Sam nodded assent.
Wal, that does beat everything. I should like to go an see something like that, sometime. Ef I git a book, will you learn me to draw a church same as you do, Mr. Sam?
Bless yer eart, yes, Sam answered quickly, and turned with swimming eyes to weed the rest of the peppermint. From that day forth, Sam Churchill and Hiram Winthrop were sworn friends through all their troubles.
CHAPTER II. RURAL ENGLAND
It was a beautiful July morning, and Colin Churchill and Minna Wroe were playing together in the fritillary fields at Wootton Mandeville. At twelve years old, the intercourse of lad and maiden is still ingenuous; and Colin was just twelve, though little Minna might still have been some two years his junior. A tall, slim, fair-haired boy was Colin Churchill, with deep-blue eyes more poetical in their depth and intensity than one might have expected from a little Dorsetshire peasant child. Minna, on the other hand, was shorter and darker; a gipsy-looking girl, black-haired and tawny-skinned; and with two little beady-black eyes that glistened and ran over every moment with contagious merriment. Two prettier children you wouldnt have found anywhere that day in the whole county of Dorset than Minna Wroe and Colin Churchill.
They had gathered flowers till they were tired of them in the broad spongy meadow; they had played hide-and-seek among the eighteenth-century tombstones in the big old churchyard; they had quarrelled and made it up again half a dozen times over in pure pettishness: and now, by way of a distraction, Minna said at last coaxingly: Do ee, Colin, do ee come down to the lake yonder and make I a bit of a vigger-ead.
Dont ee worrit me, Minna, Colin answered, like a young lady who refuses to sing, half-heartedly (meaning all the time that one should ask her again): Dont ee see I be tired? I dont want vor to go makin no vigger-eads vor ee, I tell ee.
But Minna would have one: on that she insisted: What a vinnid lad ee be, she cried petulantly, not to want to make I a vigger-ead. Now do ee, Cohn, thers a a good boy; do ee, an Ill gee ee arf my peppermint cushions, come Saturday.
I dont want none o your cushions, Minna, Colin answered, with a boys gallantry; but come along down to the lake if ee will: Ill make ee dree or vower vigger-eads, never vear, an them vine uns too, if so be as you want em.
They went together down to the brook at the corner of the meadow (called a lake in the Dorsetshire dialect); and there, at a spot where the plastic clay came to the surface in a little cliff at a bend of the stream, Colin carved out a fine large lump of shapeless raw material from the bank, which he forthwith proceeded to knead up with his hands and a sprinkling of water from the rill into a beautiful sticky consistency. Minna watched the familiar operation with deepest interest, and added from time to time a word or two of connoisseur criticism: Now theest got it too wet, Colin; or, Take care thee dont putt in too much of thik there blue earth yonder; or, Thats about right vor the viggeread now, Im thinkin; theed better begin makin it now avore the clay gets too dried up.
As soon as Colin had worked the clay up to what he regarded as the proper requirements of his art, he began modelling it dexterously with his fingers into the outer form and fashion of a ships figure-head: Whatll ee ave virst, Minna? he asked as he roughly moulded the mass into a bold outward curve, that would have answered equally well for any figure-head in the whole British merchant navy.
Ill ave the Mariar-Ann, Minna answered with a nod of her small black head in the direction of the mouth in the valley, where the six petty fishing vessels of Wootton Mandeville stood drawn up together in a long straight row on the ridge of shingle. The Mariar-Ann was the collier that came monthly from Cardiff, and its figure-head represented a gilded lady, gazing over the waves with a vacant smile, and draped in a flowing crimson costume of no very particular historical period.
Cohn worked away at the clay vigorously for a few minutes with fingers and knife by turns, and at the end of that time he had produced a very creditable figure-head indeed, accurately representing in its main features the gilded lady of the Mariar-Ann.
Oh, how lovely! Minna cried, delighted. Thiks the best theest made, Colin. Lets bake un and keep un always.
Take un ome an bake un yourself, Minna, the boy answered. We aint got no vire ere. Whatll I make ee now? Nother vigger-ead?
No! Minna cried, with a happy inspiration.
Make myself, Colin.
The boy eyed her carefully from head to foot. I dont spose I can do ee, Minna, he answered after a pause. Howsonedever, Ill try; and he took a fresh lump of the kneaded clay, and began working it up loosely into a rough outline of the girls figure. It was his first attempt at modelling from life, and he went at it with careful deliberation. Minna posed before him in her natural attitude, and Colin called her back every minute or two when she got impatient, and kept his little sitter steadily posed till the portrait statuette was fairly finished. Critical justice compels the admission that Colin Churchills first figure from life was not an entirely successful work of sculpture. Its expression was distinctly feeble; its pose was weak and uncertain; its drapery was marked by a frank disregard of folds and a bold conventionalism; and, last of all, it ended abruptly at the short dress, owing to certain mechanical difficulties in the way of supporting the heavy body on a pair of slender moist clay legs. Still, it distinctly suggested the notion of a human being; it remotely resembled a little girl; and it even faintly adumbrated, in figure at least, if not in feature, Minna Wroe herself.
But if the work of art failed a little when judged by the stern tribunal of adult criticism, it certainly more than satisfied both the young artist and the subject of his plastic skill. They gazed at the completed figure with the deepest admiration, and Minna even ventured to express a decided opinion that anybody in the world would know it was meant for her. Which high standard of artistic portraiture has been known to satisfy much older and more exalted critics, including many ladies and gentlemen of distinction who have wasted the time of good sculptors by having their busts taken.
Meanwhile, down in the village by the shore, Geargey Wroe, Minnas father, was standing by a little garden gate, where Sam Churchill the elder was carefully tending his cabbages and melons. Zeen our Minna, Sam! he asked over the paling. Whers er to, dost know? Off zumwhere with yer Colin, Ill be bound, Sammy. Theyre always off zumwhere together, them two is, I vancy. Es up to is drawin or zummat down to lake there. Such a lad vor drawin an that I never did zee. Ows bisness, Sammy?
Purty good, Geargey, purty good. Volks be a-comin in now an takin lodgins, wantin garden stuff and such like. First-rate family from London come yesterday down to Walkers. Turble rich volk I should say by the look o un. Ordered a power o fruit and zum vegetables.Ows vishin, Geargey? Bad, Geargey answered, shaking his head ominously: as bad as ur could be. Towns turble empty still: nobody come ceptin a lot o good-vor-nothin meetingers. Ootton aint wot it ad used to be, Sammy, zince these ere rail-rawds. Wot we wants is the rail-rawd to come ere to town, so volks can get ere aisy, like they can to Sayton. Then wed get zum real gintlevolk who got money in their pockets to spend, anll spend it vree and aisy to the tradesmen, and the boatmen, and the vishermen; thats wot we wants, dont us, Sammy?