The Master

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO A STUDY OF A PECULIAR PEOPLE Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. The Times : " From whatever point of view we regard it, it is a remarkable book." The Athenæum : " The chief interest of the book lies in the wonderful description of the Whitechapel Jews. The vividness and force with which Mr. Zangwill brings before us the strange and uncouth characters with which he has peopled his book are truly admirable. . . . Admirers of Mr. Zangwill's fecund wit will not fail to find flashes of it in these pages." The Daily News: "This book is admirable throughout, the theme is original, the treatment no less felicitous. Often a work is saved by possessing one of these two qualities — Mr. Zangwill's possesses both." The Spectator: "Esther Ansell, Raphael Leon, Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, Reb Shcmuel and the rest, are living creations."

The Guardian: "A novel such as only our own day could produce. A masterly study." Blaek and White: "A moving panorama of Jewish life, full of truth, full of sympathy, vivid in the setting forth, and occasionally most brilliant. Such a book as this has the germs of a dozen novels. A book to read, to keep, to ponder over, to remember." W. Archer in "The World": " The most powerful and fascinating book I have read for many a long day." Land and Water: "The most wonderful multi-coloured and brilliant description. Dickens has never drawn characters of more abiding individuality. An exceeding beautiful chapter is the honeymoon of the Hyams. Charles Kingsley in one of his books makes for something of the same sort. But his idea is not half so tender and faithful, nor his handling anything like so delicate and natural. ...

I have dwelt upon him at great length because I consider him the most interesting figure to be seen on the horizon of English letters. He is full measure for a wit, saying and writing things in which he has no English rival." Andrew Lang in "Longman's": "Almost every kind of reader will find 4 Children of the Ghetto ' interesting." THE KING OF SCHNORRERS GROTESQUES AND FANTASIES With over Ninety Illustrations by Pun. May and Others In One Volume, price 6s. The Athenæum: "Several of Mr. Zangwill's contemporary Ghetto characters have already become almost classical; but in "The King of Schnorrers' he soes back to the Jewish community of the eighteenth century for the hero of his principal story ; and lie is indeed a stupendous hero. . . . Anyhow, he is well named the Icing of beggars. The illustrations by Phil May add greatly to the attraction of the book." _ The Saturday Review: "Mr. Zangwill has created a new figure in fiction, and a new type of humour.

Book I Chap

PAGE I. SOLITUDE 5 II. THE DEAD MAN MAKES HIS FIRM AND LAST APPEARANCE 21 III. THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH ...... 30 IV. "MAN PROPOSES" ,.40 V. PEGGY THE WATER-DRINKER 5- VI. DISILLUSIONS 62 VII. THE APPRENTICE ' . . -74 VIII. A WANDER-YEAR 88 IX. ARTIST AND PURITAN . IOO X. EXODUS I09

Book II

I. IN LONDON 117 II. grainger's .129 III. THE ELDER BRANCH *44 IV. THE PICTURE-MAKERS l6l V. A SYMPOSIUM CONTENTS VLLL CHAP. PAGE VI. THE OUTCAST 194 VII. TOWARDS THE DEEPS 204 VIII. GOLD MEDAL NIGHT 21 8 IX. DEFEAT 23O X. MATT RECEIVES SUNDRY HOSPITALITIES .... 243 XI. A HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE 258

Book III

I. CONQUEROR OR CONQUERED? ...... 273 II. "SUCCESS" 28S III. " VAIN-LONGING " . . - 303 IV. FERMENT 323 V. A CELEBRITY AT HOME ....... 340 VI. A DEVONSHIRE IDYLL 361 VII. THE IDYLL CONCLUDES 387 VIII. ELEANOR WYNDWOOD _)Q6 IX. RUTH HAILEY 429 X. THE MASTER PROEM Despite its long stretch of winter, in which May might wed December in no incompatible union, 'twas a happy soil, this Acadia, a country of good air and great spaces; two-thirds of the size of Scotland, with a population that could be packed away in a corner of Glasgow ; a land of green forests and rosy cheeks ; a land of milk and molasses; a land of little hills and great harbours, of rich valleys and lovely lakes, of overflowing rivers and oversurg ing tides that, with all their menace, did but fertilise the meadows with red silt and alluvial mud ; a land over which France and England might well bicker when first they met over sea; a land which, if it never reached the restless energy of the States, never retained the old-world atmosphere that long lingered over New England villages ; save here and there in some rare Acadian settlement that dreamed out its life in peace and prayer among its willow trees, and in the shadows of its orchards.

