The tinker was seated under a hedge, hammering away at an old
kettle--with a little fire burning in front of him--and the donkey hard
by, indulging in a placid doze. Mr. Sprott looked up as Lenny
passed--nodded kindly, and said--
"Good evenin', Lenny: glad to hear you be so 'spectably sitivated with
Mounseer."
"Ay," answered Lenny, with a leaven of rancor in his recollections,
"You're not ashamed to speak to me now, that I am not in disgrace. But
it was in disgrace, when it wasn't my fault, that the real gentleman was
most kind to me."
"Ar--r, Lenny," said the Tinker, with a prolonged rattle in that said
Ar--r, which was not without great significance. "But you sees the real
gentleman who han't got his bread to get, can hafford to 'spise his
cracter in the world. A poor tinker must be timbersome and nice in his
'sociations. But sit down here a bit, Lenny; I've summat to say to ye!"
"To me--"
"To ye. Give the neddy a shove out i' the vay, and sit down, I say."
Lenny rather reluctantly, and somewhat superciliously, accepted this
invitation.
"I hears," said the Tinker in a voice made rather indistinct by a couple
of nails which he had inserted between his teeth; "I hears as how you be
unkimmon fond of reading. I ha' sum nice cheap books in my bag
yonder--sum low as a penny."
"I should like to see them," said Lenny, his eyes sparkling.
The Tinker rose, opened one of the paniers on the ass's back, took out a
bag which he placed before Lenny, and told him to suit himself. The
young peasant desired no better. He spread all the contents of the bag
on the sward, and a motley collection of food for the mind was
there--food and poison--_serpentes avibus_--good and evil. Here,
Milton's Paradise Lost, and there The Age of Reason--here Methodist
Tracts, and there True Principles of Socialism--Treatises on Useful
Knowledge by sound learning actuated by pure benevolence--Appeals to
Operatives by the shallowest reasoners, instigated by the same ambition
that had moved Eratosthenes to the conflagration of a temple; works of
fiction admirable as Robinson Crusoe, or innocent as the old English
Baron, besides coarse translations of such garbage as had rotted away
the youth of France under Louis Quinze. This miscellany was an epitome,
in short, of the mixed World of Books, of that vast City of the Press,
with its palaces and hovels, its aqueducts and sewers--which opens all
alike to the naked eye and the curious mind of him to whom you say, in
the Tinker's careless phrase, "suit yourself."
But it is not the first impulse of a nature, healthful and still pure,
to settle in the hovel and lose itself amidst the sewers; and Lenny
Fairfield turned innocently over the bad books, and selecting two of
three of the best, brought them to the tinker and asked the price.
"Why," said Mr. Sprott, putting on his spectacles, "you has taken the
werry dearest: them 'ere be much cheaper, and more hinterestin'."
"But I don't fancy them," answered Lenny; "I don't understand what they
are about, and this seems to tell one how the steam-engine is made, and
has nice plates; and this is Robinson Crusoe, which Parson Dale once
said he would give me--I'd rather buy it out of my own money."
"Well, please yourself," quoth the Tinker; "you shall have the books for
four bob, and you can pay me next month."
"Four bobs--four shillings? it is a great sum," said Lenny, "but I will
lay it by, as you are kind enough to trust me; good evening, Mr.
Sprott."
"Stay a bit," said the Tinker; "I'll just throw you these two little
tracts into the barging; they be only a shilling a dozen, so 'tis but
tuppence--and ven you has read _those_, vy, you'll be a reglar
customer."
The Tinker tossed to Lenny Nos. 1 and 2 of Appeals to Operatives, and
the peasant took them up gratefully.
The young knowledge-seeker went his way across the green fields, and
under the still autumn foliage of the hedgerows. He looked first at one
book, then at another; he did not know on which to settle.
The Tinker rose and made a fire with leaves and furze and sticks, some
dry and some green.
Lenny has now opened No. 1 of the tracts: they are the shortest to read,
and don't require so much effort of the mind as the explanation of the
steam-engine.
The Tinker has now set on his grimy gluepot, and the glue simmers.