The Argosy — page 125: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ARGOSY. Jan. 1, 1363, Tit SHAVING THE PONIES’ TAILS. OD did it. He made me hold the light, and he fastened them up to the manger, one at a time; and with Gruff Blossom’s scissors, that were bigger than shears, he set to work. I had never been so frightened in my life before. Old Hetley was in-doors, Blossom was about somewhere, and there was no knowing which of them might ‘come inupon us. Tod But I had better begin at the beginning. He lived at Dyke Manor, and his name was Todhetley. I mean the old Pater, not Tod; and, if you please, we must go back a few years, Or you may not be able to understand it. _ Old Todhetley was very rich; the farmers and people round about called him the Squire. He had no wife; she died when young Tod was a baby. Tod’s proper name was the same as his father’s, Joseph. We lived at the Court, three miles off, and I had no mother, any more than Tod had, for she was dead too. My father was Wilham Ludlow ; he was well off, but not so rich as Squire Todhetley, and they were good frends. I was John; and they called me Johnny. One morning, when I was four years old, the servants told me I had a new mamma. I can see her now as she looked when she came home. We had a high post with a lamp upon it, outside the gate, and she was as tall and thin and upright as that; she had a pinched nose and flat, light curls on her forehead. Hannah said she was thirty-five— she was talking to Eliza while she dressed me—and they both agreed that she looked lke a Tartar. She was a Miss Marks, who used to play the organ in church, and teach music; and Eliza said the master might have chosen better. _I understood that they meant papa, and asked why he might have chosen better; upon which they both shook me, and said that they had not been speaking about my papa at all, but of the old blacksmith round the corner. Papa died that year. At the end of another, Mrs. Ludlow married Mr. Todhetley, and we went to live at Dyke Manor; she, I, and Hannah. Tod did not hke it, His father mostly called him Joe, the servants Master Joseph; but at school—to which we both went together—with the boys he was always “‘ Tod,” and I fell into the same habit. In contradistinction, I suppose, we got into the way of calling the Squire Old Hetley behind his back, and Pater to his face. Tod had been regularly spoilt by his father, awfully indulged ; and naturally he did not like the invasion. As time went on, things grew uneomfort- able. Tod and his step-mother waged mutual war in the holidays ; the Pater resented it on Tod, and Tod resented it on both. ECOMicoOolkxs.cO©