He was picking up stones, and I was sticking fresh labels at the ends of some rows of plants, when all at once he uttered a peculiar monkey-like noise, down went his head, up went his heels, and I stared in astonishment at first and then turned my back.
This always annoyed Shock; but one day when he stood up after his quaint fashion I was out of temper and had a bad headache, so I ran to him, and he struck at me with his feet, just as if they had been hands, only he could not have doubled them up.

I was too quick for him though, and with a push drove him down.
He jumped up again directly and repeated the performance.
I knocked him down angrily.
He stood up again.
I knocked him down again.
And so on, again and again, when he turned and ran off laughing, and I went on with my work, vexed with myself for having shown temper.
Every now and then a fit of low spirits used to attack me.

It was generally on washing-days, when Mrs Dodley filled the place with steam early in the morning by lighting the copper fire, and then seeming to be making calico puddings to boil and send an unpleasant soapy odour through the house.
Doors and chair backs were so damp and steamy then that I used to be glad to go out and see Shock, whom I often used to find right away in the little shed indulging in a bit of cookery of his own.
If Shock's hands had been clean I could often have joined him in his feasts, but I never could fancy turnips boiled in a dirty old sauce-pan, nor tender bits of cabbage stump.

I made up my mind that I would some day try snails, but when I did join Shock on a soaking wet morning when there was no gardening, and he invited me in his sulky way to dinner, the only times I partook of his fare were on chat days.
What are chat days?
Why, the days when he used to have a good fire of wood and stumps, and roast the chats, as they called the little refuse potatoes too small for seed, in the ashes.
They were very nice, though there was not much in one.

Still they were hot and floury, and not bad with a bit of salt.
Wet days, though, were always a trouble to me, and I used to feel a kind of natural sympathy with Mr Brownsmith as he set his men jobs in the sheds, and kept walking to the doors to see if the rain had ceased.
"That's one thing I should like to have altered in nature," he said to me with one of his dry comical looks.