At Minudie, at Clare in Annapolis County, where the goodly apples grew, lay such fragments of old France, simple communities shutting out the world and time, marrying their own, tilling their good dyke-land, and picking up the shad that the retreating tide left on the exposed flats; listening to the Angelus, and baring their heads as some church procession passed through the drowsy streets. They had escaped the Great Expulsion, nor had joined in the exodus of " Evangeline," and, sprinkled about the country, were compatriots of theirs who had drifted back when the times grew more sedate ; but for the most part it was the Saxon that profited by the labours of the pioneer Gaul, repairing the tumble down farms and the dilapidated dykes, possessing himself of em banked marsh-lands, and replanting the plum-trees and the quinces his predecessor had naturalised.

For the revolt of the States against Britain sent thousands of American loyalists flocking into tliis "New Scotland," which thus became a colony of New Eng land. Scots themselves flowed in from auld Scotland, and the German came to sink himself in the Briton, and a band of Irish adventurers under the awashbuckling Colonel M'Nutt arrived with A THE MASTER 2 a grant of a million acres that they were not destined to occupy. The Acadian repose had fled for ever. The sparse Indian hastened to make himself scarcer, conscious there was no place for him in the new order, and disappearing deliciously in hogsheads of rum. The virgin greenwood rang with axes, startling the bear and the moose. Crash ! Down went pine and beech, hemlock and maple, their stumps alone left to rot and enrich the fields. Crash ! — thud !

The weasel grew warier, the astonished musquash vanished in eddying circles. Bridges began to span the rivers where the beaver built its dams in happy unconsciousness of the tall cylinder that was about to crown civilisation. The caribou and the silver fox pressed inland to save their skins. The snare was set in the wildwood, and the crack of the musket followed the ring of the axe. The mackerel and the herring sought destruction in shoals, and the seines brimmed over with salmon and alewives and gaspereux. The wild land that had bloomed with golden-rod and violets was tamed with crops, and plump sheep and fat oxen pastured where the wild strawberry vine had trailed or the bull frog had croaked under the alders. A sturdy, ingenious race, the fathers of the new settlement, loving work almost as much as they feared God, turning their hand to anything and opening it wide to the stranger.

They raised their own houses, and fashioned their own tools, and shod their own horses, and, later, built their own vessels, and even sailed them to the great markets, laden with the produce of their own fields and the timber from their own saw-mills. There were women in this work-a-day paradise — shapely, gentle creatures, whose hands alone were rough with field and house work ; women who span and sang when the winter night-winds whistled round the settlement. The dramas of love and grief began to play themselves out where the racoon and the chickadee had fleeted the golden hours in careless living. Chil dren came to make the rafters habitable, and Death to sanctify them with memories. The air grew human with the smoke of hearths, the forest with legends and histories. And as houses grew into homes, and villages into townships, Church and State arose where only Faith and Freedom had been.

The sons and heirs of the fathers did not always cling to the tradition of piety and perseverance. The " Bluenose " grew apathetic, content with the fatness of the day ; or, if he exerted himself, it was too often to best a neighbour. The great magnets of New York and Boston drew off or drew back all that was iron in the race. And amid these homely emotions of yeomen, amid the crude pieties or impieties of homespun souls, amid this sane heart}- PROEM 3 intercourse with realities or this torpor of sluggish spirits, was born ever and anon a gleam of fantasy, of imagination : bizarre, transfiguring, touching things with the glamour of dream. Blind instincts — blinder still in their loneliness — yearned towards light ; beautiful emotions stirred in dumb souls, emotions that mayhap turned to morbid passion in the silence and solitude of the woods, where character may grow crabbed and gnarled, as well as sound and straight.

For, whereas to most of these human creatures, begirt by the glory of sea and forest, the miracles of sunrise and sunset were only the familiar indications of a celesti.il timepiece, and the starry heaven was but a leaky ceiling in their earthly habitation, there was here and there an eye keen to note the play of light and shade and colour, the glint of wave and the sparkle of hoar-frost, and the spume of tossing seas ; the gracious fairness of cloud and bird and blossom, the magic of sunlit sails in the offing, the witchery of white winters and all the changing wonder of the woods; a soul with scanty self-consciousness at best, yet haply absorbing Nature to give it back one day as Art. Ah, but to see the world with other eyes than one's fellows, yet express the vision of one's race, its subconscious sense of beauty, is not all a covetable dower.

