JACK'S SMOCK FROCK.
Twelve years had elapsed since the shepherd first found the little baby
on his door-step when, one afternoon in July, Mrs. Shelley was sitting
working hard at some coarse-looking needlework, on a bench just outside
the house. By her side stood her two younger sons, Charlie and Willie,
both of them golden-haired, red-cheeked, chubby urchins, strikingly like
their father. Willie, who was now fifteen, was dressed as a sailor, for
he had already been three years in the navy, and was now at home for a
week's holiday, while Charlie, whom we last saw crying in his cradle,
was on his way to feed the pigs, and had just deposited his pail in
front of his mother to stop and look at her work.
"Is it nearly finished, mother?" asked Charlie.
The "it" was a smock made of very coarse linen, over which Mrs. Shelley
and another little pair of hands had been toiling hard every afternoon
for the last fortnight.
"Yes, if Fairy would only sit still and help me, we might finish it
before supper. Just call her, Willie, I can't think what the child is
doing; she is in her own room," replied Mrs. Shelley, who is now a
comely woman of six or seven and thirty, and has apparently had but few
sorrows, as not a wrinkle marks her smooth forehead, nor has a single
grey hair yet made its appearance among her bright brown locks.
"Well, whether it is finished or not, Jack will never wear it, I am
sure, so I hope I shall have it handed over to me," said Charlie.
"Nonsense, Charlie, pray don't say anything of the kind before Jack.
Your father will insist on his wearing it, and as Fairy has made a great
deal of it, I hope we shall persuade him to put it on to-morrow," said
Mrs. Shelley, rather anxiously, for she was by no means so sure as she
professed to be that Jack would condescend to wear a smock.
"I know he won't, mother; but what has Fairy got in her hand? Oh, my
goodness me, what is that fine thing, Fairy?" asked Charlie, as, in
answer to Willie's repeated shouts, Fairy made her appearance.
She was a tall, slight child, straight as a dart, still rather fragile
in appearance, but with a healthy pink in her cheeks that did credit to
Sussex air and living. Her hair was long, and floated about in the
summer breeze in great waves of gold, the long silky tresses reaching
below her waist. In striking contrast to this golden hair and fair pink
and white complexion were her great brown eyes, with their long, dark
lashes and delicately, though firmly, pencilled eyebrows. The rest of
her features were nothing out of the common way, but her fair hair and
dark eyes and brilliant complexion would at once have attracted
attention, if, young as she was, she had not already been one of those
people who can't come into a room without making their presence felt.
The name little Jack--no longer little, by the way--had chosen for her
years ago suited her exactly. Lightly as a fairy she tripped and flitted
about, bright as a sunbeam, as though no such thing as care or sorrow
existed in the world. Dainty in all her ways, neat and trim in her
dress, with tiny hands and feet, a better name than Fairy could not have
been given her. She was dressed in a pink print, simply yet well-made,
and altogether the child looked out of keeping with her surroundings,
particularly with her foster brother, Charlie, in his corduroys and his
swill-pail by his side.
"You dreadful boy, take that horrid pail away before I come a step
further," cried Fairy, pinching her little nose with her delicate white
taper fingers.
"All right, but do show us that fine thing you have in your hand first,"
said Charlie.
"No, no, no; go to your pigs first, you'll spoil my lovely present for
Jack if you come near me," said Fairy, hiding her hands behind her, and
running backwards to avoid any chance of a collision with Charlie and
his pail as he prepared to obey her commands.
"What is it, Fairy?" asked Mrs. Shelley, as Charlie moved off, looking
up with curiosity from her work.
"It is a shaving-case I have been making for Jack out of that quilt of
mine you said I might have, mother," replied Fairy, holding out an
elaborate shaving-case, beautifully quilted in blue satin.
"A shaving-case? But, my dear Fairy, Jack does not shave. How could you
cut that lovely thing up in this way?" said Mrs. Shelley.
"A shaving-case! What is the use of it if he did shave?" asked Willie,
who was of a practical turn of mind.
"The use of it! Why, to keep his shaving-cloths in, of course. Mr.
Leslie has one something like this, only not half so pretty," said
Fairy, eyeing her handiwork with admiration.
"It is much too good for Jack," said Charlie, who had come back from his
pigs.
"Nothing is too good for Jack, is it, mother?" asked Fairy, with an
imperceptible nod at Willie.
"It is very unsuitable, Fairy, and I think it is a pity you cut up that
quilt for it; but come and help me to finish this smock, you idle child,
do."
"That dreadful smock! and I know Jack will never, never, never put it
on, though we have pricked our fingers over it for weeks. And John will
be angry, and insist, and Jack will be in a passion, and refuse, and
instead of having a nice happy birthday, poor old Jack will be
miserable. Mother, let's give him the smock to-night, and have the row
over before to-morrow. Run and get me my thimble, Charlie, please, and
Willie, thread my needle for me, and I'll soon help mother to finish
this ugly smock," said Fairy, seating herself with a business-like air
as she folded up the shaving-case in some silk paper.
"Well, it is not a bad plan, Fairy; we will give Jack the smock when he
comes in this evening," said Mrs. Shelley.
"Yes; and I'll keep my present till to-morrow, and that will put him in
a good temper, before we start for our picnic," said Fairy, stitching
away with great energy. An hour later, just as the smock was finished
and the boys were gone to get tea ready, the shepherd entered at the
gate carrying a quantity of wheatears threaded on crow-quills. He looked
vexed, and Mrs. Shelley, who could read her husband's face like a book,
asked what was the matter.
