Jan of the Windmill Part 18

"First, show me what ye were going to show me," said the old man.

"Where's this sky you've been manufacturing?"

"It's on the ground, sir."

"On the ground! And are ye for turning earth into heaven among your other trades?" What this might mean Jan knew not; but he led his friend round, and pointed out the features of his leaf-picture. He hoped for praise, but the old man was silent,--long silent, though he seemed to be looking at what Jan showed him. And when he did speak, his broken words were addressed to no one.

"Wonderful! wonderful! The poetry of 't. It's no child's play, this. It's genius. Ay! we mun see to it!" And then, with clasped hands, he cried, "Good Lord! Have I found him at last?"

"Have you lost something?" said Jan.

But the old man did not answer. He did not even speak of the leaf- picture, to Jan's chagrin. But, stroking the boy's shoulder almost tenderly, he asked, "Did ye ever go to school, laddie?"

Jan nodded. "At Dame Datchett's," said he.

"Ah! ye were sorry to leave school for pig-minding, weren't ye?"

Jan shook his head. "I likes pigs," said he. "I axed Master Salter to let me mind his. I gets a shilling a week and me tea."

"But ye like school better? Ye love your books, don't ye?"

Jan shook his head again. "I don't like school," said he, "I likes being in the wood."

The old man winced as if some one had struck him in the face, then he muttered, "The wood! Ay, to be sure! And such a school, too!"

Then he suddenly addressed Jan. "Do ye know me, my lad?"

"No, sir," said Jan.

"Swift--Master Swift, they call me. You've heard tell of Master Swift, the schoolmaster?"

Jan shrank back. He had heard of Master Swift as a man whose stick was more to be dreaded than Dame Datchett's strap, and of his school as a place where liberty was less than with the Dame.

"See thee!" said the old man, speaking broader and broader in his earnestness. "If thy father would send thee,--nay, what am I saying?--if I took thee for naught and gladly, thou'dst sooner come to the old schoolmaster and his books than stay with pigs, even in a wood? Eh, laddie? Will ye come to school?"

But the tradition of Master Swift's severity was strong in Jan's mind, and the wood was pleasant to him, and he only shrank back farther, and said, "No." Children often give pain to their elders, of the intensity of which they have no measure; but, had Jan been older and wiser than he was, he might have been puzzled by the bitterness of the disappointment written on Master Swift's countenance.

An involuntary impulse made the old man break the blow by doing something. With trembling fingers he folded his spectacles, and crammed them into the s.h.a.green case. But, when that was done, he still found nothing to say, and he turned his back and went away in silence.

In silence Jan watched him, half regretfully, and strained his ears to catch something that Master Swift began again to recite: -

"Things sort not to my will, Even when my will doth study Thy renown: Thou turn'st the edge of all things on me still, Taking me up to throw me down."

Then, lifting a heavy bramble that had fallen across his path, the schoolmaster stooped under it, and pa.s.sed from sight.

And a sudden gust of wind coming sharply down the way by which he went caught the fragments of Jan's picture, and whirled them broadcast through the wood.

CHAPTER XX.

SQUIRE AMMABY AND HIS DAUGHTER.--THE CHEAP JACK DOES BUSINESS ONCE MORE.--THE WHITE HORSE CHANGES MASTERS.

Squire Ammaby was the most good-natured of men. He was very fond of his wife, though she was somewhat peevish, with weak health and nerves, and though she seemed daily less able to bear the rough and ready attentions of her husband, and to rely more and more on the advice and a.s.sistance of her mother, Lady Craikshaw. From this it came about that the Squire's affection for his wife took the shape of wishing Lady Louisa to have every thing that she wished for, and that the very joy of his heart was his little daughter Amabel.

Amabel was between three and four years old, and to some extent a prodigy. She was as tall as an average child of six or seven, and stout in proportion. The size of her shoes scandalized her grandmother, and once drew tears from Lady Louisa as she reflected on the probable size of Miss Ammaby's feet by the time she was "presented."

Lady Louisa was tall and weedy; the Squire was tall and robust.

Amabel inherited height on both sides, but in face and in character she was more like her father than her mother. Indeed, Lady Louisa would close her eyes, and Lady Craikshaw would put up her gold gla.s.s at the child, and they would both cry, "Sadly coa.r.s.e! QUITE AN AMMABY!" Amabel was not coa.r.s.e, however; but she had a strength and originality of character that must have come from some bygone generation, if it was inherited. She had a pitying affection for her mother. With her grandmother she lived at daggers drawn. She kept up a pretty successful struggle for her own way in the nursery.

She was devoted to her father, when she could get at him, and she poured an almost boundless wealth of affection on every animal that came in her way.