The islands of Acadia are riddled with pits, where men have burrowed for Captain Kidd's Treasure and found nothing but holes. The deeper they delved the deeper holes they found. Whoso with blood and tears would dig Art out of his soul may lavish his golden prime in pursuit of emptiness, or, striking treasure, find only fairy gold, so that when his eye is purged of the spell of morning, he sees his hand is full of withered leaves.

Book I Chapter

I SOLITUDE "Matt, Matt, what's thet thar noise?" Matt opened his eyes vaguely, shaking off his younger brother's frantic clutch. "It's on'y the frost," he murmured, closing his eyes again. " Go to sleep, Billy." Since the sled accident that had crippled him for life, Billy was full of nervous terrors, and the night had been charged with mysterious noises. Within the lonely wooden house weather boards and beams cracked ; without, twigs snapped and branches crashed ; at times Billy heard reports as loud as pistol-shots. One of these shots meant the bursting of the wash-basin on the bedroom bench, Matt having forgotten to empty its contents, which had expanded into ice. Matt curled himself up more comfortably and almost covered his face with the blanket, for the cold in the stoveless attic was acute.

In the grey half-light the rough beams and the quilts glistened with frozen breaths. The little square window-panes were thickly frosted, and below the crumbling rime was a thin layer of ice left from the day before, solid up to the sashes, and leaviug no infinitesimal dot of clear glass, for there was nothing to thaw it except such heat as might radiate through the bricks of the square chimney that came all the way from the cellar through the centre of the flooring to pop its head through the shingled roof. " Matt ! " Billy was nudging his brother in the ribs again. " Hullo !" grumbled the boy. " Thet thar ain't the frost. Hark ! " "'Tis, I tell ye. Don't you hear the pop, pop, pop ? " "Not thet; t'other downstairs." «■ Oh, thet's the wind, I reckon." " No, it's some 'un screamin' ! " Matt raised himself on his elbow and listened.

" Why, you gooney, it's on'y mother rowin' Harriet," he said reassuringly, and snuggled up again between the blankets. The winter, though yet young, had already achieved a reputation. Blustrous north winds had driven inland, felling the trees like lumbermen. In the Annapolis Basin myriads of herrings, surprised by Jack Frost before their migratory instinct awoke, had been found frozen in the weirs, and the great salt tides overflowing the high dykes had been congealed into a chocolate sea that, when the liquid water beneath ran back through the sluices, lay solid on the marshes. By the shores of the Basin of Minas sea-birds flapped ghostlike over amber ice cakes, whose mud-streaks under the kiss of the sun blushed like dragon's blood. Snow had fallen heavily, whitening the "evergreen" hemlocks, and through the shapeless landscape half-buried oxen had toiled to clear the blurred roads bordered by snowdrifts, till the three familiar tracks of hoofs and sleigh-runners came in sight again.

The stage to Truro ploughed its way along with only dead freight on its roof and a furred animal or two, vaguely human, shivering inside. Sometimes the mail had to travel by horse, and some times it altogether disappointed Billy and his brothers and sisters of the excitement of its passage, for the stage road ran by the small clearing in the centre of which their house and barn had been built — a primitive gabled house, like a Noah's Ark, ugliness unadorned, and a cheap log barn of the " lean-to " type, with its cracks corked with moss, and a roof of slabs. Jack Frost might stop the mail, but he could not stop the gaieties of the season. " Wooden frolics," and quilting parties, and candy pullings, and infares, and Baptist revival meetings had been as frequent as ever, and part of Matt's enjoyment of his couch was a delicious sense of oversleeping himself legitimately, for even his mother could hardly expect him to build the fire at five, when he had only returned from Deacon Hailey's " muddin' frolic " at two.

