Jan of the Windmill Part 10

His appet.i.te to be constantly eating, drinking, or sucking--if it were but a bennet or gra.s.s-stalk--was less voracious than that of the other children. Mrs. Lake gave him Benjamin's share of treacle- stick, but he has been known to give some of it away, and to exchange peppermint-drops for a slate-pencil rather softer than his own. He would have had Benjamin's share of "bits" from the cupboard, but that the other children begged so much oftener, and Mrs. Lake was not capable of refusing any thing to a steady tease.

He could walk the whole length of a turnip-field without taking a munch, unless he were hungry, though even dear old Abel invariably exercised his jaws upon a "turmut." And he made himself ill with hedge-fruits and ground-roots seldomer than any other member of the family.

So far, Jan gave less trouble than the rest. But then he had a spirit of enterprise which never misled them. From the effects of this, Abel saved his life more than once. On one occasion he pulled him out of the wash-tub, into which he had plunged head-foremost, in a futile endeavor to blow soap-bubbles through a fragment of clay- pipe, which he had picked up on the road, and which made his lips sore for a week, besides nearly causing his death by drowning.

From diving into the deepest recesses of the windmill it became hopeless to try to hinder him, and when Abel was fairly taken into the business Mrs. Lake relied upon his care for his foster-brother.

And Jan was wary and nimble, for his own part, and gave little trouble. His great delight was to gaze first out of one window, and then out of the opposite one; either blinking as the great sails drove by, as if they would strike him in the face, or watching the shadows of them invisible, as they pa.s.sed like noon-day ghosts over the gra.s.s.

His habit of taking himself off on solitary expeditions neither the miller's hazel-stick nor Mrs. Lake's treacle-stick could cure by force or favor.

One November evening, just after tea, Jan disappeared, and the yellow kitten also. When his bed-time came, Mrs. Lake sought him high and low, and Abel went carefully, mill-candlestick in hand, through every floor, from the millstones to the machinery, but in vain. Neither he nor the kitten was to be found.

It was when the kitten, in chase of her own tail, tumbled in sideways through the round-house door, that Mrs. Lake remembered that Jan might possibly have gone out, and she ran out after him.

The air was chill and fresh, but not bitterly cold. The moon rode high in the dark heavens, and a flock of small white clouds pa.s.sed slowly before its face and spread over the sky. The shadows of the driving sails fell clearly in the moonlight, and flitted over the gra.s.s more quickly than the clouds went by the moon.

Mrs. Lake was not susceptible to effects of scenery, and she was thinking of Jan. As she ran round the windmill, she struck her foot against what proved to be his body, and, stooping, saw that he was lying on his face. But when she s.n.a.t.c.hed him up with a cry of terror, she found that he was not dead, nor even hurt, but only weeping pettishly.

In the first revulsion of feeling from her fright, she was rather disposed to shake her recovered treasure, as a relief to her own excitement. But Abel, whose first sight of Jan was as the light of the mill-candle fell on his tear-stained face, said tenderly, "What be amiss, Janny?"

"Jan can't make un," sobbed his foster-brother.

"What can't Janny make? Tell Abel, then," said the nurse-boy.

Jan stuck his fists into his eyes, which were drying fast, and replied, "Jan can't make the moon and the clouds, Abel dear!"

And Abel's candle being at that moment blown out by a gust of wind, he could see Jan's slate and pencil lying at some distance apart upon the short gra.s.s.

On the dark ground of the slate he had made a round, white, full moon with his soft slate-pencil, and had tried hard to draw each cloud as it pa.s.sed. But the rapid changes had baffled him, and the pencil-marks were gray compared with the whiteness of the clouds and the brightness of the moon, and the slate, though dark, was a mockery of the deep, deep depths of the night-sky.

And in his despair he had flung the slate one way and the pencil another, and there they lay under the moonlight; and the sandy kitten, who could see more clearly on this occasion than any one else, was dancing a fandango upon poor Jan's unfinished sketch.

CHAPTER XII.

THE WHITE HORSE.--COMROGUES.--MOERDYK.--GEORGE CONFIDES IN THE CHEAP JACK--WITH RESERVATION.

When the Cheap Jack's horse came to the brow of the hill, it stopped, and with drooping neck stood still as before. The Cheap Jack was busy with George, and it was at no word from him that the poor beast paused. It knew at what point to wait, and it waited.

There was little temptation to go on. The road down the hill had just been mended with flints; some of these were the size of an average turnip, and the hill was steep. So the old horse poked out his nose, and stood almost dozing, till the sound of the Cheap Jack's shuffling footsteps caused him to p.r.i.c.k his ears, and brace his muscles for a fresh start.

The miller's man came also, who was sulky, whilst the Cheap Jack was civil. He gave his horse a cut across the knees, to remind him to plant his feet carefully among the sharp boulders; and then, choosing a smooth bit by the side of the road, he and George went forward together.

"You've took to picters, I see," said George, nodding towards the cart.

"So I have, my dear," said the Cheap Jack; "any thing for a livelihood; an HONEST livelihood, you know, George." And he winked at the miller's man, who relaxed his sulkiness for a guffaw.

