Jan of the Windmill Part 5

"Were you never sent to school then, Gearge?"

"They should ha' kept me there," said George, self-defensively. "I played moocher," he continued,--by which he meant truant,--"and then they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at home, the old vool!"

"Well, Gearge, thee must work hard, and I'll teach thee, Gearge, I'll teach thee!" said little Abel, proudly. "And by-and-by, Gearge, we'll get a slate, and I'll teach thee to write too, Gearge, that I will!"

George's small eyes gave a slight squint, as they were apt to do when he was thinking profoundly.

"Abel," said he, "can thee read writing, my boy?"

"I think I could, Gearge," said Abel, "if 'twas pretty plain."

"Abel, my boy," said George, after a pause, with a broad sweet smile upon his "voolish" face, "go to the door and see if the wind be rising at all; us mustn't forget th' old mill, Abel, with us larning. Sartinly not, Abel, mun."

Proud of the implied partnership in the care of the mill, Abel hastened to the outer door. As he pa.s.sed the inner one, leading into the dwelling-room, he could hear his mother crooning a strange, drony, old local ditty, as she put the little Jan to sleep. As Abel went out, she was singing the first verse: -

"The swallow twitters on the barn, The rook is cawing on the tree, And in the wood the ringdove coos, But my false love hath fled from me."

Abel opened the door, and looked out. One of those small white moths known as "millers" went past him. The night was still,--so utterly still that no sound of any sort whatever broke upon the ear.

In dead silence and loneliness stood the mill. Even the miller-moth had gone; and a cat ran in by Abel's legs, as if the loneliness without were too much for her. The sky was gray.

Abel went back to the round-house, where George was struggling to fix the candlestick securely in the wall.

"Cuss the thing!" he exclaimed, whilst the skin of his face took a mottled hue that was the nearest approach he ever made to a blush.

"The tallow've been a dropping, Abel, my boy. I think 'twas the wind when you opened the door, maybe. And I've been a trying to fix un more firmly. That's all, Abel; that's all."

"There ain't no signs of wind," said Abel. "It's main quiet and unked too outside, Gearge. And I do think it be like rain. There was a miller-moth, Gearge; do that mean any thing?"

"I can't say," said George. "I bean't weatherwise myself, Abel.

But if there be no wind, there be no work, Abel; so us may go back to our larning. Look here, my boy," he added, as Abel reseated himself on the grain-sack which did duty as chair of instruction, and drawing, as he spoke, a letter forth to the light; "come to the candle, Abel, and see if so be thee can read this, but don't tell any one I showed it thee, Abel."

"Not me, Gearge," said Abel, warmly; and he added,--"Be it from thy young 'ooman, Gearge?"

No rustic swain ever simpered more consciously or looked more foolish than George under this accusation, as he said, "Be quiet, Abel, do 'ee."

"She be a good scholar, too!" said Abel, looking admiringly at the closely written sheet.

George could hardly disguise the sudden look of fury in his face, but he hastily covered up the letter with his hands in such a manner as only to leave the first word on the page visible. There was a deeply cunning reason for this clever manoeuvre. George held himself to be pretty "cute," and he reckoned that, by only showing one word at a time, he could effectually prevent any attempt on Abel's part to read the letter himself without giving its contents to George. Like many other cunning people, George overreached himself. The first word was beyond Abel's powers, though he might possibly have satisfied George's curiosity on one essential point, by deciphering a name or two farther on. But the clever George concluded that he had boasted beyond his ability, so he put the letter away. Abel tried hard at the one word which George exhibited, and gazed silently at it for some time with a puzzled face. "Spell it, mun, spell it!" cried the miller's man, impatiently. It was a process which he had seen to succeed, when a long word had puzzled his teacher in the newspaper, before now.

"M O E R, mower; D Y K, dik," said Abel. But he looked none the wiser for the effort.

"Mower dik! What be that?" said George, peering at the word.

"Do'ee think it be Mower dik, Abel?"

"I be sure," said Abel.

"Or do 'ee think 'tis 'My dear d.i.c.k'?" suggested George, anxiously, and with a sort of triumph in his tone, as if that were quite what he expected.

"No, no. 'Tis an O, Gearge, that second letter. Besides, twould be My dear Gearge to thee, thou knows."

Again the look with which the miller's man favored Abel was far from pleasant. But he controlled his voice to its ordinary drawl (always a little slower and more simple sounding, when he specially meant mischief).

"So 'twould, Abel. So 'twould. What a vool I be, to be sure! But give it to I now. We'll look at it another time, Abel."

"I be very sorry, Gearge," said Abel, who had a consciousness that the miller's man was ill-pleased in spite of his civility. "It be so long since I was at school, and it be such a queer word. Do 'ee think she can have spelt un wrong, Gearge?"

