements for cleaning it. And he rather doubted if he would be able to do so. Edmund, the boot-boy, worked in some mysterious cell, far from the madding crowd, at the back of the house.
He sketched the horses, he sketched the dogs, all the servants, from the bleer-eyed boot-boy to the rosy cheeked lass whom the housekeeper was always calling to come downstairs. He drew his father in all postures, and jolly little Mr. Binnie too.
"Comin'!" answered the boot-boy, and burst forth from the bushes. In swift, clear words, which no stupidity could mistake or forget, Mother gave him his orders, spoken in a tone that meant urgency. Walter went flying to execute them. "Oh, Mother, where do you think Joan can be?" begged Joyce when Jenks had gone off to resume his search: "I don't know," said Mother. "It's all so absurd."
Joyce's place faced the window, so that she could see the lawn and the hedge bounding the kitchen garden; and when Mother had served her with food, she was left alone to eat it. Presently the gardener and the boot-boy passed the window, each carrying a hedge-stake and looking war-like. There reached her a murmur of voices; the gardener was mumbling something about tramps.
The fags believed that "Dumber," who had begun his career as boot-boy at the Manor in the glorious days of old, had given notice to leave when he learned that Dirty Dick was about to assume command; but had been prevailed upon to stay by the promise of an enormous salary. Nothing disturbed his equanimity.
Jimmy the boot-boy, on his return from taking the letters to the evening post, fled in panic into the kitchen, and having complied with the etiquette invariable in such cases by having "a wakeness," he described to a deeply sympathetic audience how he had seen something that was like a woman in the avenue, and he had called to it and it returned him no answer, and how he had then asked it three times in the name o' God what was it, and it soaked away into the trees from him, and then there came something rushing in on him and grunting at him to bite him, and he was full sure it was the Fairy Pig from Lough Clure.
But Littimer did not forget the charitable enthusiasm which had been awakened by a circumstance on the surface so trivial as the mistake of a boot-boy. He did not desist from his interest in aiding disabled or unfortunate people who could really be aided.
"We mustn't be silly about this," said Mother, speaking as much to herself as to Joyce. "Nothing can have happened to her. And you must have lunch, chick." "Without waiting for Joan?" asked Joyce. "Yes. The gardener and the boot-boy must look for Joan," said Mother, opening the gate. The dining-room looked very secure and homelike, with its big window and its cheerful table spread for lunch.
Four women, plus a boot-boy, to wait upon the wants of one solitary person, yet in conclave with the domestic at The Croft to the right, and The Holt to the left, Miss Briskett's maids were wont to assert that they were worked off their feet. It was, as has been said, an early Victorian household, conducted on early Victorian lines.
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