SITTING UP TO THINK--THE DIGNITY OF LABOUR.
Frank Fielding wondered where he was when he awoke next morning, and
found the sun shining in through the window of the little cosy room
in which he had slept so soundly after his adventure, the night
before.
Fred's room was in a back wing of the cottage that looked right away
out to sea. But Fred had not slept so well, and the reason was not
far to seek. He had often before heard his Daddy Pop, as he called
the old fisherman, tell snatches of his life story, but never had
listened to its complete recital. And when he retired that night to
his little chamber he was as full of thought as any boy of his age
can be. The feeling uppermost in the lad's innocent mind was one of
sorrow for Daddy Pop's sadly wasted life. The old man had made it so
plain to his listeners what the cause of his failure had been. He
had been a dreamer instead of a student and a worker. Would there,
he thought, be any chance for a humble lad like himself doing well in
the world if he worked and studied? The question kept him awake half
the night, and even then he hadn't half answered it. But long before
this he had made up his mind that he would work and study, and he
really felt thankful he had the chance, for the parish church school
he attended was excellent--in other words, it was thoroughly
Scottish--it sent at least half a dozen lads every year straight from
it away to the University, and more than one of these had become
senior wranglers at Cambridge or double first classes at Oxford.
But what, thought Fred to himself that night, was the good of being a
wrangler? whatever the somewhat pugilistic word might mean. He
supposed, however, it meant that the wranglership opened the way to
one through the thorny jungle of life, and softened many a difficulty.
He thought, nevertheless, he shouldn't care much to be a wrangler.
One wrangler, he remembered, had come back to his own Highland parish
to die. That was what wrangling had done for him.
Fred did not care a very great deal for either Latin or Greek, both
of which languages he was already well versed in. But then Daddy Pop
had told him--and didn't Daddy Pop know everything?--that learning
and study made one active-minded, clever, and bright; that, in fact,
it wasn't so much what anyone actually did learn as the actual
learning of it, that did the good, and increased the size and
fertility of the brain just as--and these were Daddy's own words--the
ploughing and harrowing of a field fitted it to receive any sort of
seed that might be sown therein. "But," Daddy Pop had added, "it is
as well to learn what will be useful in after life, and the so-called
dead languages would be so."
Fred perhaps ought to have gone to sleep as soon as he went to bed;
but having once commenced to think he could not. He thought out all
Daddy Pop's story, first lying on one side, then he rolled over on
the other, and thought it all over again. Then, as it was getting
late, he rolled over on his back and determined to sleep. Pah! he
might as well have tried to fly.
"Well," he said to himself, "I don't see any good in lying here
tumbling all the bed. It is hard work, and nothing good to show for."
So up he jumped, and drew aside his little window-blind. The window
was in shadow; but he could sea that the moon was shining brightly
over the sea, so he quietly dressed himself, opened wide the window,
and sat down beside it.
Toddie's dachshund was out there under a bush, and coughed a low
enquiring sort of a bark at him.
"Down, Tippetty, down!" said Fred.
Tippetty did lie down, but not without a little growl of displeasure.
"You ought to be in bed, you know," the little wise fellow appeared
to say; "and I'm responsible for the safety of this establishment
after nightfall."
Fred gave himself up to thought now, just as heartily as in bed he
had tried to avoid it. Of course there was a little castle-building
mixed up with these cogitations of his. And I would not care much
for a boy who did not build a few castles in the air at times, and
inhabit them too; for what, after all, is castle-building but a kind
of budding ambition?
Now Fred Arundel's father had been drowned when the boy was far too
young to know the meaning of the sacred word "parent," while his
mother had been taken away quite in his babyhood. But he had come to
love and respect his foster-parents very much indeed. They were all
in all to him. Fred was a good-natured lad, and there was nothing he
would not have done to give the kindly old couple an hour's happiness.
Well, but for them he might have been running about in rags and
wretchedness a "mitherless bairn,"
"When a' other bairnies are hushed to their hame,
By auntie, or cousin, or freckled grand-dame,
Who stands lost and lonely, wi' nobody carin'?
'Tis the poor doited laddie--the mitherless bairn,
"The mitherless bairn gangs to his lone bed,
Nane covers his cauld back, or haps his bare head;
His wee hackit heelies are hard as the iron,
And litheless the lair o' the mitherless bairn."
But Fred could not have been called "a mitherless bairn." And indeed
if you were to have asked the lad confidentially he would have told
you he was not a "bairn" in any sense of the word, but almost a man.
"Daddy Pop is old," thought Fred, "but he may live for twenty years
and more yet, and so may Mammy too. Twenty years, what a long time!
