John Broom had his own grievances too, and he brooded over them. He
thought the little ladies had given him over to the farm-bailiff,
because they had ceased to care for him, and that the farm-bailiff was
prejudiced against him beyond any hope of propitiation. The village folk
taunted him, too, with being an outcast, and called him Gipsy John, and
this maddened him. Then he would creep into the cowhouse and lie in the
straw against the white cow's warm back, and for a few of Miss Betty's
coppers, to spend in beer or tobacco, the cowherd would hide him from
the farm-bailiff and tell him countryside tales. To Thomasina's stories
of ghosts and gossip, he would add strange tales of smugglers on the
near-lying coast, and as John Broom listened, his restless blood
rebelled more and more against the sour sneers and dry drudgery that he
got from the farm-bailiff.
Nor were sneers the sharpest punishment his misdemeanours earned. The
farm-bailiff's stick was thick and his arm was strong, and he had a
tendency to believe that if a flogging was good for a boy, the more he
had of it the better it would be for him.
And John Broom, who never let a cry escape him at the time, would steal
away afterwards and sob out his grief into the long soft coat of the
sympathising sheep dog.
Unfortunately he never tried the effect of deserving better treatment as
a remedy for his woes.
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