CHAPTER FIVE.
BEGINNING A NEW LIFE.
I don't want to say much about a sad, sad time in my life, but old Brownsmith played so large a part in it then that I feel bound to set it all down.
I saw very little more of George Day, for just about that time he was sent off to another school; and I am glad to recollect that I went little away from the invalid who used to watch me with such wistful eyes.
I had no more lessons in swimming, but I saved up a shilling for a particular purpose, and that was to give to Shock; but though I tried to get near him time after time when I was in the big garden with my mother, no sooner did I seem to be going after him than the boy went off like some wild thing--diving in amongst the bushes, and, knowing the garden so well, he soon got out of sight.
I did not want to send the present by anybody, for that seemed to me like entering into explanations why I sent the money; and I knew that if the news reached my mother's ears that I had been half-drowned, it would come upon her like a terrible shock; and she was, I knew now, too ill to bear anything more.
So though I was most friendly in my disposition towards Shock, and wanted to pay him in my mild way for saving my life, he persisted in looking upon me as an enemy, and threw clay, clods, and, so to speak, derisive gestures, whenever we met at a distance.
"I won't run after him any more," I said to myself one day.

"He's half a wild beast, and if he wants us to be enemies, we will." I suppose I knew a good deal for my age, as far as education went.

If I had been set to answer the questions in an examination paper I believe I should have failed; but all the same I had learned a great deal of French, German, and Latin, and I could write a fair hand and express myself decently on paper.

But when I sat at our window watching Shock's wonderful activity, and recalled how splendidly he must be able to swim, I used to feel as if I were a very inferior being, and that he was a long way ahead of me.
As the time went on our visits to the garden used to grow less frequent; but whenever the weather was fine and my mother felt equal to the task, we used to go over; and towards the end old Brownsmith's big armed Windsor chair, with its cushions, used to be set under a big quince tree in the centre walk, just where there were most flowers, and as soon as we had reached it the old fellow used to come down with a piece of carpet to double up and put beneath my mother's feet.
"Used to be a bit of a spring here," he said with a nod to me; "might be a little damp." Then he would leave a couple of cats, "just for company like," he would say, and then go softly away.
I did not realise it was so near when that terrible time came and I followed my poor mother to her grave, seeing everything about me in a strange, unnatural manner.

One minute it seemed to be real; then again as if it were all a dream.