Jan of the Windmill Part 4

"Five pound reward!" he read. "Lor ma.s.sy! There be a sum to be easily earned by a sharp-eyed chap with good luck on 's side."

"And how then, Master Chuter?" said George, pausing, with the steaming mug half-way to his lips.

"Haw, haw!" roared the inn-keeper: "you be a sharp-eyed chap, too!

Do 'ee think 'twould suit thee, Gearge? Thee's a sprack chap, sartinly, Gearge!"

"Haw, haw, haw!" roared the other members of the company, as they slowly realized Master Chuter's irony at the expense of the "voolish" Gearge.

George took their rough banter in excellent part. He sipped his beer, and grinned like a cat at his own expense. But after the guffaws had subsided, he said, "Thee's not told un about that five pound yet, Master Chuter."

The curiosity of the company was by this time aroused, and Master Chuter explained: "'Tis a gentleman by the name of Ford as is advertising for a pocket-book, a seems to have lost on the downs, near to Master Lake's windmill. 'Tis thy way, too, Gearge, after all. Thee must get up yarly, Gearge. 'Tis the yarly bird catches the worm. And tell Master Lake from me, 'll have all the young varments in the place a driving their pigs up to his mill, to look for the pocket-book, while they makes believe to be minding their pigs."

"Tis likely, too," said George. And the two or three very aged laborers in smocks, and one other lubberly boy, who composed the rest of the circle, added, severally and collectively, "'Tis likely, too."

But, as George beat his way home over the downs in the dusk, he said aloud, under cover of the roaring wind, and in all the security of the open country, -

"Vive pound! vive pound! And a offered me vive s.h.i.+lling for un.

Master Lake, you be dog-ged cute; but Gearge bean't quite such a vool as a looks."

After a short time the advertis.e.m.e.nt was withdrawn.

CHAPTER VI.

GEORGE GOES COURTING.--GEORGE AS AN ENEMY.--GEORGE AS A FRIEND.-- ABEL PLAYS SCHOOL-MASTER.--THE LOVE-LETTER.--MOERDYK.--THE MILLER- MOTH.--AN ANCIENT DITTY.

One day George Sannel asked and obtained leave for a holiday.

On the morning in question, he dressed himself in the cleanest of smocks, greased his boots, stuck a b.l.o.o.d.y warrior, or dark-colored wallflower, in his bosom, put a neatly folded, clean cotton handkerchief into his pocket,--which, even if he did not use it, was a piece of striking dandyism,--and scrubbed his honest face to such a point of cleanliness that Mrs. Lake was almost constrained to remark that she thought he must be going courting.

George did not blush,--he never blushed,--but he looked "voolish"

enough to warrant the suspicion that his errand was a tender one, and he had no other reason to give for his spruce appearance

It was, perhaps, in his confusion that he managed to convey a mistaken notion of the place to which he was going to Mrs. Lake.

She was under the impression that he went to the neighboring town, whereas he went to one in an exactly opposite direction, and some miles farther away.

He went to the bank, too, which seems an unlikely place for tender tryst; but George's proceedings were apt to be less direct than the simplicity of his looks and speech would have led a stranger to suppose. When he reached home, the windmiller and his family were going to bed, for the night was still, and the mill idle. George betook himself at once to where his truckle-bed stood in the round- house, and proceeded to light his mill-candlestick, which was stuck into the wall.

From the c.h.i.n.k into which it was stuck he then counted seven bricks downwards, and the seventh yielded to a slight effort and came out.

It was the door, so to speak, of a hole in the wall of the mill, from which he drew a morocco-bound pocket-book. After an uneasy glance over his shoulder, to make sure that the long dark shadow which stretched from his own heels, and s.h.i.+fted with the draught in which the candle flared, was not the windmiller creeping up behind him, he took a letter out of the book and held it to the light as if to read it. But he never turned the page, and at last replaced it with a sigh. Then he put the pocket-book back into the hole, and pushed in after it his handkerchief, which was tied round something which c.h.i.n.ked as he pressed it in. Then he replaced the brick, and went to bed. He said nothing about the bank in the morning nor about the hole in the mill-wall; and he parried Mrs. Lake's questions with gawky grins and well-a.s.sumed bashfulness.

Abel overheard his mother's jokes on the subject of "Gearge's young 'ooman," and they recurred to him when he and George formed a curious alliance, which demands explanation.

It was not solely because the windmiller looked favorably upon the little Jan that he and Abel were now allowed to wander in the business parts of the windmill, when they could not be out of doors, to an extent never before permitted to the children. Part of the change was due to a change in the miller's man.

However childlike in some respects himself, George was not fond of children, and he had hitherto seemed to have a particular spite against Abel. He, quite as often as the miller, would drive the boy from the round-house, and thwart his fancy for climbing the ladders to see the processes of the different floors.

Abel would have been happy for hours together watching the great stones grind, or the corn poured by golden showers into the hopper on its way to the stones below. Many a time had he crept up and hidden himself behind a sack; but George seemed to have an impish ingenuity in discovering his hiding-places, and would drive him out as a dog worries a cat, crying, "Come out, thee little varment!

