They were now in the hayfield, and a boy of about sixteen, but like most
country lads, to appearance much younger than he was, looked up from his
rake, with lively blue eyes, beaming forth under a profusion of brown
curly hair.
Leonard Fairfield was indeed a very handsome boy—not so stout nor so ruddy
as one would choose for the ideal of rustic beauty; nor yet so delicate in
limb and keen in expression as are those children of cities, in whom the
mind is cultivated at the expense of the body; but still he had the health
of the country in his cheeks, and was not without the grace of the city in
his compact figure and easy movements. There was in his physiognomy
something interesting from its peculiar character of innocence and
simplicity. You could see that he had been brought up by a woman, and much
apart from familiar contact with other children; and such intelligence as
was yet developed in him, was not ripened by the jokes and cuffs of his
coevals, but fostered by decorous lecturings from his elders, and good
little boy maxims in good little boy books.
PARSON.—“Come hither, Lenny. You know the benefit of school, I see: it can
teach you nothing better than to be a support to your mother.”
LENNY, looking down sheepishly, and with a heightened glow over his
face.—“Please, sir, that may come one of these days.”
PARSON—“That’s right Lenny. Let me see! why, you must be nearly a man. How
old are you?”
Lenny looks up inquiringly at his mother.
PARSON.—“You ought to know, Lenny; speak for yourself. Hold your tongue,
Mrs. Fairfield.”
LENNY, twirling his hat, and in great perplexity.—“Well, and there is
Flop, neighbor Dutton’s old sheep-dog. He be very old now.”
PARSON.—“I am not asking Flop’s age, but your own.”
“’Deed, sir, I have heard say as how Flop and I were pups together. That
is, I—I—”
For the Parson is laughing, and so is Mrs. Fairfield; and the haymakers,
who have stood still to listen, are laughing too. And poor Lenny has quite
lost his head, and looks as if he would like to cry.
PARSON, patting the curly locks, encouragingly.—“Never mind; it is not so
badly answered after all. And how old is Flop?”
LENNY.—“Why, he must be fifteen year and more.”
PARSON.—“How old, then, are you?”
LENNY, looking up with a beam of intelligence.—“Fifteen year and more!”
Widow sighs and nods her head.
“That’s what we call putting two and two together,” said the Parson. “Or,
in other words,” and here he raised his eyes majestically toward the
haymakers—“in other words—thanks to his love for his book—simple as he
stands here, Lenny Fairfield has shown himself capable of INDUCTIVE
RATIOCINATION.”
At those words, delivered _ore rotundo_, the haymakers ceased laughing.
For even in lay matters they held the Parson to be an oracle, and words so
long must have a great deal in them.
Lenny drew up his head proudly.
“You are very fond of Flop, I suppose?”
“’Deed he is,” said the widow, “and of all poor dumb creatures.”
“Very good. Suppose, my lad, that you had a fine apple, and that you met a
friend who wanted it more than you; what would you do with it?”
“Please you, sir, I would give him half of it.”
The Parson’s face fell. “Not the whole, Lenny?”
Lenny considered. “If he was a friend, sir, he would not like me to give
him all!”
“Upon my word, Master Leonard, you speak so well, that I must e’en tell
the truth. I brought you an apple, as a prize for good conduct in school.
But I met by the way a poor donkey, and some one beat him for eating a
thistle; so I thought I would make it up by giving him the apple. Ought I
only to have given him the half?”
Lenny’s innocent face became all smile; his interest was aroused. “And did
the donkey like the apple?”
“Very much,” said the Parson, fumbling in his pocket, but thinking of
Leonard Fairfield’s years and understanding; and moreover, observing, in
the pride of his heart, that there were many spectators to his deed, he
thought the meditated twopence not sufficient, and he generously produced
a silver sixpence.
“There, my man, that will pay for the half apple which you would have kept
for yourself.” The Parson again patted the curly locks, and, after a
hearty word or two with the other haymakers, and a friendly “Good-day” to
Mrs. Fairfield, struck into a path that led toward his own glebe.
He had just crossed the stile, when he heard hasty but timorous feet
behind him. He turned, and saw his friend Lenny.
LENNY, half crying, and holding out the sixpence.—“Indeed, sir, I would
rather not. I would have given all to the Neddy.”
PARSON.—“Why, then, my man, you have a still greater right to the
sixpence.”
LENNY.—“No, sir; ’cause you only gave it to make up for the half apple.
And if I had given the whole, as I ought to have done, why, I should have
had no right to the sixpence. Please, sir, don’t be offended; do take it
back, will you?”
The Parson hesitated. And the boy thrust the sixpence into his hand, as
the ass had poked his nose there before in quest of the apple.
“I see,” said Parson Dale, soliloquizing, “that if one don’t give Justice
the first place at the table, all the other Virtues eat up her share.”
Indeed, the case was perplexing. Charity, like a forward impudent baggage
as she is, always thrusting herself in the way, and taking other people’s
apples to make her own little pie, had defrauded Lenny of his due; and now
Susceptibility, who looks like a shy, blush-faced, awkward Virtue in her
teens—but who, nevertheless, is always engaged in picking the pockets of
her sisters, tried to filch from him his lawful recompense. The case was
perplexing; for the Parson held Susceptibility in great honor, despite her
hypocritical tricks, and did not like to give her a slap in the face,
which might frighten her away forever. So Mr. Dale stood irresolute,
glancing from the sixpence to Lenny, and from Lenny to the sixpence.
“_Buon giorno_—good-day to you,” said a voice behind, in an accent
slightly but unmistakably foreign, and a strange-looking figure presented
itself at the stile.
Imagine a tall and exceedingly meagre man, dressed in a rusty suit of
black—the pantaloons tight at the calf and ankle, and there forming a
loose gaiter over thick shoes buckled high at the instep; an old cloak,
lined with red, was thrown over one shoulder, though the day was sultry; a
quaint, red, outlandish umbrella, with a carved brass handle, was thrust
under one arm, though the sky was cloudless; a profusion of raven hair, in
waving curls that seemed as fine as silk, escaped from the sides of a
straw-hat of prodigious brim; a complexion sallow and swarthy, and
features which, though not without considerable beauty to the eye of the
artist, were not only unlike what we fair, well-fed, neat-faced Englishmen
are wont to consider comely, but exceedingly like what we are disposed to
regard as awful and Satanic—to wit, a long hooked nose, sunken cheeks,
black eyes, whose piercing brilliancy took something wizard-like and
mystical from the large spectacles through which they shone; a mouth round
which played an ironical smile, and in which a physiognomist would have
remarked singular shrewdness and some closeness, complete the picture:
imagine this figure, grotesque, peregrinate, and to the eye of a peasant
certainly diabolical, then perch it on the stile in the midst of those
green English fields, and in sight of that primitive English village;
there let it sit straddling, its long legs dangling down, a short German
pipe emitting clouds from one corner of those sardonic lips, its dark eyes
glaring through the spectacles full upon the Parson, yet askant upon Lenny
Fairfield. Lenny Fairfield looked exceedingly frightened.
“Upon my word, Dr. Riccabocca,” said Mr. Dale, smiling, “you come in good
time to solve a very nice question in casuistry;” and herewith the Parson
explained the case, and put the question—“Ought Lenny Fairfield to have
the sixpence, or ought he not?”
“_Cospetto_!” said the doctor. “If the hen would but hold her tongue,
nobody would know that she had laid an egg.”