The Maid of SkerBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
General
The Maid of Sker
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
Foundlings -- Fiction; Romance fiction; Wales -- Fiction
The seventh and last child had been a girl--a sweet little creature as
could be seen, and taking after Watkin. But she had something on her
throat from six months up to six years old; and when she died, some
three months back, people who had been in the house said that her mother
would sooner have lost all the boys put together, if you left Watkin out
of them. How that was I cannot say, and prefer to avoid those subjects.
But I know that poor black Evan swore no oath worth speaking of for one
great market and two small ones, but seemed brought down to sit by
himself, drinking quietly all day long.
When we came to the ancient hall (or kitchen, as now they called it),
for a moment I was vexed--expecting more of a rush, perhaps, than I was
entitled to. Knowing how much that young child owed me for her
preservation, and feeling how fond I was of her, what did I look for but
wild delight at seeing "old Davy" back again? However, it seems, she had
taken up with another and forgotten me.
Watkin, the youngest boy of Sker, was an innocent good little fellow,
about twelve years old at that time. Bardie had found this out already;
as quickly as she found out my goodness, even by the moonlight. She had
taken the lead upon Watkin, and was laying down the law to him, upon a
question of deep importance, about the manner of dancing. I could dance
a hornpipe with anybody, and forward I came to listen.
"No, no, no! I tell 'a. 'E mustn't do like that, Yatkin. 'E must go
yound and yound like this; and 'e must hold 'a cothes out, same as I
does. Gardy là! 'E must hold 'a cothes out all the time, 'e must."
The little atom, all the time she delivered these injunctions, was
holding out her tiny frock in the daintiest manner, and tripping
sideways here and there, and turning round quite upon tiptoe, with her
childish figure poised, and her chin thrown forward; and then she would
give a good hard jump, but all to the tune of the brass jew's-harp which
the boy was playing for his very life. And all the while she was doing
this, the amount of energy and expression in her face was wonderful. You
would have thought there was nothing else in all the world that required
doing with such zeal and abandonment. Presently the boy stopped for a
moment, and she came and took the knee of his trousers, and put it to
her pretty lips with the most ardent gratitude.
"She must be a foreigner," said I to myself: "no British child could
dance like that, and talk so; and no British child ever shows
gratitude."
As they had not espied us yet, where we stood in the passage-corner, I
drew Bunny backward, and found her all of a tremble with eagerness to go
and help.
"More pay," said little missy, with a coaxing look; "more pay, Yatkin!"
"No, no. You must say 'more play, please, Watkin.'"
"See voo pay, Yatkin; I 'ants--more pay!" The funny thing laughed at
herself while saying it, as if with some comic inner sense of her own
insatiability in the matter of play.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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