Jan of the Windmill Part 22

"Do you say your prayers, Bogy?"

"Yes, Miss."

"Do you go to church, Bogy?"

"Yes, Miss."

"Then where do you sit?"

"In the choir, Miss; the end next to Squire Ammaby's big pew."

"DO YOU?" said Amabel. She had been threatened with Bogy for misbehavior in church, and it was startling to find that he sat so near. She changed the subject, under a hasty remembrance of having once made a face at the parson through a hole in the bombazine curtains.

"Why don't you paint with paints, Bogy?" said she.

"I haven't got none, Miss," said Jan.

"I've got a paint-box," said Amabel. "And, if you like, I'll give it to you, Bogy."

The color rushed to Jan's face.

"Oh, thank you, Miss!" he cried.

"You must dip the paints in water, you know, and rub them on a plate; and don't let them lie in a puddle," said Amabel, who loved to dictate.

"Thank you, Miss," said Jan.

"And don't put your brush in your mouth," said Amabel.

"Oh, dear, no, Miss," said Jan. It had never struck him that one could want to put a paint-brush in one's mouth.

At this point Amabel's overwrought energies suddenly failed her, and she burst out crying. "I don't know how I shall get over the wall,"

said she.

"Don't 'ee cry, Miss. I'll help you," said Jan.

"I can't walk any more," sobbed Amabel, who was, indeed, tired out.

"I'll take 'ee on my back," said Jan. "Don't 'ee cry."

With a good deal of difficulty, Amabel was hoisted up, and planted her big feet in Jan's hands. It was no light pilgrimage for poor Jan, as he climbed the winding path. Amabel was peevish with weariness; her bundles were sadly in the way, and at every step a cup-moss or marchantia dropped out, and Amabel insisted upon its being picked up. But they reached the wall at last, and Jan got her over, and made two or three expeditions after the missing mosses, before the little lady was finally content.

"Good-by, Bogy," she said, at last, holding up her face to be kissed. "And thank you very much. I'm not frightened of you, Bogy."

As Jan kissed her, he said, smiling, "What is your name, love?"

And she said, "Amabel."

To her parents and guardians, Amabel made the following statement: "I've seen Bogy. I like him. He doesn't sleep in the cellar, so Nurse told a story. And he didn't take me away, so that's another story. He says his prayers, and he goes to church, so he can't be the Bad Man. He makes pictures with leaves. He carried me on his back, but not in a bag" -

At this point the outraged feelings of Lady Craikshaw exploded, and she rang the bell, and ordered Miss Amabel to be put to bed with a dose of rhubarb and magnesia (without sal-volatile), for telling stories.

"The eau-de-Cologne, mamma dear, please," said Lady Louisa, as the door closed on the struggling, screaming, and protesting Amabel.

"Isn't it really dreadful? But Esmerelda Ammaby says Henry used to tell shocking stories when he was a little boy."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PAINT-BOX.--MASTER LINSEED'S SHOP.--THE NEW SIGN-BOARD.--MASTER SWIFT AS WILL SCARLET.

On Sunday morning Jan took his place in church with unusual feelings. He looked here, there, and everywhere for the little damsel of the wood, but she was not to be seen. Meanwhile she had not sent the paint box, and he feared it would never come. He fancied she must be the Squire's little daughter, but he was not sure, and she certainly was not in the big pew, where the back of the Squire's red head and Lady Louisa's aquiline nose were alone visible. She was a dear little soul, he thought. He wondered why she called him Bogy. Perhaps it was a way little ladies had of addressing their inferiors.

Jan did not happen to guess that, Amabel being very young, the morning services were too long for her. In the afternoon he had given her up, but she was there.

The old Rector had reached the third division of his sermon, and Lady Craikshaw was asleep, when Amabel, mounting the seat with her usual vigor, pushed her Sunday hood through the bombazine curtains, and said, -

"Bogy!"

Jan looked up, and then started to his feet as Amabel stuffed the paint-box into his hands. "I pushed it under my frock," she said in a stage whisper. "It made me so tight? But grandmamma is such" -

Jan heard and saw no more. Amabel's footing was apt to be insecure; she slipped upon the cushions and disappeared with a crash.

Jan trembled as he clasped the shallow old cedar-wood box. He wondered if the colors would prove as bright as those in the window.

He fancied the wan, ascetic faces there rejoiced with him. When he got home, he sat under the shadow of the mill, and drew back the sliding lid of the box. Brushes, and twelve hard color cakes. They were Ackermann's, and very good. Cheap paint-boxes were not made then. He read the names on the back of them: Neutral Tint, Prussian Blue, Indian Red, Yellow Ochre, Brown Madder, Brown Pink, Burnt Umber, Vand.y.k.e Brown, Indigo, King's Yellow, Rose Madder, and Ivory Black.

It says much for Jan's uprightness of spirit, and for the sense of duty in which the schoolmaster was training him, that he did not neglect school for his new treasure. Happily for him the sun rose early, and Jan rose with it, and taking his paint-box to the little wood, on sc.r.a.ps of parcel paper and cap paper, on bits of wood and smooth white stones, he blotted-in studies of color, which he finished from memory at odd moments in the windmill.

In the summer holidays, Jan had more time for sketching. But the many occasions on which he could not take his paints with him led him to observe closely, and taught him to paint from memory with wonderful exactness. He was also obliged to reduce his outlines and condense his effects to a very small scale to economize paper.

About this time he heard that Master Chuter was going to have a new sign painted for the inn. Master Linseed was to paint it.

Master Linseed's shop had been a place of resort for Jan in some of his leisure time. At first the painter and decorator had been churlish enough to him, but, finding that Jan was skilful with a brush, he employed him again and again to do his work, for which he received instead of giving thanks. Jan went there less after he got a paint-box, and could produce effects with good materials of his own, instead of making imperfect experiments in color on bits of wood in the painter's shop.

But in this matter of the new sign-board he took the deepest interest. He had a design of his own for it, which he was most anxious the painter should adopt. "Look 'ee, Master Linseed," said he. "It be the Heart of Oak. Now I know a oak-tree with a big trunk and two arms. They stretches out one on each side, and the little branches closes in above till 'tis just like a heart.

'Twould be beautiful, Master Linseed, and I could bring 'ee leaves of the oak so that 'ee could match the yellows and greens. And then there'd be trees beyond and beyond, smaller and smaller, and all like a blue mist between them, thee know. That blue in the paper 'ee've got would just do, and with more white to it 'twould be beautiful for the sky. And" -

"And who's to do all that for a few shillings?" broke in the painter, testily. "And Master Chuter wants it done and hung up for the Foresters' dinner."

Since the pressing nature of the commission was Master Linseed's excuse for not adopting his idea for the sign, it seemed strange to Jan that he did not set about it in some fashion. But he delayed and delayed, till Master Chuter was goaded to repeat the old rumor that real sign-painting was beyond his powers.

It was within a week of the dinner that the little innkeeper burst indignantly into the painter's shop. Master Linseed was ill in bed, and the sign-board lay untouched in a corner.

"It be a kind of fever that's on him," said his wife.

"It be a kind of fiddlestick!" said the enraged Master Chuter; and turning round his eye fell on Jan, who was looking as disconsolate as himself. Day after day had he come in hopes of seeing Master Linseed at work, and now it seemed indefinitely postponed. But the innkeeper's face brightened, and, seizing Jan by the shoulder, he dragged him from the shop.

"Look 'ee here, Jan Lake," said he. "Do 'ee thenk THEE could paint the sign? I dunno what I'd give 'ee if 'ee could, if 'twere only to spite that humbugging old hudmedud yonder."