“Oh, you never will amount to anything, Bonnyboy!” said Bonnyboy’s
father, when he had vainly tried to show him how to use a gouge; for
Bonnyboy had just succeeded in gouging a piece out of his hand, and was
standing helplessly, letting his blood drop on an engraving of Napoleon
at Austerlitz, which had been sent to his father for framing. The
trouble with Bonnyboy was that he was not only awkward--left-handed
in everything he undertook, as his father put it--but he was so very
good-natured that it was impossible to get angry with him. His large
blue innocent eyes had a childlike wonder in them, when he had done
anything particularly stupid, and he was so willing and anxious to
learn, that his ill-success seemed a reason for pity rather than for
wrath. Grim Norvold, Bonnyboy’s father, was by trade a carpenter, and
handy as he was at all kinds of tinkering, he found it particularly
exasperating to have a son who was so left-handed. There was scarcely
anything Grim could not do. He could take a watch apart and put it
together again; he could mend a harness if necessary; he could make a
wagon; nay, he could even doctor a horse when it got spavin or glanders.
He was a sort of jack-of-all-trades, and a very useful man in a valley
where mechanics were few and transportation difficult. He loved work for
its own sake, and was ill at ease when he had not a tool in his hand.
The exercise of his skill gave him a pleasure akin to that which the
fish feels in swimming, the eagle in soaring, and the lark in singing. A
finless fish, a wingless eagle, or a dumb lark could not have been more
miserable than Grim was when a succession of holidays, like Easter or
Christmas, compelled him to be idle.
When his son was born his chief delight was to think of the time when
he should be old enough to handle a tool, and learn the secrets of his
father’s trade. Therefore, from the time the boy was old enough to sit
or to crawl in the shavings without getting his mouth and eyes full of
sawdust, he gave him a place under the turning bench, and talked or sang
to him while he worked. And Bonnyboy, in the meanwhile amused himself
by getting into all sorts of mischief. If it had not been for the belief
that a good workman must grow up in the atmosphere of the shop, Grim
would have lost patience with his son and sent him back to his mother,
who had better facilities for taking care of him. But the fact was he
was too fond of the boy to be able to dispense with him, and he would
rather bear the loss resulting from his mischief than miss his prattle
and his pretty dimpled face.
It was when the child was eighteen or nineteen months old that he
acquired the name Bonnyboy. A woman of the neighborhood, who had called
at the shop with some article of furniture which she wanted to have
mended, discovered the infant in the act of investigating a pot of blue
paint, with a part of which he had accidentally decorated his face.
“Good gracious! what is that ugly thing you have got under your turning
bench?” she cried, staring at the child in amazement.
“No, he is not an ugly thing,” replied the father, with resentment; “he
is a bonny boy, that’s what he is.”
The woman, in order to mollify Grim, turned to the boy, and asked, with
her sweetest manner, “What is your name, child?”
“Bonny boy,” murmured the child, with a vaguely offended air--“bonny
boy.”
And from that day the name Bonnyboy clung to him.