An uncle had just given her a Spanish saddle, and her father had promised to buy her a donkey. He had heard of one, and was going to drive to the town to see the owner. With great difficulty Amabel had got permission from her mother and grandmother to go with the Squire in the pony carriage. As she had faithfully promised to "be good," she submitted to be "well wrapped up," under her grandmother's direction, and staggered downstairs in coat, cape, gaiters, comforter, m.u.f.fatees, and with a Shetland veil over her burning cheeks. She even displayed a needless zeal by carrying a big shawl in a lump in her arms, which she would give up to no one.

"No, no!" she cried, as the Squire tried to take it from her. "Lift me in, daddy, lift me in!"

The Squire laughed, and obeyed her, saying, "Why, bless my soul, Amabel, I think you grow heavier every day."

Amabel came up crimson from some disposal of the shawl after her own ideas, and her eyes twinkled as he spoke, though her fat cheeks kept their gravity. It was not till they were far on their way that a voice from below the seat cried, "Yap!"

"Why, there's one of the dogs in the carriage," said the Squire.

On which, clinging to one of his arms and caressing him, Amabel confessed, "It's only the pug, dear daddy. I brought him in under the shawl. I did so want him to have a treat too. And grandmamma is so hard! She hardly thinks I ought to have treats, and she NEVER thinks of treats for the dogs."

The Squire only laughed, and said she must take care of the dog when they got to the town; and Amabel was encouraged to ask if she might take off the Shetland veil. Hesitating between his fear of Amabel's catching cold, and a common-sense conviction that it was ludicrous to dress her according to her invalid mother's susceptibilities, the Squire was relieved from the responsibility of deciding by Amabel's promptly exposing her rosy cheeks to the breeze, and they drove on happily to the town. The Squire had business with the Justices, and Amabel was left at the Crown. When he came back, Amabel jumped down from the window and the black blind over which she was peeping into the yard, and ran up to her father with tears on her face.

"Oh, daddy!" she cried, "dear, good daddy! I don't want you to buy me a donkey, I want you to buy me a horse."

"That's modest!" said the Squire; "but what are you crying for?"

"Oh, it's such a poor horse! Such a very old, poor horse!" cried Amabel. And from the window Mr. Ammaby was able to confirm her statements. It was the Cheap Jack's white horse, which he had been trying to persuade the landlord to buy as a cab-horse. More lean, more scarred, more drooping than ever, it was a pitiful sight, now and then raising its soft nose and intelligent eyes to the window, as if it knew what a benevolent little being was standing on a slippery chair, with her arms round the Squire's neck, pleading its cause.

"But when I buy horses," said the Squire, "I buy young, good ones, not very old and poor ones."

"Oh, but do buy it, daddy! Perhaps it's not had enough to eat, like that kitten I found in the ditch. And perhaps it'll get fat, like her; and mamma said we wanted an old horse to go in the cart for luggage, and I'm sure that one's very old. And that's such a horrid man, like hump-backed Richard. And when n.o.body's looking, he tugs it, and beats it. Oh, I wish I could beat him!" and Amabel danced dangerously upon the horsehair seat in her white gaiters with impotent indignation. The Squire was very weak when pressed by his daughter, but at horses, if at any thing, he looked with an eye to business. To buy such a creature would be ludicrous. Still, Amabel had made a strong point by what Lady Louisa had said. No one, too, knew better than the Squire what difference good and bad treatment can make in a horse, and this one had been good once, as his experienced eye told him. He said he "would see," and strolled into the yard.

Long practice had given the Cheap Jack a quickness in detecting a possible purchaser which almost amounted to an extra sense, and he at once began to a.s.sail the Squire. But a nearer view of the white horse had roused Mr. Ammaby's indignation.

"I wonder," he said, "that you're not ashamed to exhibit a poor beast that's been so ill-treated. For heaven's sake, take it to the knacker's, and put it out of its misery at once."

"Look ye, my lord," said the Cheap Jack, touching his cap. "The horse have been ill-treated, I knows. I'm an afflicted man, my lord, and the boy I've employed, he's treated him shameful; and when a man can't feed hisself, he can't keep his beast fat neither.

That's why I wants to get rid on him, my lord. I can't keep him as I should, and I'd like to see him with a gentleman like yourself as'll do him justice. He comes of a good stock, my lord. Take him for fifteen pound," he added, waddling up to the Squire, "and when you've had him three months, you'll sell him for thirty."

This was too much. The Squire broke out in a furious rage.

"You unblushing scoundrel!" he cried. "D'ye think I'm a fool?

Fifteen pounds for a horse you should be fined for keeping alive!

Be off with it, and put it out of misery." And he turned indignantly into the inn, the Cheap Jack calling after him, "Say ten pound, my lord!" the bystanders giggling, and the ostler whistling dryly through the straw in his mouth, "Take it to the knacker's, Cheap John."

"Oh, daddy dear! have you got him?" cried Amabel, as the Squire re- entered the parlor.