"Why, again Jack has forgotten to attend to those traps for the
wheatears; when I did them myself I caught a hundred in one day; now I
leave them to him I get perhaps eighteen to twenty, because he is too
lazy to dig out the turf and make the traps properly; here are only ten
brace this evening, and they are as plentiful as sparrows just now."
"John, you are a greedy man, and Jack is not lazy; he does not approve
of killing birds; he thinks it is cruel, that is why he has not seen to
the traps, so you must not scold him about it, will you?" said Fairy,
looking up into the shepherd's grave face, as she stroked the white
breasts of the wheatears.
"You had better see to the traps yourself, John; there is always a fuss
about them every summer since you gave them to Jack to attend to. You
know, as Fairy says, he is so fond of birds, and he knows so much about
them too, that he can't bear snaring them."
"Knows so much about them! I should think he did. Why Mr. Leslie says if
Jack had only the means of getting himself some good books, he would be
a first-rate ornithologist, which means a man learned in birds, John,"
said Fairy.
She had always called the shepherd John since she could speak, and Mrs.
Shelley and John were quite content that she should do so, as he was not
her father, though Fairy persisted in calling his wife mother, to Mrs.
Shelley's secret joy. They were both greatly attached to their
foster-daughter; as for the shepherd, he never contradicted her in
anything, and though over-strict as his wife thought with his own boys,
he never seemed to think Fairy could do wrong, and had never been heard
even to rebuke her in the mildest way since he found her; and when Mrs.
Shelley remonstrated with him, as she sometimes did, he excused himself
by saying she was not his own child, so he did not feel the same
responsibility about her.
Luckily for Fairy, Mrs. Shelley did not humour her and look upon her
with the same excessive admiration the shepherd and the boys did; they
regarded her as a superior being, and thought her way of queening it
over them perfectly right and natural. Mrs. Shelley loved the child she
had been a mother to tenderly, and was proud of her beauty and
cleverness, and yet, while she constantly impressed on her boys that
Fairy was a lady by birth and therefore in a very different position to
any of them, and, moreover, might any day be claimed by her own parents
and taken into her own sphere, she insisted on the same obedience from
her as she expected from her own children.
"Jack had far better become a man learned in sheep than in birds, seeing
he is to be a shepherd. I can't see the use of all the learning Jack
gets hold of; it can't do him any good," said the shepherd.
"Oh! you dear, good old shepherd, I believe you think the world was made
for sheep, and shepherds the only useful people in it," exclaimed Fairy.
"I think if Jack learns his business and his Bible and Prayer-book, he
will do very well without any other learning. It is quite right and
proper that my little Fairy should learn to play the spinnet and to
speak French, which nobody here understands, and many other things of
which I don't even know the names, but I don't think that kind of
knowledge will make Jack a good shepherd or a good Christian, and that
is all he is required to be," said John Shelley, stroking Fairy's
golden head fondly as he spoke.
"But if he could be a very clever man some day and perhaps learn a
profession, you would think that better than being a good shepherd,
would you not?" said Fairy, who was in Jack's confidence, and knew that
as he watched the sheep on the downs he dreamt dreams of this kind.
"No, Fairy, no; if God had meant Jack to be a gentleman he would not
have given him a shepherd for his father. His duty is to labour hard to
get his own living in that state of life in which it has pleased God to
call him, as the Catechism says."
"But, John, why did God let me be brought up by a shepherd, then?" asked
Fairy. "You see He does not always mean people to remain what they are
born or I should not be here, should I?"
This was an argument to which John's slow mind could not supply an
answer. Conservative to the backbone in all his notions, like most
Sussex people, be their politics what they may, the law of progress was
no law to him, but rather rebellion to the divine appointments, and that
Jack should wish to be anything else but a shepherd like his ancestors
was to him as inexplicable and incomprehensible as it was profane and
wicked.
Fairy's presence among them had often been an enigma to him. Accustomed
to work in a groove himself, his mind never travelling beyond the downs
on which his life was spent, he could not fathom the divine purpose in
placing her under his care, but yet being quite clear in his own mind it
was God's will for her at present, he did his duty towards her without
questioning; but the idea of Jack rising out of his own sphere of life
into a higher was another matter altogether.
"I don't know," said John, at last, as Fairy repeated her question.
"By the bye, how long have I been here exactly?" asked Fairy.
"Let me see; twelve years last shearing-time," said the shepherd, whose
dates were few and simple, sheep-washing, shearing, lambing, and next
and last sheepfair being the principal.
"But I want to know the day of the month; and I'll tell you why. You all
have birthdays except me, and no one knows when mine was, so I am going
to keep mine for the future on the day I was brought here, so I shall
be like the sheep; you count their age from their first shearing, not
from the day they are born, and I am going to count mine from the day I
was found. Now try and remember when it was, will you?"
"Twelve years ago last shearing; it was on a Friday, the day before the
shearing ended, somewhere about this time, for we finished shearing last
Saturday week," said John.
"It was earlier, John; it was the twenty-sixth of June; I wrote it down
in my Bible the night you found her; but come into supper; the smock is
finished at last," said Mrs. Shelley, folding up the ugly garment with a
sigh.
"Jack's smock? I am glad of that, he must put it on to-morrow; he will
look every inch a shepherd then," said John.
"Indeed, he won't wear it to-morrow; we are all going to have a holiday,
and going to the seaside for the day; but where is Jack? I wish he would
come into tea. I want him to help me with my lessons; I shall be much
too tired to do them to-morrow," said Fairy, as they went into the
kitchen.
(_To be continued._)
"SHE COULDN'T BOIL A POTATO;"
OR,
THE IGNORANT HOUSEKEEPER, AND HOW SHE ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE.
BY DORA HOPE.