the miller’s letter.—a new pot boiler sold.
jan was very happy, and the brief dream of the “jook” was over, but his heart clung to his old home. if love and care, if tenderness in sickness and teaching in health, are parental qualities, why should he seek another parent than master swift? and had he not a foster-father to whom he was bound by all those filial ties of up-bringing from infancy, and of a common life, a common trade, and common joys and sorrows in the past, such as could bind him to no other father?
he begged a bit of paper from the painter, and wrote a letter to master lake, which would have done more credit to the schoolmaster’s instructions had it been less blotted with tears. he besought his foster-father not to betray him to the cheap jack, and he inquired tenderly after the schoolmaster and rufus.
the windmiller was no great scholar, as was shown by his reply:—
“my dear jan,
“your welcome letter to hand, and i do hope, my dear jan, it finds you well as it leave me at present. i be mortal bad with a cough, and your friends as searched everywhere, and dragged every place for you, encluding the plains for twenty mile round and down by the watermill. that cheap john be no more your vather nor mine, an e’d better not show his dirty vace yearabouts after all he stole. but your poor mother, she was allus took in by him, but she said with her own mouth, that woman be no more the child’s mother, and never wos a mother, and your mother knowed wots wot, poor zowl! and i’m glad, my dear jan, you be doing well in a genteel line, though i did hope you’d take to the mill; but work is slack, and i’m not wot i wos, and i do miss master swift. he had a stroke after you left, and confined to the house, so i will conclude, my dear jan, and go down and rejoice his heart to hear you be alive. i’d main like to see you, jan, my dear, and so for sartin would he and all enquiring friends; and i am till deth your loving vather, or as good, and i shan’t grudge you if so be you finds a better.
“abel lake.”
“p.s. i’d main like to see your vace again, jan, my dear.”
jan sobbed so bitterly in reading the postscript that, after vain attempts to console him by chaff, the bow-legged boy wept from sympathy.
as to the painter, the whole letter so caught his capricious fancy that he was for ever questioning jan as to the details of his life in that out-of-the-world district where the purest breath of heaven turned the sails of the windmill, and where the miller took payment for his work “in kind.”
“it must be a wonderful spot, giotto,” said he; “and, if i were richer, just now we’d go down together, and paint sunsets, and see your friends.” and he walked up and down the studio, revolving his new caprice, whilst jan tried to think if any thing were likely to bring money into his master’s pocket before long. suddenly the artist seized a sketch that was lying near, and, turning it over, began one on the other side, questioning jan as he drew. “what do old country wives dress in down yonder?—what did you wear in the mill?—where does the light come from in a round-house,” etc.
presently he flung it to jan, and, in answer to the boy’s cry of admiration, growled, “ay, ay. you must do what you can now, for every after-touch of mine will spoil it. there are hundreds of men, giotto, whose sketches are good, and their paintings daubs. but it is only the sketches of great men that sell. the public likes canvas and linseed oil for its money, where small reputations are concerned.”
the sketch was of a peep into the round-house. jan, toll-dish in hand, with a quaint business gravity, was met by a dame who was just raising her old back after letting down her sack of gleanings, with garrulous good-humor in her blinking eyes and withered face.
“chiaroscuro good,” dictated the painter; “execution sketchy; coloring quiet, to be in keeping with the place and subject, but pure. you know the scene better than i, so work away, giotto. motto—’will ye pay or toll it, mother?’ price twenty-five guineas. take it to what’s-his-name’s, and if it sells we’ll go to arcadia, giotto mio! the very thought of those breezes is as quinine to my languid faculties!”
jan worked hard at the new “pot boiler.” the artist painted the boy’s figure himself, and jan did most of the rest. the bow-legged boy stooped in a petticoat as a model for the old woman, murmuring at intervals, “oh, my, here is a game!” and, when the painter had left the room, his grave speculations as to whether the withered face of the dame were a good likeness of his own chubby cheeks made jan laugh till he could hardly hold his palette. it was done at last, and jan took it to the picture-dealer’s.
the poor boy could hardly keep out of the street where the picture-dealer lived. one afternoon, as he was hanging about the window, the business gentleman came by and asked kindly after his welfare. jan was half ashamed of the hope with which he told the tale of the pot boiler.
“and you did some of it?” said the business gentleman, peering in through his spectacles.
“only the painting, sir, not the design,” said jan.
“and you want very much to go and see your old home?”
“i do, sir,” said jan.
the business gentleman put his gold spectacles into their case, and laid his hand on jan’s shoulder. “i am not much of a judge of genius,” said he, “but if you have it, and if you live to make a fortune by it, remember, my boy, that there is no luxury which money puts in a man’s power like the luxury of helping others.” with which he stepped briskly into the picture-dealer’s.
and half an hour afterwards jan burst into the painter’s studio, crying, “it’s sold, sir!”
“sold!” shouted the painter, in boyish glee. “hooray! where’s that rascal bob? oh, i know! i sent him for the beer. giotto, my dear fellow, i have some shooting-boots somewhere, if you can find them, and a tourist’s knapsack, and”—
but jan had started to find the boots, and the bow-legged boy, who had overheard the news as he left the house, rushed up the street, with his head down, crying, “it’s sold! it’s sold!” and, as he ran, he jostled against a man in a white apron, carrying a pot of green paint to some area railings.
“wot’s sold?” said he, testily, as he recovered his balance.
“you a painter, and don’t know?” said the rosy-cheeked boy. “oh, my! wot’s sold? why, i’m sold, and it’s sold. that walable picter i wos about to purchase for my mansion in piccadilly.” and, feigning to burst into a torrent of tears, he darted round the corner and into the public-house.