"YOU'VE had so little in my way lately, George," the hunchback continued, looking sharply sideways up at his companion. "Sly business has been slack, my dear, eh?"

But George made no answer, and the Cheap Jack, after relieving his feelings by another cut at the horse, changed the subject.

"That's a sharp little brat of the miller's," said he, alluding to Jan. "And he ain't much like the others. Old-fashioned, too.

Children mostly likes the gay picters, and worrits their mothers for 'em, bless 'em! But he picked out an ancient-looking thing,--came from a bankrupt p.a.w.nshop, my dear, in a lot. I almost think I let it go too cheap; but that's my failing. And a beggarly place like this ain't like London. In London there's a place for every thing, my dear, and shops for old goods as well as new, and customers too; and the older and dirtier some things is, the more they fetches."

There was a pause, for George did not speak; and the Cheap Jack, bent upon amiability, repeated his remark,--"A sharp little brat, too!"

"What be 'ee harping on about him for?" asked George, suspiciously.

"I knows what I knows about un, but that's no business of yours."

"You know about most things, my dear," said the Cheap Jack, flatteringly. "They'll have to get up very early that catch you napping. But what about the child, George?"

"Never you mind," said George. "But he ain't none of the miller's, I'll tell 'ee that; and he ain't the missus's neither."

"What is he to YOU, my dear?" asked the dwarf, curiously, and, getting no answer, he went on: "He'd be useful in a good many lines. He'd not do bad in a circus, but he'd draw prime as a young prodigy."

George looked round, "You be thinking of stealing HE then, as well as" -

"Hush, my dear," said the dwarf. "No, no, I don't want him. But there was a good deal of s.n.a.t.c.hing young kids done in my young days; for sweeps, dest.i.tute orphans, juvenile performers, and so on."

"HE wouldn't suit you," grinned George. "A comes of genteel folk, and a's not hard enough for how you'd treat un."

"You're out there, George," said the dwarf. "Human beings is like 'osses; it's the genteelest as stands the most. 'Specially if they've been well fed when they was babies."

At this point the Cheap Jack was interrupted by his horse stumbling over a huge, jagged lump of flint, that, with the rest of the road- mending, was a disgrace to a highway of a civilized country. A rate-payer or a horse-keeper might have been excused for losing his temper with the authorities of the road-mending department; but the Cheap Jack's wrath fell upon his horse. He beat him over the knees for stumbling, and across the hind legs for slipping, and over his face for wincing, and accompanied his blows with a torrent of abuse.

What a moment that must have been for Balaam's a.s.s, in which she found voice to remonstrate against the unjust blows, which have, nevertheless, fallen pretty thickly ever since upon her descendants and their fellow-servants of ungrateful man! From how many patient eyes that old reproach, of long service ill-requited, yet speaks almost as plainly as the voice that "rebuked the madness of the prophet!"

The Cheap Jack's white horse had a point of resemblance to the "genteel human beings" of whom he had been speaking. It had "come of a good stock," and had seen better and kinder days; and to it, also, in its misfortunes, there remained that n.o.bility of spirit which rises in proportion to the ills it meets with. The poor old thing was miserably weak, and sore and jaded, and the flints were torture. But it rallied its forces, gave a desperate struggle, and got the cart safely to the bottom of the hill. Here the road turned sharply, and the horse went on. But after a few paces it stopped as before; this time in front of a small public-house, where trembling, and bathed in perspiration, it waited for its master.

The public-house was a small dark, dingy-looking hovel, with a reputation fitted to its appearance.

A dirty, grim-looking man nodded to the Cheap Jack and George as they entered, and a girl equally dirty, but much handsomer, brought gla.s.ses of spirits, to which the friends applied themselves, at the Cheap Jack's expense. George grew more sociable, and the Cheap Jack reproached him with want of confidence in his friends.

"You're so precious sharp, my dear," said the hunchback, who knew well on what point George liked to be flattered, "that you overreaches yourself. I don't complain--after all the business we've done together--that it's turned slack all of a sudden. You says they're down on you, and that's enough for me. I don't complain that you've got your own plans and keeps 'em as secret as the grave, but I says you'll regret it. If you was a good scholar, George, you could do without friends, you're so precious sharp. But you're no scholar, my dear, and you'll be let in yet, by a worse friend than Cheap John."

George so bitterly regretted his want of common learning, and the stupidity which made him still slow to decipher print, and utterly puzzled by writing, that the Cheap Jack's remarks told strongly.

These, and the conversation they had had on the hill, recalled to his mind a matter which was still a mystery to the miller's man.

"Look here, Jack," said he, leaning across the dirty little table; "if you be such a good scholar, what do M O E R D Y K spell?"

"Say it again, George," said the dwarf. But when, after that, he still looked puzzled, George laughed long and loudly.

"You be a good scholar!" he cried. "You be a fine friend, too, for a iggerant man. If a can't tell the first word of a letter, 'tis likely 'ee could read the whole, too!"

"The first word of a LETTER, eh?" said the dwarf.

"The very first," said George. "'Tis a long way you'd get in it, and stuck at the start!"

"Up in the corner, at the top, eh?" said the dwarf.