into which she could not resist going for the purposes of gossip and flirtation with the heir-apparent, who was a dawdling fellow, never out at work as he ought to have been.  The moment Charity had found her cousin, or any other occupation, Tom would slip away; and in a minute shrill cries would be heard from the dairy, “Charity, Charity, thee lazy huzzy, where bist?” and Tom would break cover, hands and mouth full of curds, and take refuge on the shaky surface of the great muck reservoir in the middle of the yard, disturbing the repose of the great pigs.  Here he was in safety, as no grown person could follow without getting over their knees; and the luckless Charity, while her aunt scolded her from the dairy door, for being “allus hankering about arter our Willum, instead of minding Master Tom,” would descend from threats to coaxing, to lure Tom out of the muck, which was rising over his shoes, and would soon tell a tale on his stockings, for which she would be sure to catch it from missus’s maid.

Tom had two abettors, in the shape of a couple of old boys, Noah and Benjamin by name, who defended him from Charity, and expended much time upon his education.  They were both of them retired servants of former generations of the Browns.  Noah Crooke was a keen, dry old man of almost ninety, but still able to totter about.  He talked to Tom quite as if he were one of his own family, and indeed had long completely identified the Browns with himself.  In some remote age he had been the attendant of a Miss Brown, and had conveyed her about the country on a pillion.  He had a little round picture of the identical gray horse, caparisoned with the identical pillion, before which he used to do a sort of fetish worship, and abuse turnpike-roads and carriages.  He wore an old full-bottomed wig, the gift of some dandy old Brown whom he had valeted in the middle of last century, which habiliment Master Tom looked upon with considerable respect, not to say fear; and indeed his whole feeling towards Noah was strongly tainted with awe.  And when the old gentleman was gathered to his fathers, Tom’s lamentation over him was not unaccompanied by a certain joy at having seen the last of the wig.  “Poor old Noah, dead and gone,” said he; “Tom Brown so sorry.  Put him in the coffin, wig and all.”

But old Benjy was young master’s real delight and refuge.  He was a youth by the side of Noah, scarce seventy years old—­a cheery, humorous, kind-hearted old man, full of sixty years of Vale gossip, and of all sorts of helpful ways for young and old, but above all for children.  It was he who bent the first pin with which Tom extracted his first stickleback out of “Pebbly Brook,” the little stream which ran through the village.  The first stickleback was a splendid fellow, with fabulous red and blue gills.  Tom kept him in a small basin till the day of his death, and became a fisherman from that day.  Within a month from the taking of the first stickleback, Benjy had carried off our hero to the