‘Sick?’ Hiram answered, through his sobs, unconsciously translating the word into his own dialect. ‘Sick? No, I aint sick, Mr. Sam; but I’m orful mad with father. He kem right here just now and tore up my drawin’ book – an’ that drawin’ book was most everything to me, it was – and he’s tore it up, a ravin’ an’ tearin’ like all possest, this very minnit.’
Sam looked at the fragments sympathetically. ‘I tell’ee, Hiram,’ he said gently, ‘I’ve got a brother o’ my own awver yonder in Darsetshire – about your age, too – as is turble vond of drawin’. I was turble vond of it myself when I was a little chap at ‘Ootton. Thik ther eagle is drawed first-rate, ’e be, an’ so’s the squir’l. I’ve drawed squir’ls myself, many’s the time, in the copse at ‘Ootton, I mind: an’ I’ve gone mitching, too, in summer, birds’-nestin’ and that, all over the vields for miles around us. Your faather’s a main good man, Hiram;‘e ’s a religious man, an’ a ‘onest man, and I do love to ‘ear ‘un argify most turble vine about religion, an’ ‘ell, an’ reprobation, an’ ‘Enery Clay, and such like: but’e’s a’ard man, tiler’s no denyin’ of it.‘E’s took’is religion ‘ot an’ ‘ot, ‘e ‘as; an’ I do think’e do use ‘ee bad sometimes, vor a little chap, an’ no mistake. Now, don’t ‘ee go an’ cry no longer, ther’s a good little vulla; don’t ‘ee cry, Hiram, vor I never could abare to zee a little chap or a woman a-cryin’. Zee ‘ere, Hiram,’ and the big hand dived deep into the recesses of a pair of very muddy corduroy trousers, ‘’ere’s a sixpence for’ee – what do ‘ee call it awver ‘ere, ten cents, bain’t it? ‘Ere, take it, take it young un; don’t ‘ee be aveard. Now, what’ll ‘ee buy wi’ it, eh? Lollipops, most like, I sim.’
‘Lollipops!’ the boy answered quickly, taking the dime with a grateful gesture. ‘No, Mr. Sam, not them: nor toffy, nor peanuts neither. I shall go right away to Wes’ Johnson’s store, next time father’s in the city, an’ buy a new book, so as I can make a crowd more drawin’s. That’s what I like better’n anything. It’s jest splendid.’
Sam looked at the little Yankee boy again with a certain faint moisture in his eyes; but he didn’t reflect to himself that human nature is much the same all the world over, in Dorsetshire or in Geauga County. In fact, it would never have occurred to Sam’s simple heart to doubt the truth of that fairly obvious principle. He only put his hand on Hiram’s ragged head, and said softly: ‘Well, Hiram, turn to now, an’ I’ll help ‘ee weed the peppermint.’
They weeded a row or two in silence, and then Sam asked suddenly: ‘What vor do un grow thik peppermint, Hiram?’
‘To make candy, Mr. Sam,’ Hiram answered.
‘Good job too,’ Sam went on musingly. ‘Seems to me they do want it turble bad in these ‘ere parts. Sight too much corn, an’ not near enough candy down to ‘Murrica; why can’t deacon let the little vulla draw a squir’l if ‘e’s got a mind to? That’s what I wants to know. What do those varmers all around ‘ere do? (Varmers they do call ‘em; no better nor labourers, I take it.) Why, they buy a bit ‘o land, an’ work, an’ slave thesselves an’ their missuses, all their lives long, what vor? To raise pork and corn on. What vor, again? To buy more land; to raise more corn an’ bacon; to buy more land again; to raise more corn an’ bacon; and so on, world without end, amen, for ever an’ ever. An’ in the tottal, what do ur all come to? Pork and flour, for ever an’ ever. Why, even awver yonder in old England, we’d got something better nor that, and better worth livin’ vor.’ And Sam’s mind wandered back gently to Wootton Mandeville, and the old tower which he didn’t know to be of Norman architecture, but which he loved just as well as if he did for all that: and then he borrowed Hiram’s pencil, and pulled a piece of folded paper from his pocket (it had inclosed an ounce of best Virginia), and drew upon it for Hiram’s wondering eyes a rough sketch of an English village church, with big round arches and dog-tooth ornament, embowered in shady elm-trees, and backed up by a rolling chalk down in the further distance. Hiram looked at the sketch admiringly and eagerly.
