was going on in the pretty retired little villa. The man in the white hat bustled forward into the middle of the lawn, and the thick-nosed contingent grouped about him at varying distances.
"You see the next lot before you, gentlemen," said the auctioneer. "Seven garden seats, various. One patent duplex-action lawn mower, an iron roller, three watering pots, spade, rake, and hoe. How much for this lot, gentlemen?"
The handful of brokers wandered unconcernedly about the lawn, inspecting the various articles offered for sale with depreciating aspect and gesture.
"Come, gentlemen," said the auctioneer, "we can't be here all day. How much? Give me a bid to start with."
"Ted bob," said one of the thick-nosed men.
"Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen!" cried the auctioneer, and became fluent, almost passionate, in laudatory criticism of the articles offered for sale. His voice took a tone of pathetically remonstrant indignation. "Ten shillings! Oh, really, really, gentlemen! Let us be reasonable!"
Another thick-nosed gentleman soared so high into the air of pure reason as to increase the bid by sixpence. The auctioneer expostulated. The goods were being thrown away. He was there to sell without reserve, but it was grievous and hardly to be borne that the things he had to offer should have to be knocked down at prices so far below their real value. The Hebraic crowd listened to his diatribes with a dreary patience; but, nobody offering a further bid for the garden seats, various, and the rest, the lot was knocked down, and the whole party, headed by the auctioneer, meandered back to the house again.
This little episode had inspired the unsuspected onlooker with a variety of emotions, and, after the manner of his tribe, he had profoundly pitied half a dozen imaginary persons before the scene was over. His bardic bosom had been fired with scorn for the handful of money-grubbers banded together to take advantage of the straits of the widow and the fatherless; but when the curtain had fallen on the trivial act he fell into a dejection more mournful than before, and gazed at the ivy-covered porch of the small villa as if he read in it a decree of mysterious and all-embracing doom.
As he looked, a small boy—a boy of five, or thereabouts—came out, nursing a puppy, a smooth-haired, pot-bellied, helpless canine infant of a month or two. The boy, a sturdy little fellow, was evidently labouring under a sense of injury, which he did his best to conquer. He walked resolutely towards the poet, as if he had him in view, and plumping down on the wet grass within two yards of him, hugged his burden to his breast with a gesture so emphatic that the puppy uttered a yowk of remonstrance. At this the child released him, and the pup, in infantile glee, began, with a tottering jocundity, to charge about the lawn, and to bark with a pretence of valour at imagined intruders. He was at the age at which dogs learn to bark, and was obviously proud of his newly found accomplishment. When he had sufficiently asserted his own importance, and had expressed with especial vehemence his opinion of the people then within doors, he returned to his childish companion, and tumbled over him in an ecstasy of fawning affection. The boy gathered him up again in a loose armful, and began to cry silently, but at this instant a jeering call broke in upon his solitude, and the poet, peering through the leafy screen, saw a mean boy, a repulsive boy, with a face freckled all over like a toad's back, who had thrown one leg over the garden wall something less than a score of yards away.
"Yah!" said the freckled boy, "who's being sold up?"
At this the eyes of the infant with the puppy glittered suddenly, and his tears ceased. He clinched his white milk teeth, and put both arms about the puppy.
"Who's being sold up?" the repulsive boy repeated. "Yah!"
He detached small pieces of mortar from the top of the wall, and threw them at the object of his derision. Then, emboldened by the absence of retort, for he was obviously, at the first glance, a boy who loved to deride in safety, he threw the other leg over the wall, and dropped stealthily into the garden. Then, having assured himself by observation that his way of retreat was clear, and that, if need were, he could scale the wall before the enemy reached him, he threw a stone, and finding that this elicited no retort, he grew still bolder, and ventured forward. He was an older boy than the rightful occupant of the lawn, and topped him by three ungainly inches.
"Yah!" he said again, for he was a boy unfertile in resource, "who's being sold up?"
