THE WINDMILLER’S WORDS COME TRUE.—THE RED SHAWL.—IN THE CLOUDS.—NURSING
V. PIG-MINDING.—THE ROUND-HOUSE.—THE MILLER’S THUMB.
STRANGE to say, the windmiller’s idea came true in time,—the foster-child
was the favorite.
He was the youngest of the family, for the mother had no more children.
This goes for something.
Then, when she had once got over her repugnance to adopting him, he did
do much to heal the old grief, and to fill the empty place in her heart
as well as in the cradle.
He was a frail, fretful little creature, with a very red face just fading
into yellow, about as much golden down on his little pate as would
furnish a moth with plumage, and eyes like sloe-berries. It was
fortunate rather than otherwise that he was so ailing for some weeks that
the good wife’s anxieties came over again, and, in the triumph of being
this time successful, much of the bitterness of the old loss passed away.
In a month’s time he looked healthy, if not absolutely handsome. The
windmiller’s wife, indeed, protested that he was lovely, and she never
wearied of marvelling at the unnatural conduct of those who had found it
in their hearts to intrust so sweet a child to the care of strangers;
though it must be confessed that nothing would have pleased her less than
the arrival of two doting and conscientious parents to reclaim him.
Indeed, pity had much to do with the large measure of love that she gave
to the deserted child. A meaner sentiment, too, was not quite without
its influence in the predominance which he gradually gained over his
foster brothers and sisters. There was little enough to be proud of in
all that could be guessed as to his parentage (the windmiller knew
nothing), but there was scope for any amount of fancy; and if the child
displayed any better manners or talents than the other children, Mrs.
Lake would purse her lips, and say, with a somewhat shabby pride,—
“Anybody may see ’tis gentry born.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said the windmiller, one day, “that if that there
woman weren’t the mother, ’tis likely the mother’s dead.”
“’Tis likely, too,” said his wife; and her kindness abounded the more
towards the motherless child. Little Abel was nurse-boy to it, as he had
been to his sister. Not much more than a baby himself, he would wrap an
old shawl round the baby who was quite a baby, stagger carefully out at
the door, and drop dexterously—baby uppermost—on to the short, dry grass
that lay for miles about the mill.
The shawl was a special shawl, though old. It was red, and the bright
color seemed to take the child’s fancy; he was never so good as when
playing upon the gay old rag. His black eyes would sparkle, and his tiny
fingers clutch at it, when the mother put it about him as he swayed in
Abel’s courageous grasp. And then Abel would spread it for him, like an
eastern prayer carpet, under the shadow of the old mill.
Little need had he of any medicine, when the fresh strong air that blew
about the downs was filling his little lungs for most of the day. Little
did he want toys, as he lay on his red shawl gazing upwards hour by hour,
with Abel to point out every change in their vast field of view.
It is a part of a windmiller’s trade to study the heavens, and Abel may
have inherited a taste for looking skywards. Then, on these great open
downs there is so much sky to be seen, you can hardly help seeing it, and
there is not much else to look at. Had they lived in a village street,
or even a lane, Abel and his charge might have taken to other
amusements,—to games, to grubbing in hedges, or amid the endless
treasures of ditches. But as it was, they lay hour after hour and looked
at the sky, as at an open picture-book with ever-changing leaves.
“Look ’ee here!” the nurse-boy would cry. “See to the crows, the pretty
black crows! Eh, there be a lapwing! Lap-py, lap-py, lap-py, there he
go! Janny catch un!”
[Picture: “Look ’ee here!” the nurse-boy would cry]
And the baby would stretch his arms responsive to Abel’s expressive
signs, and cry aloud for the vanishing bird.
If no living creature crossed the ether, there were the clouds.
Sometimes a long triangular mass of small white fleecy clouds would
stretch across half the heavens, having its shortest side upon the
horizon, and its point at the zenith, where one white fleece seemed to be
leading a gradually widening flock across the sky.
“See then!” the nurse-boy would cry. “See to the pretty sheep up yonder!
Janny mind un! So! so!”
And if some small gray scud, floating lower, ran past the far-away
cirrus, Abel would add with a quaint seriousness, “’Tis the sheep-dog.
How he runs then! Bow-wow!”
At sunset such a flock wore golden fleeces, and to them, and to the
crimson hues about them, the little Jan stretched his fingers, and
crowed, as if he would have clutched the western sky as he clutched his
own red shawl.
But Abel was better pleased when, in the dusk, the flock became dark
gray.
“They be Master Salter’s pigs now,” said he. For pigs in Abel’s native
place were both plentiful and black; and he had herded Master Salter’s
flock (five and twenty black, and three spotted) for a whole month before
his services were required as nurse-boy to his sister.