Master Lake he don't allow thee hereabouts."

The cleverness of the miller's man in discovering poor Abel's retreats probably arose from the fact that he had so rooted a dislike for the routine work of his daily duties that he would rather employ himself about the mill in any way than by attending to the mill-business, and that his idleness and stupidity over work were only equalled by his industry and shrewdness in mischief.

Poor Abel had a dread of the great, gawky, mischievous-looking man, which probably prevented his complaining to his mother of many a sly pinch and buffet which he endured from him. And George took some pains to keep up this wholesome awe of himself, by vague and terrifying speeches, and by a trick of what he called "dropping on"

poor Abel in the dusk, with hideous grimaces and uncouth sounds.

He once came thus upon Abel in an upper floor, and the boy fled from him so hastily that he caught his foot in the ladder and fell headlong. Though it must have been quite uncertain for some moments whether Abel had not broken his neck, the miller's man displayed no anxiety. He only clapped his hands upon his knees, in a sort of uncouth ecstasy of spite, saying, "Down a comes vlump, like a twoad from roost. Haw, haw, haw!"

Happily, Abel fell with little more damage to himself than the mill- cats experienced in many such a tumble, as they fled before the tormenting George.

But, after all this, it was with no small surprise that Abel found himself the object of attentions from the miller's man, which bore the look of friendliness.

At first, when George made civil speeches, and invited Abel to "see the stwones a-grinding," he only felt an additional terror, being convinced that mischief was meant in reality. But, when days and weeks went by, and he wandered unmolested from floor to floor, with many a kindly word from George, and not a single cuff or nip, the sweet-tempered Abel began to feel grat.i.tude, and almost an affection, for his quondam tormentor.

George, for his part, had hitherto done some violence to his own feelings by his constant refusal to allow Abel to help him to sweep the mill or couple the sacks for lifting. He would have been only too glad to put some of his own work on the shoulders of another, had it not been for the vexatious thought that he would be giving pleasure by so doing where he only wanted to annoy. And in his very unamiable disposition malice was a stronger quality even than idleness.

But now, when for some reason best known to himself, he wished to win Abel's regard, it was a slight recompense to him for restraining his love of tormenting that he got a good deal of work out of Abel at odd moments when the miller was away. So well did he manage this, that a marked improvement in the tidiness of the round-house drew some praise from his master.

"Thee'll be a sprack man yet, Gearge," said the windmiller, encouragingly. "Thee takes the broom into the corners now."

"So I do," said George, unblus.h.i.+ngly, "so I do. But lor, Master Lake, what a man you be to notice un!" George's kinder demeanor towards Abel began shortly after the coming of the little Jan, and George himself accounted for it in the following manner: -

"You do be kind to me now, Gearge," said Abel, gratefully, as he stood one day, with the baby in his arms, watching the miller's man emptying a sack of grain into the hopper.

"I likes to see thee with that babby, Abel," said George, pausing in his work. "Thee's a good boy, Abel, and careful. I likes to do any thing for thee, Abel."

"I wish I could do any thing for thee, Gearge," said Abel; "but I be too small to help the likes of you, Gearge."

"If you're small, you're sprack," said the miller's man. "Thee's a good scholar, too, Abel. I'll be bound thee can read, now? And a poor gawney like I doesn't know's letters."

"I can read a bit, Gearge," said Abel, with pride; "but I've been at home a goodish while; but mother says she'll send I to school again in spring, if the little un gets on well and walks."

"I wish I could read," said George, mournfully; "but time's past for me to go to school, Abel; and who'd teach a great lummakin vool like I his letters?"

"I would, Gearge, I would!" cried Abel, his eyes sparkling with earnestness. "I can teach thee thy letters, and by the time thee's learned all I know, maybe I'll have been to school again, and learned some more."

This was the foundation of a curious kind of friends.h.i.+p between Abel and the miller's man.

On the same shelf with the "Vamly Bible," before alluded to, was a real old horn-book, which had belonged to the windmiller's grandmother. It was simply a sheet on which the letters of the alphabet, and some few words of one syllable, were printed, and it was protected in its frame by a transparent front of thin horn, through which the letters could be read, just as one sees the prints through the ground-gla.s.s of "drawing slates."

From this horn-book Abel labored patiently in teaching George his letters. It was no light task. George had all the cunning and shrewdness with which he credited himself; but a denser head for any intellectual effort could hardly have been found for the seeking.

Still they struggled on, and as George went about the mill he might have been heard muttering, -

"A B C G. No! Cuss me for a vool! A B C _D_. Why didn't they whop my letters into I when a was a boy? A B C"--and so persevering with an industry which he commonly kept for works of mischief.

One evening he brought home a newspaper from the Heart of Oak, and when Mrs. Lake had taken the baby, he persuaded Abel to come into the round-house and give him a lesson. Abel could read so much of it that George was quite overwhelmed by his learning.

"Thee be's mortal larned, Abel, sartinly. But I'll never read like thee," he added, despairingly. "Drattle th' old witch; why didn't she give I some schooling?" He spoke with spiteful emphasis, and Abel, too well used to his rough language to notice the uncivil reference to his mother, said with some compa.s.sion, -