‘I wish I could draw such a thing as that, he said with delight. ‘But I can’t, Mr. Sam; I can only draw birds and musk-rats and things – not churches. That’s a reel pretty church, too: reckon I never see such a one as that thar anywhere. Might that be whar you was raised, now?’
Sam nodded assent.
‘Wal, that does beat everything. I should like to go an’ see something like that, sometime. Ef I git a book, will you learn me to draw a church same as you do, Mr. Sam?’
‘Bless yer ‘eart, yes,’ Sam answered quickly, and turned with swimming eyes to weed the rest of the peppermint. From that day forth, Sam Churchill and Hiram Winthrop were sworn friends through all their troubles.
CHAPTER II. RURAL ENGLAND
It was a beautiful July morning, and Colin Churchill and Minna Wroe were playing together in the fritillary fields at Wootton Mandeville. At twelve years old, the intercourse of lad and maiden is still ingenuous; and Colin was just twelve, though little Minna might still have been some two years his junior. A tall, slim, fair-haired boy was Colin Churchill, with deep-blue eyes more poetical in their depth and intensity than one might have expected from a little Dorsetshire peasant child. Minna, on the other hand, was shorter and darker; a gipsy-looking girl, black-haired and tawny-skinned; and with two little beady-black eyes that glistened and ran over every moment with contagious merriment. Two prettier children you wouldn’t have found anywhere that day in the whole county of Dorset than Minna Wroe and Colin Churchill.
They had gathered flowers till they were tired of them in the broad spongy meadow; they had played hide-and-seek among the eighteenth-century tombstones in the big old churchyard; they had quarrelled and made it up again half a dozen times over in pure pettishness: and now, by way of a distraction, Minna said at last coaxingly: ‘Do ‘ee, Colin, do ‘ee come down to the lake yonder and make I a bit of a vigger-’ead.’
‘Don’t ‘ee worrit me, Minna,’ Colin answered, like a young lady who refuses to sing, half-heartedly (meaning all the time that one should ask her again): ‘Don’t ‘ee see I be tired? I don’t want vor to go makin’ no vigger-’eads vor ‘ee, I tell ‘ee.’
But Minna would have one: on that she insisted: ‘What a vinnid lad ‘ee be,’ she cried petulantly, ‘not to want to make I a vigger-’ead. Now do ‘ee, Cohn, ther’s a a good boy; do ‘ee, an’ I’ll gee ‘ee ‘arf my peppermint cushions, come Saturday.’
‘I don’t want none o’ your cushions, Minna,’ Colin answered, with a boy’s gallantry; ‘but come along down to the lake if ‘ee will: I’ll make ‘ee dree or vower vigger-’eads, never vear, an’ them vine uns too, if so be as you want ‘em.’
They went together down to the brook at the corner of the meadow (called a lake in the Dorsetshire dialect); and there, at a spot where the plastic clay came to the surface in a little cliff at a bend of the stream, Colin carved out a fine large lump of shapeless raw material from the bank, which he forthwith proceeded to knead up with his hands and a sprinkling of water from the rill into a beautiful sticky consistency. Minna watched the familiar operation with deepest interest, and added from time to time a word or two of connoisseur criticism: ‘Now thee’st got it too wet, Colin;’ or, ‘Take care thee don’t putt in too much of thik there blue earth yonder; or, ‘That’s about right vor the viggeread now, I’m thinkin’; thee’d better begin makin’ it now avore the clay gets too dried up.’
As soon as Colin had worked the clay up to what he regarded as the proper requirements of his art, he began modelling it dexterously with his fingers into the outer form and fashion of a ship’s figure-head: ‘What’ll ‘ee ‘ave virst, Minna?’ he asked as he roughly moulded the mass into a bold outward curve, that would have answered equally well for any figure-head in the whole British