In the kitchen, Chris leaned against the corner of the passage and
kitchen wall to watch Becky at her tasks. How different from the
compact white kitchen they had at home! And yet there was a cosy
feeling about the huge room in front of him with its ruddy copper
utensils, tub-size wicker basket of vegetables, steaming pots hung
over the fire, and the browning row of four chickens on a revolving
spit, that gave out a friendliness and welcome modern kitchens did not
have. Becky finally paused in her work long enough to glance out from
under her hat at Chris.
"Now then, me lad! 'Tis not yet time to eat. That young belly of yours
takes a bit of filling, and no mistake! Be off now, and do you not go
a-bothering Becky for a bit. I will soon call you when all's done."
Chris would have liked to go outside and put his hand on the handle of
the back door, when a momentary confusion overtook him. He wondered if
in going out he would step back into his own time before he had
completed the work Mr. Wicker wanted him to do, and suddenly unsure,
turned away regretfully. Not knowing where else to go, he climbed the
stairs to his bedroom.
Becky had made his bed, and the little room looked spruce. Chris
walked into one of the niches made by the projecting windows, pushed
up the sash, and leaned perilously out.
This was to be the first of many such times that Chris was to lean out
so, king of this new world spread out below him as far as the eye
could reach. A vast and absorbing panorama lay beneath and beyond him.
Immediately below turned Water Street, narrow and muddy, while the
broad wharves and wooden storehouses spaced themselves at intervals
along the shore. Beyond, the sailing ships of all kinds that he had
admired that morning pointed their bowsprits along the docks or swung
at anchor along the river.
Chris looked down at the many vessels. He could not tell one from
another, but names began to drift into his mind from some forgotten
trip to a museum, or from the pages of a book read long ago. Frigate,
schooner, brigantine. Good ships all. The creak of rigging sounded in
the names, the harsh whip of salty winds, and the heart-lifting sight
of white sails cutting across blue water. Chris leaned on his arms,
his eyes shining. If he should ever go to sea in a sailing ship, what
a day that would be! And then he remembered that he must do so if he
were ever to obtain the fabulous Jewel Tree. All at once the dangers
of such a quest were terrifying, and Chris turned his thoughts away
from them to look at the view.
Where the city of Washington lay in his time were only woods and
marshlands. No Monument, no Lincoln Memorial, no houses. Lying in the
river like a great green ship, he could see the island which had once
belonged to his ancestor, George Mason. Once? Now it probably still
did. He could make out figures moving at the bank of it, and a ferry
pushing off from the shore.
[Illustration]
What fun this was! Chris gave a chuckle out loud. What a chance--to
see what once had been! He was enjoying himself increasingly as he
glanced down at the activity along the riverbanks.
[Illustration]
So close to noon, the sailors and stevedores had vanished to eat their
meal, and passers-by were few. The street was nearly deserted when
along the hardened muddy ruts of Water Street Chris heard a wailing
cry: "Pity the blind! Pity the pore blind!" The boy looked down, and
the drop below him to the road made his head swim, until he refused to
think of it. He saw below him a grotesque figure making its way,
turning its head toward the houses as it made its cry.
It was a hunchbacked man with a wooden peg leg and a crutch. Tied
crisscross over his snarled hair were two black eye patches. He was
unshaven and in a rare state of filth, his coat green with age and
speckled with greasy stains, the stocking on his one good leg
wrinkling down into his shoe, and his hands gnarled with long-nailed
fingers. Chris gave an involuntary shudder, but the sight of the man
held his gaze, for he had never seen anyone quite like him before.
As the cripple advanced slowly past the few houses of Water Street,
here and there a window was opened and a coin tossed out, which the
cripple held his cap for, or grubbed with his filthy hands where he
heard it fall. Watching his progress, Chris became fascinated with the
accuracy with which the blind man caught the coins or found them in
the road. After a passing gentleman on horseback had tossed a silver
piece in his direction, the hunchback made off around the corner of
the stables beyond Mr. Wicker's garden.
The boy hung out even farther and craned his neck to see what the
blind man would do, for from his determined gait he seemed to have a
purpose. Feeling along the side of the barn to guide himself, when he
came to the back of it the cripple darted around, and then, to Chris's
amazement, lifted the corner of one black eye patch and peered out
from under it! Seeing no one, and thinking himself unobserved, the
cripple nonchalantly pushed both eye patches onto his forehead, fished
in his pocket, and began examining the silver piece he had just
retrieved. It appeared to satisfy his scrutiny, turn it over and over
though he did, but to be quite sure of its value he bit tentatively on
it with his back teeth. This seemed to be the final test, for the
cripple grinned from ear to ear, disclosing even fewer teeth than
Master Cilley.
Next, the hunchback sat down upon a heap of straw, laying his crutch
beside him, and with a quick movement, wriggled himself out of not
only his jacket but his humpback too!
Chris could scarcely believe his eyes, but he now saw that a false
hump had been cleverly sewn into the jacket from inside. The cripple
untied a patch that formed a trap door in the hump, and putting his
hand inside the hollow, drew from its hiding place in the false hump a
small bag tied at the neck with a string. Then, as Chris watched, he
counted the contents of the bag, pieces of money that winked in the
sun, and added to his horde those pieces he had begged that morning.
The bag was then retied, replaced, and the jacket and hump put back on
its wearer with evident satisfaction.
But the cripple had not yet completed his work. Holding the silver
piece between the blackened stubs of his front teeth, with difficulty
he managed to hoist his peg leg over his good knee. Then, after
darting many a sly look all about him, he unstrapped the wooden peg
off the stump of his leg.
First, from the interior of the stump he pulled out an assortment of
rags used for stuffing, and to cushion the weight of his stump. Then,
after spreading a torn bandanna handkerchief near him, he tipped up
the stump and from its hollow peg, out rained a shower of coins!
Chris looked, and looked again. Gold and silver money flashed on the
crumpled handkerchief, and adding to it the last silver piece he had
held in his teeth, the loathsome cripple stirred the heap around and
around with one dirty forefinger, his mouth stretched in a cackle of
greed.
After a while he caught up the coins, counting them over not once but
many times, and at last let them fall slowly one by one into the
hollow peg of his stump, strapping it back securely. Finally, after
looking about with his face close to the ground to make sure that no
smallest coin had escaped him, the cripple replaced his eye patches
and heaved himself up with his crutch under his arm, turning to make
his way once more toward the docks and the ships. His wailing cry
lagged behind him like a cur dog: "Pity the blind! Pity the pore
crippled blind!" Yet Chris now noticed that his head was tilted back
to enable him to see under the patches as he went.
The boy was straining to see him out of sight when a resounding bellow
from Becky Boozer let him know that dinner was ready. Hastily shutting
the window and running downstairs, Chris could think of only one
thing.
"Becky!" he cried, bursting out at the bottom of the stairs, "Who is
the blind man that just went by--the hunchback?"
Becky never even turned from the plate she was preparing. "Oh, him?
That would be Simon Gosler, one of Claggett Chew's men. How he can be
a sailor beats me, but Claggett Chew has hired him for years, plague
take him! Now," and she came toward the sunny table with a beaming
smile, "eat up, young man, or I shall think my cooking does not please
you!"
Chris hurriedly set about proving his appreciation.