Jan of the Windmill Part 6

"'Tis likely too, Gearge," said Abel. "Well! Molly we knows. And moment, and moping, and moral."

"What's moral?" inquired George.

"'Tis what they put at the end of Vables, Gearge. There's Vables at the end of the spelling-book, and I've read un all. There's the Wolf and the Lamb, and" -

"I knows now," said George. "'Tis like the last verse of that song about the Harnet and the Bittle. Go on, Abel."

"Mortal. That's swearing. Moses. That's in the Bible, Gearge.

Motive. I thought I'd try un just once more. 'What's a motive, Dame?' says I. 'I've got un here,' says she, quite quiet-like. But I seed her feeling under 's chair, and I know'd 'twas for the strap, and I ran straight off, spelling-book and all, Gearge."

"So thee've been playing moocher, eh?" said George, with an unpleasant twinkle in his eyes. "What'll Master Lake say to that?"

"Don't 'ee tell un, Gearge!" Abel implored; "and, O Gearge! let I tell mother about the word. Maybe she've heard tell of it. Let I show her the letter, Gearge. She'll read it for 'ee. She's a scholard, is mother."

There was no mistaking now the wrath in George's face. The fury that is fed by fear blazes pretty strongly at all times.

"Look 'ee, Abel, my boy," said he, pinching Abel's shoulder till he turned red and white with pain. "If thee ever speaks of that letter and that word to any mortal soul, I'll tell Master Lake thee plays moocher, and I'll half kill thee myself. Thee shall rue the day ever thee was born!" he added, almost beside himself with rage and terror. And as, after a few propitiating words, Abel fled from the mill, George ground his hands together and muttered, "Motive! I wish the old witch had motived every bone in thee body, or let me do 't!"

Master George Sannel was indeed a little irritable at this stage of his career. Like the miller, he had had one stroke of good luck, but capricious fortune would not follow up the blow.

He had made five pounds pretty easily. But how to turn some other property of which he had become possessed to profit for himself was, after months of waiting, a puzzle still.

He was well aware that his own want of education was the great hindrance to his discovering for himself the exact worth of what he had got. And to his suspicious nature the idea of letting any one else into his secret, even to gain help, was quite intolerable.

Abel seemed to be no nearer even to the one word that George had showed him, after weeks of "schooling," and George himself progressed so slowly in learning to read that he was at times tempted to give up the effort in despair.

Of his late outburst against Abel he afterwards repented, as impolitic, and was soon good friends again with his very placable teacher.

Much of the time when he should have been at work did George spend in "puzzling" over his position. Sometimes, as from an upper window of the mill he saw the little Jan in Abel's arms, he would mutter, -

"If a body were to kidnap un, would they advertise he, I wonders?"

and after some consideration would shake his white head doubtfully, saying, "No, they wants to get rid of un, or they wouldn't have brought un here."

Happily for poor little Jan, the unscrupulous rustic rejected the next idea which came to him as too doubtful of success.

"I wonder if they'd come down something handsome to them as could tell 'em the young varmint was off their hands for good and all.

'Twould save un ten s.h.i.+lling a week. Ten s.h.i.+lling a week! I heard un with my own ears. I'd a kep' un for five, if they'd asked me. I wonders now. Little uns like that does get stole by gipsies sometimes. Varmer Smith's son were, and never heard on again. They falls into a mill-race too sometimes. They be so venturesome. But I doubt 'twouldn't do. Them as it belongs to might be glad enough to get rid of un, and save their credit and their money too by turning upon I after all."

The miller's man puzzled himself in vain. He could think of no mode of action at once safe and certain of success. He did not even know whether what he possessed had any value, or how or where to make use of it. But a sort of dim hope of seeing his way yet kept him about the mill, and he persevered in the effort to learn to read, and kept his big ears open for any thing that might drop from the miller or his wife to throw light on the history of Jan, with whom his hopes were bound up.

Meanwhile, with a dogged patience, he bided his time.

CHAPTER VIII.

VISITORS AT THE MILL.--A WINDMILLER OF THE THIRD GENERATION.--CURE FOR WHOOPING-COUGH.--MISS AMABEL ADELINE AMMABY.--DOCTORS DISAGREE.

One of the earliest of Jan's remembrances--of those remembrances, I mean, which remained with him when childhood was past--was of little Miss Amabel, from the Grange, being held in the hopper of the windmill for whooping cough.

Jan was between three and four years old at this time, the idol of his foster-mother, and a great favorite with his adopted brothers and sisters. A quaint little fellow he was, with a broad, intellectual-looking face, serious to old-fas.h.i.+onedness, very fair, and with eyes "like slans."

He was standing one morning at Mrs. Lake's ap.r.o.n-string, his arms clasped lovingly, but somewhat too tightly, round the waist of a sandy kitten, who submitted with wonderful good-humor to the well- meant strangulation, his black eyes intently fixed upon the dumplings which his foster-mother was dexterously rolling together, when a strange footstep was heard shuffling uncertainly about on the floor of the round-house just outside the dwelling-room door. Mrs.

Lake did not disturb herself. Country folk were constantly coming with their bags of grist, and both George and the miller were at hand, for a nice breeze was blowing, and the mill ground merrily.

After a few seconds, however, came a modest knock on the room-door, and Mrs. Lake, wiping her hands, proceeded to admit the knocker.

She was a smartly dressed woman, who bore such a ma.s.s of laces and finery, with a white woollen shawl spread over it, apparently with the purpose of smothering any living thing there might chance to be beneath, as, in Mrs. Lake's experienced eyes, could be nothing less than a baby of the most genteel order.

