A Rough Shaking by George MacDonald (simple ebook reader TXT) 📖

The adopted child of a clergyman might well be acquainted with Paradise Lost , though she herself had never read more of it than the apostrophe to Light in the beginning of the third book! That she had learned at school without understanding phrase or sentence of it; while Clare never left passage alone until he understood it, or, failing that, had invented a meaning for it.

"Well, then, Clare, I've been talking to my gardener about you," said Miss Tempest. "He will give you a job."

"God bless you, ma'am! I'm ready!" cried Clare, stretching out his arms, as if to get them to the proper length for work. "Where shall I find him?"

"You must have breakfast first."

She led the way to the kitchen.

The cook, a middle-aged woman, looked at the dog, and her face puckered all over with points of interrogation and exclamation.

"Please, cook, will you give this young man some breakfast? He wanted to go to work without any, but that wouldn't do-would it, cook?" said her mistress.

"I hope the dog won't be running in and out of my kitchen all day, ma'am!"

"No fear of that, cook!" said Clare; "he never leaves me."

"Then I don't think-I'm afraid," she began, and stopped. "-But that's none of my business," she added. "John will look after his own-and more!"

Miss Tempest said nothing, but she almost trembled; for John, she knew, had a perfect hatred of dogs. Nor could anyone wonder, for, gate open or gate shut, in they came and ran over his beds. She dared not interfere! He and Clare must settle the question of Abdiel or no Abdiel between them! She left the kitchen.

The cook threw the dog a crust of bread, and Abdiel, after a look at his master, fell upon it with his white, hungry little teeth. Then she proceeded to make a cup of coffee for Clare, casting an occasional glance of pity at his garments, so miserably worn and rent, and his brown bare feet.

"How on the face of this blessed world, boy, do you expect to work in the garden without shoes?" she said at length.

"Most things I can do well enough without them," answered Clare; "-even digging, if the ground is not very hard. My feet used to be soft, but now the soles of them are like leather.-They've grown their own shoes," he added, with a smile, and looked straight in her eyes.

The smile and the look went far to win her heart, as they had won that of her mistress: she felt them true, and wondered how such a fair-spoken, sweet-faced boy could be on the tramp. She poured him out a huge cup of coffee, fried him a piece of bacon, and cut him as much bread and butter as he could dispose of. He had not often eaten anything but dry bread, in general very dry, since he left the menagerie, and now felt feasted like an emperor. Pleased with the master, the cook fed the dog with equal liberality; and then, curious to witness their reception by John, between whom and herself was continuous feud, she conducted Clare to the gardener. From a distance he saw them coming. With look irate fixed upon the dog, he started to meet them. Clare knew too well the meaning of that look, and saw in him Satan regarding Abdiel with eye of fire, and the words on his lips-

"And fly, ere evil intercept thy flight."

The moment he came near enough, without word, or show of malice beyond what lay in his eye, he made, with the sharp hoe he carried, a sudden downstroke at the faithful angel, thinking to serve him as Gabriel served Moloch. But Abdiel was too quick for him: he had read danger in his very gait the moment he saw him move, and enmity in his eyes when he came nearer. He kept therefore his own eyes on the hoe, and never moved until the moment of attack. Then he darted aside. The weapon therefore came down on the hard gravel, jarring the arm of his treacherous enemy. With a muttered curse John followed him and made another attempt, which Abdiel in like manner eluded. John followed and followed; Abdiel fled and fled-never farther than a few yards, seeming almost to entice the man's pursuit, sometimes pirouetting on his hind legs to escape the blows which the gardener, growing more and more furious with failure, went on aiming at him. Fruitlessly did Clare assure him that neither would the dog do any harm, nor allow any one to hit him. It was from very weariness that at last he desisted, and wiping his forehead with his shirt-sleeve, turned upon Clare in the smothered wrath that knows itself ridiculous. For all the time the cook stood by, shaking with delighted laughter at his every fresh discomfiture.

"Awa', ye deil's buckie," he cried, "an tak' the little Sawtan wi' ye! Dinna lat me see yer face again."

"But the lady told me you would give me a job!" said Clare.

"I didna tell her I wad gie yer tyke a job! I wad though, gien he wad lat me!"

"He's given you a stiff one!" said the cook, and laughed again.

The gardener took no notice of her remark.

"Awa' wi' ye!" he cried again, yet more wrathfully, "-or-"

He raised his hand.

Clare looked in his eyes and did not budge.

"For shame, John!" expostulated the cook. "Would you strike a child?"

"I'm no child, cook!" said Clare. "He can't hurt me much. I've had a good breakfast!"