He saw himself coasting down the white slopes in his hand-sled, watching the wavering radiance of the Northern Lights that paled the moon and the stars, and wishing his mother would not spoil the afterglow of the night's pleasure and the poetic silence of the woods by grumbling about his grown-up sister Harriet, who had deserted them for an earlier escort home. He felt himself well rewarded for his afternoon's labour in loading marsh mud for the top-dressing of Deacon Hailey's fields; and a sudden remembrance of how his mother had been rewarded for SOLITUDE 7 helping Mrs. Hailey to prepare the feast made him nudge Billy in his turn. "Cheer up, Billy — we've brought back a basket o' goodies; there's plum-cake, dough-nuts " " It's gettin' worst," said Billy. " Hark ! " Matt mumbled impatiently and redirected his thoughts to the "muddin' frolic."

The images of the night swept before him with almost the vividness of actuality, he lost himself in memories as though they were realities, and every now and then a dash of sleep streaked these waking visions with the fantasy of dream. " My, how the fiddle shrieks 1 " runs the boy's reminiscence. " Why don't ole Jupe do his tunin' to home, the pesky nigger 1 We're all waitin' for the reel — the ' fours ' are all made up ; Ruth Hailey an' me hev took the floor. Ruth looks jest great with thet white frock an' the pink sash, thet's a fact. Hooray I The Devil among the Tailors 1 La, lalla, lalla, lalla, lalla, flip-flop ! " He hears the big winter top-boots thwack the threshing-floor. Keep it up ! Whoop ! Faster ! Ever faster ! Oh the joy of life! Now he is swinging Ruth in his arms. Oh the merry-go-round !

The long rows of candles pinned by forks to the barn walls are guttering in the wind of the movement ; the horses, tied to their mangers, neigh in excitement; from between their stanchions the mild-eyed cows gaze at the dancers, perking their naive noses and tranquilly chewing the cud. A bat, thawed out of his winter nap by the heat of the temporary stove, flutters drowsily about the candles ; and the odours of the stable and of the packed hay mingle with the scents of the ballroom. Matt's exhaustive eye, though never long off pretty Ruth's face, takes in even the grains of wheat that gild many a tousled head of swain or lass as tho shaking of the beams dislodges the unthreshed kernels in the mow under the eaves, and, keener even than the eye of his collie, Sprat, notes the mice that dart from their holes to seize the fallen drops of tallow.

But, perhaps, Sprat is only lazy, for he will not vacate his uncomfortable snuggery under the stove, though he has to shift his carcass incessantly to escape the jets of tobacco-juice constantly squirted in his direction. It serves him right, thinks his young master, for persisting in coming ; though, for the matter of that, the creature, having superintended tho mud-hauling, has more right to be present than Bully Preep. " Wonder why sister Harriet lets him dance with her so of'n ! " the panorama of his thought proceeds. " What kin she see in the skunk, fur Ian' sakes ? I told her 'bout tho way he bully-ragged me when he was boss o' the school and I was a teeny shaver. But she don't seem to care a snap. Girls air queer critters, thet's a fact. He used to put a chip on my shoulder an' egg the fellers on to flick it off.

But, gosh ! Didn't I hit him a lick when he pulled httle Ruth's hair ? He'd a black eye, thet's a fact, though he giv me two an' mother an' teacher 'ud a give me one more apiece, but there warn't no more left. I took, it out in picters, though, I guess. My! didn't ole M'Tavit's face jest look reedic'lous when he discovered Bully Preep in the fly-leaf of every readin' book. Thet's je&t how mother is glarin' at Harriet this moment. Pop! Pop! Pop! What a lot o' gingerbeer an' spruce-beer Deacon Hailey is openin' ! Pop ! Pop ! Pop ! He don't seem to notice them thar black bottles o' rum. He's 'tarnal cute is ole Hey. Seems like he's talkin' to mother. Wonder how she kin understand him. He allus talks es if his mouth was full o' words — but it's on'y tobacco, I reckon. Pop ! Pop ! Pop ! Thet's what I allus hear him say, windin' up with a 'Hey' — an' it does rile me some to refuse pumpkin pie, not knowin' he's invitin' me to anythin' but hay.

