Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the PlainsEwing, Juliana Horatia
Philosophy
Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the Plains
Ewing, Juliana Horatia
Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Country life -- England -- Juvenile fiction
One day as he sat “making pigs” for one after another of the group of
children round him, a pig of especial humor having drawn a murmur of
delight from the circle, this murmur was dismally echoed by a sob from a
little maid on the outside of the group. It was Master Chuter’s little
daughter, a pretty child, with an oval, dainty-featured face, and a prim
gentleness about her, like a good little girl in a good little story.
The intervening young rustics began to nudge each other and look back at
her.
“Kitty Chuter be crying!” they whispered.
“What be amiss with ’ee, then, Kitty Chuter?” said Jan, looking up from
his work; and the question was passed on with some impatience, as her
tears prevented her reply. “What be amiss with ’ee?”
“Janny Lake have never made a pig for I,” sobbed the little maid, with
her head dolefully inclined to her left shoulder, and her oval face
pulled to a doubly pensive length. “I axed my vather to let me get him a
posy, and a said I might. And I got un some vine Bloody Warriors, and a
heap of Boy’s Love off our big bush, that smelled beautiful. And vather
says a can have some water-blobs off our pond when they blows. But Tommy
Green met I as a was coming down to school, and a snatched my vlowers
from me, and I begged un to let me keep some of un, and a only laughed at
me. And I daren’t go back, for I was late; and now I’ve nothin’ to give
Janny Lake to make a draft of a pig for I.” And, having held up for the
telling of her tale, the little maid broke down in fresh tears.
Jan finished off the tail of the pig he was drawing with a squeak of the
pencil that might have come from the pig itself and, stuffing the slate
into its owner’s hands, he ran up to Kitty Chuter and kissed her wet
cheeks, saying, “Give I thee slate, Kitty Chuter, and I’ll make thee the
best pig of all. I don’t want nothing from thee for ’t. And when
school’s done, I’ll whop Tommy Green, if I sees him.”
And forthwith, without looking from the door for studies, Jan drew a fat
sow with her little ones about her; the other children clustering round
to peep, and crying, “He’ve made Kitty Chuter one, two, three, vour,
_vive_ pigs!”
“Ah, and there be two more you can’t see, because the old un be lying on
’em,” said Jan.
“Six, seven!” William counted; and he assisted the calculation by
sticking up first a thumb and then a forefinger as he spoke.
Some who had not thought half a ball of string, or a dozen nails as good
as new, too much to pay for a single pig drawn on one side of their
slates, and only lasting as long as they could contrive to keep the other
side in use without quite smudging that one, were now disposed to be
dissatisfied with their bargains. But as the school broke up, and Tom
Green was seen loitering on the other side of the road, every thing was
forgotten in the general desire to see Jan carry out his threat, and
“whop” a boy bigger than himself for bullying a little girl.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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