“A cruel shame I call it,” muttered Bob, “to whip a little chap like that, and then shut him out in the cold. I told him Ralph Ruddy never meant to do it, and then he caned me as well. A real brute I call him, and I’ll pay him out, too. I declare I’ll break his bedroom windows this very night, and let him try how he likes the winter wind!”
And Bob meant to do it, too. He climbed out of the cottage window when all were asleep, and made his way down to the schoolhouse by moonlight, with a pocketfull of stones, and climbed the wall of the playground, and stood there all ready to open fire, when a voice startled him, a sort of shivering whisper.
“Better not, Bob! Better wait a bit!” said the voice.
Bob dropped the stone and looked about, but there was no one near except the snow-man shining weirdly in the pale moonlight. However, the words, whoever spoke them, set Bob a thinking, and instead of breaking the schoolmaster’s windows, he went home again and got into bed.
That was in January, and when January was done February came, as happens in most years. February brought good fortune--at least Bob’s mother said so, for she got a job as charwoman at the squire’s, for which she was well paid.
It did not turn out so very well, though, after all, for the butler said she stole a silver spoon, and told the squire so; and if the butler could have proved what he said, the squire would have sent her to prison; only he could not, so she got off, and Bob’s mother declared that she had no doubt the butler took the spoon himself.
“All right,” said Bob to himself, “I’ll try the strength of my new oaken stick across that butler’s back.”
And he meant it, too, for that very evening he shouldered his cudgel and tramped away to the big house. And when he got there the door stood wide open, so in he walked.
Now there hung in the hall the portrait of a queer old lady in a stiff frill and a long waist, and an old-fashioned hoop petticoat; and when Bob entered the house what should this old lady do but shake her head at him! To be sure there was only a flickering lamp in the entry, and Bob thought at first it must have been the dim light and his own fancy, so he went striding through the hall with his cudgel in his hand.