I 'spect mother's heerd him talk considerable, just es I've heerd the jays an' the woodpeckers, though she kin't tell one from t'other, I vow, through bein' raised at Halifax. Thunderation ! Thet's never her dancin' with ole Hey. My stars, what'll her Elders say ? Well, I wow ! She is backslidin'. Ah, she recollecks ! She pulls up ; her face is like a beet. Ole Hey is argufyin', but she hangs back in her traces. I reckon she kinder thinks she's kicked over the dashboard this time. Ah, he's gone an' taken Harriet for a pardner instead — he'll like sister better, I guess. By gum ! He's kickin' up his heels like a colt when it fust feels the crupper. I do declare Marm Hailey is lookin' pesky ugly 'bout it. She's a mighty handsome critter, Marm Hailey. Pity she kin't wear her hat with the black feather indoors — she does look jest splifiin' when she drives her horses through the snow.

Whoop ! Keep it up ! Sling it out, ole Jupe ! More rosin. Yankey doodle, keep it up, Yankey doodle dandy ! Go it, you cripples ; I'll hold your crutches ! Why, there's Billy dancin' with the crutch I made him ! " he tells himself, as his vision merges into dream. "Pop! Pop! Pop! How his crutch thumps the floor! Poor Billy ! Fancy hevin' to hop through life on thet thar crutch. like a robin on one leg ! Or shall I hev to make him a longer one when he's growed up ? Mebbe he won't grow up, mebbe he'll allus be the identical same size, an' when he's an ole man he'll be the right size again, an' the crutch'll on'y be a sorter stick. 1 wish I hed a stick to make this durned cow keep quiet — I kin't milk her 1 So I So 1 Daisy ! Ole Jupe's music ain't for four- SOLITUDE 9 legged critters to dance to !

My, what's thet nonsense 'bout a cow ? Why, I'm dreamin'. Whoa, there 1 Give her a tickler in the ribs, Billy. Hullo, look out ! here's father come back from sea ! Quick, Billy, chuck your crutch in the haymow. Kin't you stand straighter nor that ? TJnkink your leg, or father'll never take you out to be a pirate. Fancy a pirate on a crutch ! It was my fault, father, fur fixin' up thet thar fandango, but mother's lambasted me a'ready, an' she wanted to shoot herself. But it don't matter to you, father; you're allus away a'most, an' Billy's crutch kin't get into your eye like it does into mother's. She was afeared to write to you 'bout it. Thet's on'y Billy in a fit — you see, Daisy kicked him, an' they couldn't fix his leg back proper — it don't fit, so he hes fits now an' then. He'll never be a pirate now.

Drive the crutch deeper into the ice, Charley ; steady there with the long pole. The iron pin goes into the crutch, Billy ; don't get off the ashes, you'll slide under the sled. Now then, is the rope right t Jump on the sled, you girls an' fellers ! Round with the pole ! Whoop ! Hooray ! Ain't she scootin' jest ! Let her rip ! Pop ! Snap ! Geewiglets ! The rope's give ! Don't jump off, Billy, I tell you, you'll kill yourself ! Stick in your toes an' don't yowl ; we'll slacken at the dykes. Look at Ruth — she don't scream. Thunderation ! We're goin' over into the river ! Hold tight, you 'uns ! Bang ! Smash ! We're on the ice-cakes ! Is thet you thet's screamin', Billy 1 You ain't hurt, I tell you — don't yowl — you gooney — don't " But it was not Billy's voice that he heard screaming when the films of sleep really cleared away.

The little cripple was nestling close up to him with the same panic-stricken air as when they rode that flying sled together. This time it was impossible to mistake their mother's voice for the wind — it rose clearly in hysterical vituperation. " An' you orter be 'shamed o' yourself, I do declare, goin' home all alone in a sleigh with a young man — in the dead o' night, too ! " "There were more nor ourn on the road, and since Abner Preep was perlite enough " " Yes, an' you didn't think o' me on the road oncet, I bet ! If young Preep wanted to do the perlite, he'd 'a' took me in his father's sleigh, not a wholesome young gal." " But I was tar'd out with dancin' e'en a'most, and you on'y " "Don't you talk about my dancin', you blabbin' young slum mix ! Jest keep your eye on your Preeps, with their bow-legs an' their pigeon -toes."

" His legs is es straight es yourn, anyhow." "P'raps you'll say thet I've got Injun blood next. Look at his round shoulders and his lanky hair— he's a Micmac, thets what he is. He on'y wants a few baskets and butter-tubs to make him look nateral. Ugh ! I kin smell spruce every time I think on him." "It's you that hev hed too much spruce-beer, hey?" " You sassy minx ! Folks hev no right to bring eyesores into the world. I'd rather stab you than see you livin' with Abner Preep. It's a squaw he wants, thet's a fact, not a wife ! " " I'd rather stab myself than go on livin' with you." For a moment or two Matt listened in silent torture. The frequency of these episodes had made him resigned but not callous. Now Harriet's sobs were added to the horror of the altercation, and Matt fancied he heard a sound of scuffling.

