THE POCKET-BOOK AND THE FAMILY BIBLE.—FIVE POUNDS’ REWARD.
OF the strange gentleman who brought Jan to the windmill, the Lakes heard
no more, but the money was paid regularly through a lawyer in London.
From this lawyer, indeed, Master Lake had heard immediately after the
arrival of his foster-son.
The man of business wrote to say that the gentleman who had visited the
mill on a certain night had, at that date, lost a pocket-book, which he
thought might have been picked up at the mill. It contained papers only
valuable to the owner, and also a five-pound note, which was liberally
offered to the windmiller if he could find the book, and forward it at
once.
Master Lake began to have a kind of reckless, gambling sort of feeling
about luck. Here would be an easily earned five pounds, if he could but
have the luck to find the missing property! That ten shillings a week
had come pretty easily to him. When all is said, there _are_ people into
whose mouths the larks fall ready cooked!
The windmiller looked inside the mill and outside the mill, and wandered
a long way along the chalky road with his eyes downwards, but he was no
nearer to the five-pound note for his pains. Then he went to his wife,
but she had seen nothing of the pocket-book; on which her husband
somewhat unreasonably observed that, “A might a been zartin _thee_
couldn’t help un!”
He next betook himself to George, who was slowly, and it is to be hoped
surely, sweeping out the round-house.
“Gearge, my boy,” said the windmiller, in not too anxious tones, “have
’ee seen a pocket-book lying about anywheres?”
George leaned upon his broom with one hand, and with the other scratched
his white head.
“What be a pocket-book, then, Master Lake?” said he, grinning, as if at
his own ignorance.
“Thee’s eerd of a pocket-book before now, thee vool, sure-ly!” said the
impatient windmiller.
“I’se eerd of a pocket of hops, Master Lake,” said George, after an
irritating pause, during which he still smiled, and scratched his poll as
if to stimulate recollection.
“Book—book—book! pocket-_book_!” shouted the miller. “If thee can’t
read, thee knows what a book is, thee gawney!”
“What a vool I be, to be sure!” said George, his simple countenance
lighted up with a broader smile than before. “I knows a book, sartinly,
Master Lake, I knows a book. There’s one,” George continued, speaking
even slower than before,—“there’s one inzide, sir,—a big un. On the
shelf it be. A Vamly Bible they calls un. And I’m sartin sure it be
there,” he concluded, “for a hasn’t been moved since the last time you
christened, Master Lake.”
The miller turned away, biting his lip hard, to repress a useless
outburst of rage, and George, still smiling sweetly, spun the broom
dexterously between his hands, as a man spins the water out of a stable
mop. Just before Master Lake had got beyond earshot, George lowered the
broom, and began to scratch his head once more. “I be a proper vool,
sartinly,” said he; and when the miller heard this, he turned back.
“Mother allus said I’d no more sense in my yead than a dumbledore,”
George candidly confessed. And by a dumbledore he meant a humble-bee.
“It do take me such a time to mind any thing, sir.”
“Well, never mind, Gearge,” said the miller; “if thee’s slow, thee’s
sure. What do ’ee remember about the book, now, Gearge? A don’t mind
giving thee five shilling, if thee finds un, Gearge.”
“A had un down at the burying, I ’member quite well now, sir. To put the
little un’s name in ’twas. I thowt a hadn’t been down zince christening,
I be so stoopid sartinly.”
“What are you talking about, ye vool?” roared the miller.
“The book, sir, sartinly,” said George, his honest face beaming with
good-humor. “The Vamly Bible, Master Lake.”
And as the windmiller went off muttering something which the Family Bible
would by no means have sanctioned, George returned chuckling to a
leisurely use of his broom on the round-house floor.
Master Lake did not find the pocket-book, and after a day or two it was
advertised in a local paper, and a reward of five pounds offered for it.
George Sannel was seated one evening in the “Heart of Oak” inn, sipping
some excellent home-brewed ale, which had been warmed up for his
consumption in a curious funnel-shaped pipkin, when his long lop-ears
caught a remark made by the inn-keeper, who was reading out bits from the
local paper to a small audience, unable to read it for themselves.
“Five pound reward!” he read. “Lor massy! 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 shilling 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 advertisement was withdrawn.