But for the coming of the new baby, he would probably have gone back to
the pigs. And he preferred babies. A baby demands attention as well as
a herd of pigs, but you can get it home. It does not run off in
twenty-eight different directions, just when you think you have safely
turned the corner into the village.
Master Salter’s swine suffered neglect at the hands of several successors
to the office Abel had held, and Master Salter—whilst alluding to these
in indignant terms as “young varments,” “gallus-birds,” and so forth—was
pleased to express his regret that the gentle and trustworthy Abel had
given up pig-minding for nursing.
The pigs’ loss was the baby’s gain. No tenderer or more careful nurse
could the little Jan have had. And he throve apace.
The windmiller took more notice of him than he had been wont to do of his
own children in their babyhood. He had never been a playful or indulgent
father, but he now watched with considerable interest the child who, all
unconsciously, was bringing in so much “grist to the mill.”
When the weather was not fine enough for them to be out of doors, Abel
would play with his charge in the round-house, and the windmiller never
drove him out of the mill, as at one time he would have done. Now and
then, too, he would pat the little Jan’s head, and bestow a word of
praise on his careful guardian.
It may be well, by-the-by, to explain what a round-house is. Some of the
brick or tower mills widen gradually and evenly to the base. Others
widen abruptly at the lowest story, which stands out all round at the
bottom of the mill, and has a roof running all round too. The projection
is, in fact, an additional passage, encircling the bottom story of the
windmill. It is the round-house. If you take a pill-box to represent
the basement floor of a tower-mill, and then put another pill-box two or
three sizes larger over it, you have got the circular passage between the
two boxes, and have added a round-house to the mill. The round-house is
commonly used as a kind of store-room.
Abel Lake’s windmill had no separate dwelling-house. His grandfather had
built the windmill, and even his father had left it to the son to add a
dwelling-house, when he should perhaps have extended his resources by a
bit of farming or some other business, such as windmillers often add to
their trade proper. But that calamity of the broken sails had left Abel
Lake no power for further outlay for many years, and he had to be content
to live in the mill.
The dwelling-room was the inner part of the basement floor. Near the
door which led from this into the round-house was the ladder leading to
the next story, and close by that the opening through which the sacks of
grain were drawn up above. The story above the basement held the
millstones and the “smutting” machine, for cleaning dirty wheat. The
next above that held the dressing machine, in which the bran was
separated from the flour. In the next above that were the corn-bins. To
the next above that the grain was drawn up from the basement in the first
instance. The top story of all held the machinery connected with the
turning of the sails. Ladders led from story to story, and each room had
two windows on opposite sides of the mill.
Use is second nature, and all the sounds which haunt a windmill were soon
as familiar and as pleasant to the little Jan as if he had been born a
windmiller’s son. Through many a windy night he slept as soundly as a
sailor in a breeze which might disturb the nerves of a land-lubber. And
when the north wind blew keen and steadily, and the chains jangled as the
sacks of grist went upwards, and the millstones ground their monotonous
music above his head, these sounds were only as a lullaby to his
slumbers, and disturbed him no more than they troubled his foster-mother,
to whom the revolving stones ground out a homely and welcome measure:
“Dai-ly bread, dai-ly bread, dai-ly bread.”
For another sign of his being a true child of the mill, his nurse Abel
anxiously watched.
Though Abel preferred nursing to pig-minding, he had a higher ambition
yet, which was to begin his career as a windmiller. It was not likely
that he could be of use to his father for a year or two, and the fact
that he was of very great use to his mother naturally tended to delay his
promotion to the mill.
Mrs. Lake was never allowed to say no to her husband, and she seemed to
be unable, and was certainly unwilling, to say it to her children.
Happily, her eldest child was of so sweet and docile a temper that
spoiling did him little harm; but even with him her inability to say no
got the mother into difficulties. She was obliged to invent excuses to
“fub off,” when she could neither consent nor refuse.
So, when Abel used to cling about her, crying, “Mother dear, when’ll I be
put t’help father in the mill? Do ’ee ask un to let me come in now! I
be able to sweep ’s well as Gearge. I sweeps the room for thee,”—she had
not the heart or the courage to say, “I want thee, and thy father
doesn’t,” but she would take the boy’s hand tenderly in hers, and making
believe to examine his thumbs with a purpose, would reply, “Wait a bit,
love. Thee’s a sprack boy, and a good un, but thee’s not rightly got the
miller’s thumb.”
And thus it came about that Abel was for ever sifting bits of flour
through his finger and thumb, to obtain the required flatness and
delicacy which marks the latter in a miller born; and playing lovingly
with little Jan on the floor of the round-house, he would pass some
through the baby’s fingers also, crying,—
“Sift un, Janny! sift un! Thee’s a miller’s lad, and thee must have a
miller’s thumb.”