The manners of the nurse were most genteel also, and might have quite overpowered Mrs. Lake, but that the windmiller's wife had in her youth been in good service herself, and, though an early marriage had prevented her from rising beyond the post of nursemaid, she was fairly familiar with the etiquette of the nursery and of the servants' hall.

"Good morning, ma'am," said the nurse, who no sooner ceased to walk than she began a kind of diagonal movement without progression, in which one heel clacked, and all her petticoats swung, and the baby who, head downwards, was snorting with gaping mouth under the woollen coverlet, was supposed to be soothed. "Good morning, ma'am.

You'll excuse my intruding" -

"Not at all, mum," said Mrs. Lake. By which she did not mean to reject the excuse, but to disclaim the intrusion.

When the nurse was not speaking, she kept time to her own rocking by a peculiar click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth; and indeed it sometimes mingled, almost confusingly, with her conversation. "You're very obliging, ma'am, I'm sure," said she, and, persuaded by Mrs. Lake, she took a seat. "You'll excuse me for asking a singular question, ma'am, but WAS YOUR HUSBAND'S FATHER AND GRANDFATHER BOTH MILLERS?"

"They was, mum," said Mrs. Lake. "My husband's father's father built this mill where we now stands. It cost him a deal of money, and he died with a debt upon it. My husband's father paid un off; and he meant to have built a house, mum, but he never did, worse luck for us. He allus says, says he,--that's my husband's father, mum,--'I'll leave that to Abel,'--that's my maester, mum. But nine year ago come Michaelmas" -

Mrs. Lake's story was here interrupted by a frightful outburst of coughing from the unfortunate baby, who on the removal of the woollen shawl presented an appearance which would have been comical but for the sympathy its condition demanded.

A very red and utterly shapeless little face lay, like a crushed beet-root, in a ma.s.s of dainty laces almost voluminous enough to have dressed out a bride. As a sort of crowning satire, the face in particular was surrounded by a broad frill, spotted with bunches of pink satin ribbon, and farther encased in a white satin hood of elaborate workmans.h.i.+p and fringes.

The contrast between the natural red of the baby's complexion and its snowy finery was ludicrously suggestive of an over-dressed n.i.g.g.e.r, to begin with; but when, in the paroxysms of its cough, the tiny creature's face pa.s.sed by shades of plum-color to a bluish black, the result was appalling to behold.

Mrs. Lake's experienced ears were not slow to discover that the child had got whooping-cough, which the nurse confessed was the case. She also apologized for bringing in the baby among Mrs.

Lake's children, saying that she had "thought of nothing but the poor little chirrub herself."

"Don't name it, mum," replied the windmiller's wife. "I always say if children be to have things, they'll have 'em; and if not, why they won't." A theory which seems to sum up the views of the majority of people in Mrs. Lake's cla.s.s of life upon the spread of disease.

"I'm sure I don't know what's coming to my poor head," the nurse continued: "I've not so much as told you who I am, ma'am. I'm nurse at the Grange, ma'am, with Mr. Ammaby and Lady Louisa.

They've been in town, and her ladys.h.i.+p's had the very best advice, and now we've come to the country for three months, but the dear child don't seem a bit the better. And we've been trying every thing, I'm sure. For any thing I heard of I've tried, as well as what the doctor ordered, and rubbing it with some stuff Lady Louisa's mamma insisted upon, too,--even to a frog put into the dear child's mouth, and drawed back by its legs, that's supposed to be a certain cure, but only frightened it into a fit I thought it never would have come out of, as well as fetching her ladys.h.i.+p all the way from her boudoir to know what was the matter--which I no more dared tell her than fly."

"Dear, dear!" said the miller's wife; "have you tried goose-grease, mum? 'Tis an excellent thing."

"Goose-grease, ma'am, and an excellent ointment from the bone- setter's at the toll-bar, which the butler paid for out of his own pocket, knowing it to have done a world of good to his sister that had a bad leg, besides being a certain cure for coughs, and cancer, and consumption as well. And then the doctor's IMPRECATION on its little chest, night and morning, besides; but nothing don't seem to do no good," said the poor nurse. "And so, ma'am,--her ladys.h.i.+p being gone to the town,--thinks I, I'll take the dear child to the windmill. For they do say,--where I came from, ma'am,--that if a miller, that's the son of a miller, and the grandson of a miller, holds a child that's got the whooping-cough in the hopper of the mill whilst the mill's going, it cures them, however bad they be."

The reason of the nurse's visit being now made known, Mrs. Lake called her husband, and explained to him what he was asked to do for "her ladys.h.i.+p's baby." The miller scratched his head.

"I've heard my father say that his brother that drove a mill in Ches.h.i.+re had had it to do," said he, "but I never did it myself, ma'am, nor ever see un done. And a hopper be an ackerd place, ma'am. We've ground many a cat in this mill, from getting in the hopper at nights for warmth. However," he added, "I suppose I can hold the little lady pretty tight." And finally, though with some unwillingness, the miller consented to try the charm; being chiefly influenced by the wish not to disoblige the gentlefolk at the Grange.

The little Jan had watched the proceedings of the visitors with great attention. During the poor baby's fit of coughing, he was so absorbed that the sandy kitten slipped through his arms and made off, with her tail as stiff as a sentry's musket; and now that the miller took the baby into his arms, Jan became excited, and asked, "What daddy do with un?"

"The old-fas.h.i.+oned little piece!" exclaimed the nurse, admiringly.

And Mrs. Lake added, "Let un see the little lady, maester."

The miller held out the baby, and the nurse, removing a dainty handkerchief edged with Valenciennes lace from its face, introduced it as "Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby;" and Mrs. Lake murmured, "What a lovely little thing!" By which, for truth's sake, it is to be hoped she meant the lace-edged handkerchief.