The tinker was seated under a hedge, hammering away at an old
kettle--with a little fire burning in front of him--and the donkey
hard by, indulging in a placid doze. Mr Sprott looked up as Lenny
passed--nodded kindly, and said--
"Good evenin', Lenny: to hear you be so 'spectably sitivated with
Mounseer."
"Ay," answered Lenny, with a leaven of rancour in his recollections,
"You're not ashamed to speak to me now, that I am not in disgrace. But
it was in disgrace, when it wasn't my fault, that the real gentleman
was most kind to me."
"Ar--r, Lenny," said the Tinker, with a prolonged rattle in that said
Ar--r, which was not without great significance. "But you sees the real
gentleman who han't got his bread to get, can hafford to 'spise his
cracter in the world. A poor tinker must be timbersome and nice in his
'sociations. But sit down here a bit, Lenny; I've summat to say to ye!"
"To me--"
"To ye. Give the neddy a shove out i' the vay, and sit down, I say."
Lenny rather reluctantly, and somewhat superciliously, accepted this
invitation.
"I hears," said the Tinker in a voice made rather indistinct by a
couple of nails which he had inserted between his teeth; "I hears as
how you be unkimmon fond of reading. I ha' sum nice cheap books in my
bag yonder--sum as low as a penny."
"I should like to see them," said Lenny, his eyes sparkling.
The Tinker rose, opened one of the paniers on the ass's back, took
out a bag which he placed before Lenny, and told him to suit himself.
The young peasant desired no better. He spread all the contents of
the bag on the sward, and a motley collection of food for the mind
was there--food and poison--_serpentes avibus_--good and evil. Here,
Milton's Paradise Lost, there The Age of Reason--here Methodist Tracts,
there True Principles of Socialism--Treatises on Useful Knowledge by
sound learning actuated by pure benevolence--Appeals to Operatives by
the shallowest reasoners, instigated by the same ambition that had
moved Eratosthenes to the conflagration of a temple; works of fiction
admirable as Robinson Crusoe, or innocent as the Old English Baron,
beside coarse translations of such garbage as had rotted away the youth
of France under Louis Quinze. This miscellany was an epitome, in short,
of the mixed World of Books, of that vast City of the Press, with its
palaces and hovels, its aqueducts and sewers--which opens all alike
to the naked eye and the curious mind of him to whom you say, in the
Tinker's careless phrase, "suit yourself."
But it is not the first impulse of a nature, healthful and still pure,
to settle in the hovel and lose itself amidst the sewers; and Lenny
Fairfield turned innocently over the bad books, and selecting two or
three of the best, brought them to the Tinker and asked the price.
"Why," said Mr Sprott, putting on his spectacles, "you has taken the
werry dearest: them 'ere be much cheaper, and more hinterestin'."
"But I don't fancy them," answered Lenny; "I don't understand what they
are about, and this seems to tell one how the steam-engine is made, and
has nice plates; and this is Robinson Crusoe, which Parson Dale once
said he would give me--I'd rather buy it out of my own money."
"Well, please yourself," quoth the Tinker; "you shall have the books
for four bob, and you can pay me next month."
"Four bobs--four shillings? it is a great sum," said Lenny, "but I will
lay by, as you are kind enough to trust me; good evening, Mr Sprott."
"Stay a bit," said the Tinker; "I'll just throw you these two little
tracks into the barging; they be only a shilling a dozen, so 'tis
but tuppence--and ven you has read _those_, vy, you'll be a reglar
customer."
The tinker tossed to Lenny Nos. 1 and 2 of Appeals to Operatives, and
the peasant took them up gratefully.
The young knowledge-seeker went his way across, the green fields, and
under the still autumn foliage of the hedgerows. He looked first at one
book, then at another; he did not know on which to settle.
The Tinker rose and made a fire with leaves and furze and sticks, some
dry and some green.
Lenny has now opened No. 1 of the tracts: they are the shortest to
read, and don't require so much effort of the mind as the explanation
of the steam-engine.
The Tinker has now set on his grimy glue-pot, and the glue simmers.