"'Tis likely she have," said George, regaining his composure.

"Abel! Abel! Abel!" cried the mother from the dwelling-room.

"Come to bed, child!"

"Good-night, Gearge. I'm main sorry to be so stupid, Gearge," said Abel, and off he ran.

Mrs. Lake was walking up and down, rocking the little Jan in her arms, who was wailing fretfully.

"I be puzzled to know what ails un," said Mrs. Lake, in answer to Abel's questions. "He be quite in a way tonight. But get thee to bed, Abel."

And though Abel begged hard to be allowed to try his powers of soothing with the little Jan, Mrs. Lake insisted upon keeping the baby herself; and Abel undressed, and crept into the press-bed. He fell asleep in spite of a somewhat disturbed mind. That mysterious word and George's evident displeasure worried him, and he was troubled also by the unusual fretfulness of the little Jan, and the sound of sorrow in his baby wail. His last waking thoughts were a strange mixture, pa.s.sing into stranger dreams.

The word Moerdyk danced before his eyes, but brought no meaning with it. Jan's cries troubled him, and with both there blended the droning of the ancient plaintive ditty, which the foster-mother sang over and over again as she rocked the child in her arms. That wail of the baby's must have in some strange manner recalled the first night of his arrival, when Abel found him wailing on the bed. For the fierce eyes of the strange gentleman haunted Abel's dreams, but in the face of the miller's man.

The poor boy dreamed horribly of being "dropped on" by George, with fierce black eyes added to the terrors of his uncouth grimaces. He seemed to himself to fly blindly and vainly through the mill from his tormentor, till George was driven from his thoughts by his coming suddenly upon the little Jan, wailing as he really did wail, round whose head a miller-moth was sailing slowly, and singing in a human voice: -

"The swallow twitters on the barn, The rook is cawing on the tree, And in the wood the ringdove coos, But my false love hath fled from me.

Like tiny pipe of wheaten straw, The wren his little note doth swell, And every living thing that flies, Of his true love doth fondly tell.

But I alone am left to pine, And sit beneath the withy tree; For truth and honesty be gone, And my false love hath fled from me."

CHAPTER VII.

ABEL GOES TO SCHOOL AGAIN.--DAME DATCHETT.--A COLUMN OF SPELLING.-- ABEL PLAYS MOOCHER.--THE MILLER'S MAN CANNOT MAKE UP HIS MIND.

Abel went to school again in the spring, and, though George would have been better pleased had he forgotten the whole affair, he remembered the word in George's young woman's love-letter which had puzzled him; and never was a spelling-lesson set him among the M's that he did not hope to come across it and to be able to demand the meaning of Moerdyk from his Dame.

Without the excuse of its coming in the column of spelling set by herself, Abel dared not ask her to solve his puzzle; for never did teacher more warmly resent questions which she was unable to answer than Dame Datchett.

Abel could not fully make up his mind whether it should be looked up among two-syllabled or three-syllabled words. He decided for the former, and one day brought his spelling-book to George in the round-house.

"I've been a looking for that yere word, Gearge," said he. "There's lots of Mo's, but it bean't among 'em. Here they be. Words of two syllables; M, Ma, Me, Mi; here they be, Mo." And Abel began to rattle off the familiar column at a good rate, George looking earnestly over his shoulder, and following the boy's finger as it moved rapidly down the page. "Mocking, Modern, Mohawk, Molar, Molly, Moment, Money, Moping, Moral, Mortal, Moses, Motive, Movement."

"Stop a bit, mun," cried George; "what do all they words mean? They bothers me."

"I knows some of 'em," said Abel, "and I asked Dame Datchett about the others, but she do be so cross; and I thinks some of 'em bothered she too. There's mocking. I knows that. 'What's a modern, Dame?' says I. 'A muddle-headed fellow the likes of you,'

says she. 'What's a mohawk, Dame?' says I. 'It's what you'll come to before long, ye young hang-gallus,' says she. I was feared on her, Gearge, I can tell 'ee; but I tried my luck again. 'What's a molar, Dame?' says I. ''Tis a wus word than t'other,' says she; 'and, if 'ee axes me any more voolish questions, I'll break thee yead for 'ee.' Do 'ee think 'tis a very bad word, Gearge?" added Abel, with a rather indefensible curiosity.

"I never heard un," said George. And this was perhaps decisive against the Dame's statement. "And I don't believe un neither. I think it bothered she. I believe 'tis a genteel word for a man as catches oonts. They call oonts MOLES in some parts, so p'r'aps they calls a man as catches moles a molar, as they calls a man as drives a mill a miller."