He jumped out of bed in an agony of alarm. He pulled on his trousers, caught up his coat, and slipped it on as he flew barefoot down the rough wooden stairs, with his woollen braces dangling behind him. In the narrow, icy passage at the foot of the stairs, in the bleak light from the row of little crusted panes on either side of the door, he found his mother and sister, their rubber-cased shoes half buried in snow that had drifted in under the door. Mrs. Strang was fully dressed in her " frolickin' " costume, which at that period included a crinoline ; she wore an astrakhan sacque, reaching to the knees, and a small poke bonnet, plentifully be-ribboned, blooming with artificial flowers within and without, and tied under the chin by broad, black watered bands. Round her neck was a fringed Afghan or home-knit muffler.

She was a tall, dark, voluptuously built woman, with blazing black eyes and handsome features of a somewhat Gallic cast, for she came of old Huguenot stock. She stood now drawing on her mittens in terrible silence, her bosom heaving, her nostrils quivering. Harriet was nearer the door, flushed and panting and sobbing, a well-developed, auburn blonde of sixteen, her hair dishevelled, her bodice un hooked, a strange contrast to the other's primness. " Where you goin' ? " she said tremulously, as she barred her mother's way with her body. " I'm goin' to drownd myself," answered her mother, carefully smoothing out her right mitten. " Nonsense, mother," broke in Matt. " You kin't go out — it's snowin'." He brushed past tho pair and placed himself with his back to the door, his heart beating painfully.

His mother's mad threats SOLITUDE 11 were familiar enough, yet they never ceased to terrify. Some day she might really do something desperate. Who knew? " I'm goin' to drownd myself," repeated Mrs. Strang, carefully winding the muffler round her head. She made a step towards the door, sweeping the limp Harriet roughly behind her. " You kin't get out," Matt said firmly. " Why, you hevn't lied breakfast yet." " What do I want o'breakfus? Your sister is breakfus 'nough fur me. Clear out o' the way." "Don't you let her go, Matt," cried Harriet. "I'll quit instead." " You ! " exclaimed her mother, turning fiercely upon her, while her eyes spat fire. "You are young and wholesome — the world is afore you. You were not brought from a great town to be buried in a wilderness. Marry your Preeps an' your Micmacs, an' nurse your papooses.

God has cursed me with froward children an' a cripple, an' a husband that goes gallivantin' onchristianly about the world with never a thought fur his 'mortal soul, an' the Lord has doomed me to worship Him in the wrong church. Mother yourselves; I throw up the position." " Is it my fault if father hesn't wrote you lately 1 " cried Harriet. " Is it my fault if there's no Baptist church to Cobequid village ? " " Shut your mouth, you brazen hussy. You've drove your mother to her death. Stand out o' my way, Matthew ; don't you disobey my dyin' reques'." " I shan't," said the boy, squaring his shoulders firmly against the door. " Where kin you drownd yourself ? The pond's froze an' the tide's out." He could think of no other argument for tho moment, and he had an incongruous vision of her sliding down to the river on her stomach, as the boys often did, down the steep reddish brown slopes of greasy mud, or sinking into a squash-hole like an errant horse.

" Why, there's on'y mud-flats," he added. " I'll wait on the mud-flats fur the merciful tide." She fastened her bonnet-strings firmly. " The river is full of ice," he urged. " There will be room fur me," she answered. Then, with a sudden exclamation of dismay, " My God ! you've got no shoes an' socks on ! You'll ketch your death. Go upstairs d'reckly." " No," replied Matt, becoming conscious for the first time of a cold wave creeping up his spinal marrow. " I'll ketch my death then." And he sneezed vehemently. " Put on your shoes an' socks d'reckly, you wretched boy. You know what a bother I hed with you last time." He shook his head, conscious of a trump card. " D'ye hear me ! Put on your shoes an' socks ! " " Take off your bonnet an' sacque," retorted Matt, clenching his fists. " Put on your shoes an' socks !