Country life -- England -- Fiction; Pastoral fiction; Villages -- England -- Fiction
What an ill-conditioned hobgoblin it is! And yet
there is something bold and sturdy about him too. I should miss Jem
Eusden.
Ah, there is another deserter from the party! my friend the little
hussar--I do not know his name, and call him after his cap and jacket.
He is a very remarkable person, about the age of eight years, the
youngest piece of gravity and dignity I ever encountered; short,
and square, and upright, and slow, with a fine bronzed flat
visage, resembling those convertible signs the Broad-Face and the
Saracen's-Head, which, happening to be next-door neighbours in the
town of B., I never knew apart, resembling, indeed, any face that is
open-eyed and immovable, the very sign of a boy! He stalks about with
his hands in his breeches pockets, like a piece of machinery; sits
leisurely down when he ought to field, and never gets farther in batting
than to stop the ball. His is the only voice never heard in the melee:
I doubt, indeed, if he have one, which may be partly the reason of a
circumstance that I record to his honour, his fidelity to Jem Eusden,
to whom he has adhered through every change of fortune, with a tenacity
proceeding perhaps from an instinctive consciousness that the loquacious
leader talks enough for two. He is the only thing resembling a follower
that our demagogue possesses, and is cherished by him accordingly.
Jem quarrels for him, scolds for him, pushes for him; and but for
Joe Kirby's invincible good-humour, and a just discrimination of the
innocent from the guilty, the activity of Jem's friendship would get the
poor hussar ten drubbings a day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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