To this came an answer couched in these terms:—

This answer made the younger brother very angry. He sent for a mason and gave orders that the wall should be raised four feet, between his garden and that of his neighbour.

“Please, sir,” said the mason, “we must put a scaffold on t’other side as well as this; there must be a second bricklayer in the garden of No. 2, to work ekall to the bricklayer on this side, in the garden of No. 1.”

“That cannot be,” answered Mr. Hezekiah, “you must manage to build the wall entirely from my side.”

“It’ll leave the other side wery untidy.”

“The untidier the better,” said Mr. Hezekiah. So the wall was begun.

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Hezekiah Heckmondwyke “whatever are you doing? You will cut off all the light from the dining-room. We got little enough sunlight there now, and if this wall be carried four feet higher, we shall get none at all.”

“My dear Bessie,” answered her husband; “I am sorry for the inconvenience, but it is inevitable. My brother persists in throwing his rubbish into our garden and I will not have it.”

“What rubbish?”

“His old withered roses.”

“My dear, he has thrown quite young buds.”

“I don’t care. He shall throw nothing there,” answered Hezekiah. “I hope and trust the wall will darken his dining-room as it darkens ours; the hope makes me bear the inconvenience with a light heart.”

The raising of the wall provoked fresh trouble. A wall between two dwellings belongs equally to both proprietors and has to be maintained in repair by both. For one to raise the wall so as to exclude light from the other is an excess of right, and immediately a letter came to Mr. Hezekiah from the solicitor for his brother requiring him to remove the bricks that had been placed on the wall, and reduce it to its previous height.

This Hezekiah refused to do. He asserted that he was constrained to raise the wall in self-defence, as his next door neighbour was employing his garden ground as a place for the casting of his rubbish. As he did not cease from building, Philip moved for an injunction to enforce stayment of proceeding. So the scaffold was left and the heap of mortar, and piles of bricks, in Hezekiah’s garden awaiting the decision of the court. The bricklayer had, in the meantime disfigured his garden, trampled on the beds, bespattered the turf with mortar, sifted the lime on his premises and sent a cloud in at his windows, had chipped and broken the bricks, sending splinters in all directions over the grass and upon the walks, and bestrewed the beds.

“My dear,” exclaimed Bessie Heckmondwyke one day, “where is Penelope Lætitia?”

“In the garden.”

“Any one with her?”

“No, the nurse is laid up with a bad headache.”

Mrs. Heckmondwyke went to the window and uttered a cry of horror.

“What is the matter?” asked her husband, starting forward.

“Hez! oh Hez! quick! What is to be done? The child is on the top of the wall.”

That same afternoon, Philip Heckmondwyke had had been seated in his arbour, smoking. His eyes rested on the wall. The old mellow red brick, stained with lichen, and dappled with moss, rose from his garden bed to the height of ten feet. Above that was the raw scarlet of the new brick, of which several courses were laid, and in part the new addition had been completed.

“Abominable!” exclaimed Philip. “Outrageous! An eyesore! My brother must be taught a lesson, and he will have to pull down every brick that has been laid. Legally he has not a leg to stand on. What is that?”

Over the wall flew a child’s ball, scarlet, blue, yellow, and green, and bounced against the steps of the summer house.

“Hah!” said Philip. “That child has done this. She must be taught a lesson. I will not throw this ball back again. She must learn to be more careful.”

He took up the ball and turned it about, and put it on the table where stood his bottle of claret and glass.