"Lat 'im tak' awa' that deevil o' a tyke o' his, as I tauld him," thundered the gardener, "or I'll mak" a pulp o' 'im!"

"I've had such a breakfast, sir, as I'm bound to give a whole day's work in return for," said Clare, looking up at the angry man; "and I won't stir till I've done it. Stolen food on my stomach would turn me sick!"

"Gien it did, it wadna be the first time, I reckon!" said the gardener.

"It would be the first time!" returned Clara "You are very rude.-If Abdiel understood Scotch, he would bite you," he added, as the dog, hearing his master speak angrily, came up, ears erect, and took his place at his side, ready for combat.

"Ye'll hae to tak' some ither mode o' payin' the debt!" said John. "Stick spaud in yird here, ye sall not! You or I maun flit first!"

With that he walked slowly away, shouldering his hoe.

"Come, Abdiel," said Clare; "we must go and tell Miss Tempest! Perhaps she'll find something else for us to do. If she can't, she'll forgive us our breakfast, and we'll be off on the tramp again. I thought we were going to have a day's rest-I mean work; that's the rest we want! But this man is an enemy to the poor."

The gardener half turned, as if he would speak, but changed his mind and went his way.

"Never mind John!" said the cook, loud enough for John to hear. "He's an old curmudgeon as can't sleep o' nights for quarrellin' inside him. I'll go to mis'ess, and you go and sit down in the kitchen till I come to you."


Chapter LIV.

The Kitchen.


Clare went into the kitchen, and sat down. The housemaid came in, and stood for a moment looking at him. Then she asked him what he wanted there.

"Cook told me to wait here," he answered.

"Wait for what?"

"Till she came to me. She's gone to speak to Miss Tempest."

"I won't have that dog here."

"When I had a home," remarked Clare, "our servant said the cook was queen of the kitchen: I don't want to be rude, ma'am, but I must do as she told me."

"She never told you to bring that mangy animal in here!"

"She knew he would follow me, and she said nothing about him. But he's not mangy. He hasn't enough to eat to be mangy. He's as lean as a dried fish!"

The housemaid, being fat, was inclined to think the remark personal; but Clare looked up at her with such clear, honest, simple eyes, that she forgot the notion, and thought what a wonderfully nice boy he looked.

"He's shamefully poor, though! His clothes ain't even decent!" she remarked to herself.

And certainly the white skin did look through in several places.

"You won't let him put his nose in anything, will you?" she said quite gently, returning his smile with a very pleasant one of her own.

"Abdiel is too much of a gentleman to do it," he answered.

"A dog a gentleman!" rejoined the housemaid with a merry laugh, willing to draw him out.

"Abdiel can be hungry and not greedy," answered Clare, and the young woman was silent.

Miss Tempest and Mrs. Mereweather had all this time been turning over the question of what was to be done with the strange boy. They agreed it was too bad that anyone willing to work should be prevented from earning even a day's victuals by the bad temper of a gardener. But his mistress did not want to send the man away. She had found him scrupulously honest, as is many a bad-tempered man, and she did not like changes. The cook on her part had taken such a fancy to Clare that she did not want him set to garden-work; she would have him at once into the house, and begin training him for a page. Now Miss Tempest was greatly desiring the same thing, but in dread of what the cook would say, and was delighted, therefore, when the first suggestion of it came from Mrs. Mereweather herself. The only obstacle in the cook's eyes was that same long, spectral dog. The boy could not be such a fool, however,-she said, not being a lover of animals-as let a wretched beast like that come betwixt him and a good situation!

"It's all right, Clare," said Mrs. Mereweather, entering her queendom so radiant within that she could not repress the outshine of her pleasure. "Mis'ess an' me, we've arranged it all. You're to help me in the kitchen; an' if you can do what you're told, an' are willin' to learn, we'll soon get you out of your troubles. There's but one thing in the way."

"What is it, please?" asked Clare.

"The dog, of course! You must part with the dog."

"That I cannot do," returned Clare quietly, but with countenance fallen and sorrowful. "-Come, Abdiel!"

The dog started up, every hair of him full of electric vitality.

"You don't mean you're going to walk yourself off in such a beastly ungrateful fashion-an' all for a miserable cur!" exclaimed the cook.

"The lady has been most kind to us, and we're grateful to her, and ready to work for her if she will let us;-ain't we, Abdiel? But Abdiel has done far more for me than Miss Tempest! To part with Abdiel, and leave him to starve, or get into bad company, would be sheer ingratitude. I should be a creature such as Miss Tempest ought to have nothing to do with: I might serve her as that young butler I told her of! It's just as bad to be ungrateful to a dog as to any other person. Besides, he wouldn't leave me. He would be always hanging about."

"John would soon knock him on the