Why I shall be getting old myself in that time. Now although Daddy
had some money in the bank before he went away on his long
wanderings, and found when he came back that it had grown into a heap
more; and although he had enough to build this cottage, and a fine
fishing-boat also, still I know he isn't rich. His bed is not a very
soft one, he doesn't live so well as I would like him to; he says he
can't afford an easy chair, and that his Sunday coat is good enough.
Well, if I had money, Daddy would have such a lot of comforts, and so
would Mammy Mop. Why shouldn't Mammy have a silk dress as well as
farmer Grigg's wife? She shall have it.
"Why shouldn't Daddy have an easy chair and a better pair of specs,
and an easier seat in the cave among the rocks in which he writes his
beautiful poetry? My Daddy shall be comfortable when I am older.
But what shall I be? I can't be a fisher lad. Oh, no! I must
travel and see the world, and--but, dear me! common sailors don't get
rich, and Sandie Davis told me, after he came back from being all
round and round the world, that often and often he was not allowed to
put a foot on shore even in some of the prettiest places on the face
of the earth. Sandie told me this because he likes me. Sandie
wouldn't tell everybody, I'm sure of that. It wasn't for the half
crown I lent Sandie that he likes me. Oh, no!
"But what does Sandie do? He comes home wearing his best blue
clothes, and a dandy tie, and silver rings and things, and to hear
him talk anybody would think he had been first officer of a ship. He
smokes and takes beer--not that he pays for it, except by the
stories--yarns he calls them--that he tells those who treat him. No,
poor Sandie never has a penny to bless himself with after he has been
two weeks at home. That isn't the kind of sailor I'm going to be, if
ever I'm a sailor at all. Sandie's mother has a lot of 'curios,' as
he calls them--some wonderful Japanese boxes, bottles of _eau de
Cologne_, a funny-looking tea-caddy made out of a nut, an ostrich's
egg, a savage's spear, and an old bow and arrow; but nothing she can
eat or wear. She can't even eat the ostrich's egg, and funny she'd
look going about with that dirty old bow and arrow.
"He's not a bad fellow, though he boasts and brags, and talks through
his nose, and says words I never heard before, and don't wish to hear
again, for sailors like Sandie would make me sick of the sea.
"No, I'll be something--something. I'm going to study and work to
begin with, and then----"
Only the moonlight lying clear on the sea, only the lisp of the waves
on the shore, only the whisper of wind in the trees, only--why, it
can't surely be daylight already!
But it is though, and has been for hours, though Fred still sits
there, his face and his arms, and his bare head exposed to the
morning breeze.
"Oh, you naughty Fred!" cried Toddie, discovering her foster-brother,
and pulling his hair to wake him. "Oo has never been to bed. I
declare oo'll bleak my heart; and Flank and I has been all wound the
beach and at the atwalium (aquarium) too. Flank's a dear, dood boy.
Tome to bleakfast at once, I tell oo."
Fred looked up, smiling sleepily, then he gave himself a shake, as a
dog would, jumped right through the window, and patted Toddie's head.
"I'll be back in ten minutes, Toddie, old woman," he said.
Then straight for the rocks he ran, and divesting himself of his
clothes in a little recess, sprang in, had a good swim, and returned
home singing, and quite as happy as the skylark that was lilting high
above the woods.
Frank came out of the cottage to meet him, and the two lads shook
hands heartily.
"You're none the worse for your ducking," said Fred.
"No, all the better. Ha! ha! I wonder what mother will say? But
tell me, are you always so late of coming down to breakfast?"
Fred laughed.
"It isn't coming down," he said, "because, you know, we haven't any
up. Yours is a big fine house, I suppose?"
"It's a fair size. Two story, you know, and all among woods and
gardens. Oh, I'm sure you'll like it!"
It was time for Fred to laugh again.
"Very likely I shall see it," he said somewhat ironically; "but come
in till I sup my porridge."
"I've had mine long ago, and so has Toddie, and we've had such a game
of romps. But of course you'll come often to Benshee House. I have
a Shetland pony and a little trap, and can come over to you."
"Oh! but, Frank Fielding," Fred said solemnly, as he dipped his spoon
in a basin of creamy milk, "don't forget I'm only a poor working lad,
and you are a young gentleman."
The tears sprang to poor Frank's eyes in a moment but he manfully
kept even a single one from falling. He stretched out his hand and
grasped that of Fred, even though he had the spoon in it.
"There," said Frank, "I've made you spill the milk. But never mind.
Now, Fred, just listen. Don't be a fool. I'm not a cad, mind. My
father is a Scotchman, though my mother is English. My father made
his money in stocks, and might lose it to-morrow."
"_Avertit omen_," murmured Fred.
"I don't know Chinese, Fred; but I do know this, you and I are going
to be fast friends, and bother the rank and riches. My father makes
me learn Burns's poems. My mother thinks they are not _bon ton_."
"Bong tong," said Fred. "Well, I don't know Japanese."
"Never mind. Just listen to this. I'm going to recite. Father
makes me do it. Now here is the scene. You are a baronet and I am
Bobbie Burns. I have been visiting you, you know, staying a few days
at your mansion, when a nobleman--a downright cad--comes also to
visit you, and you ask him if he would object to the ploughman poet
dining with him.
"'What!' cries this ignoble nobleman, 'a ploughman singing fellow
dining with you and me! How very absurd to be sure!'
"Then you, Sir Fred, are awfully put about, and you come to me
sheepishly, and explain matters, and I bite my tongue and don't say
anything.
"Well, after dinner his lordship says, 'Now, pon honour, I'd like to
hear your singing fellow just for five minutes, don't-cher-know?'
"And so I--Robert Burns--am asked in.
"Of course I'm in a boiling rage at being treated thus. So I strut
in and bow to you and his lordship, that is Toddie yonder.
"'Singing fellow,' says the lord, 'give us a specimen of your poetic
powahs.'
"And this is the specimen I give:
"'Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure, and a' that,
The rank is but a guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd* for a' that.
"'Ye see yon Birkie,† ca'ed a lord,
(Frank points at Toddie.)
Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof‡ for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
His riband, star, and a' that,
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.
"'A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Guid faith he canna fa'§ that!
For a' that, and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
* Gold.
† Proud, silly fellow.
‡ Blockhead.
§ Manage.
"Oh!" cried little Toddie, clapping her pink hands, "oo is a pletty
boy when oo speaks like that."
"Now," said Frank, laughing, "I think like Burns, Fred, and if you
don't come and see me and be friendly it will be all your own fault."
"I'll come," said Fred, laughing, "and if I happen to be carrying a
creel of lobsters, I suppose you won't set your dogs at me?"
"Oh, no, because father talks about the dignity of labour, and that
would be the dignity of labour. And you know--'a man's a man for a'
that.'"
"Bravo! Frank Fielding," cried the old fisherman, entering the room,
"How I love your sentiments, my boy. Why they are noble--noble.
Shake the old bard's hand."
"Now," said Toddie, "evelybody must hold his tongue, I'se goin' to
'cite a piece."
And this little waif and stray that the Atlantic waves had tossed up
on the beach as if she had been seaweed, stepped boldly into the
arena, that is, into the middle of the sanded floor.
She was a beautiful child, this Toddie, with large eyes, delicate
features, and such a wealth of glossy hair that one could not but
wonder how it could have grown on a head so young.
She held one wee arm aloft, and in slow and measured tones, with many
a brief but impressive pause, spoke as follows:
"There once was a leetle, leetle dirl,
Who--lived--in a shoe,
And she had so many tsilden,
She--didn't--know--what to do.
But the Dood Lord sent a wild, wild stolm,
An' the waves wose--mountains high.
An lightenin's dleamed acloss the hills,
An' sunders shook the sky.
An' a dleat big whale dot vely sick,
Wi' the wobblin' o' the sea,
An' so he tumbled on the beach,
As dead as dead tould be.
But Bunko took the dleat whale's bones,
As none but Bunko tould,
And set them up adainst the rocks,
And lined them all with wood.
And when the whale was all tomplete,
We named it the Ig-loo,*
And there the little dirl lives,
And all her tsilden too."
* The hut in which Eskimos live.
Frank looked much amused, but quite puzzled; the old bard patted his
foster-daughter, and smiled not a little proudly; while Fred roared
with laughter because Frank looked so enquiringly droll.
"Is there any meaning in all that?"
"Yes," cried Fred, "and it's all true; at least the last of it.
Toddie and I, and Toddie's children, that is her pets and things, do
really live in a whale."
"Oh, shouldn't I like to see it!" said Frank. "Hullo!" he added, as
the rattling of wheels ceased at the cottage door, "here is mother in
the pony chaise, and--why look, there is Bunko himself driving my
pony carriage with the Shetland in it! I wonder how the pony allowed
him."
"Why not?"
"Oh, because if anybody but myself drives him he nearly always lies
down to roll."
Frank ran to meet his mother, who lovingly embraced him. She was a
very handsome lady and Toddie really stood in awe of her at first.
"Oh," Toddie said to Fred in a kind of stage whisper, "Oh, Fred, I
don't like her much, I weally must suck my fumb."
And so she did.