Our Frank, Amy Walton [best ereader for epub .txt] 📗

the sun it was about four o'clock, and he must be a long way from Green Highlands. He dropped down in a little crumpled heap at the foot of a tree, and shut his eyes--nothing seemed to matter much, not even his father's anger; nothing but this dreadful gnawing pain. The only other thing he was conscious of was a distant continuous sound like the sawing of wood. He did not take much notice of this at first, but by and by as it went on and on monotonously the idea shaped itself in his mind that where that noise was there must be people, whom he could ask for food, and he got up and staggered on again. As he went the sound got louder and louder, and he could also hear a voice singing. This encouraged him so much that he quickened his pace to a run, and soon came to a great clearing in the wood. And then he saw what had caused the noise.

Felled trees were lying about in the round open space, and there were great heaps of curly yellow shavings, and strange-looking smooth pieces of wood carefully arranged in piles. Two little sheds stood at some distance from each other, and in one of these sat a man turning a piece of wood in a rudely fashioned lathe; as he finished it he handed it to a boy kneeling at his feet, who supplied him with more wood, and sang at his work in a loud, clear voice. And then a still more interesting object caught Frank's eye, for in the middle of the clearing there burned and crackled a lively little wood-fire, and over it, hanging from a triangle of three sticks, was a smoky black kettle. It held tea, he felt sure, and near it were some tin mugs and some nice little bundles of something tied up in spotted handkerchiefs. It all suggested agreeable preparations for a meal, and he felt he must join it at any risk.

He stood timidly at the edge of the wood observing all this for a minute, and then, as no one noticed him, he slowly advanced till he was close to the man and boy; then they looked up and saw him.

A wayworn, weary little figure he was, with a white face and mournful blue eyes; he had a shrinking, frightened air, like some hunted creature of the woods; and here and there the dry brown leaves had stuck to his clothes. Holding out his hand, and speaking in a low voice, for he felt ashamed of begging when it came to the point, he said:

"Please can yer give me a morsel of bread?"

The man, who had kind slow brown eyes and a very placid face, looked at him without speaking, and shook his head at the outstretched hand. But the boy answered with a wide-mouthed grin:

"He's hard o' hearin', my pardner is. He don't know what yer say."

He then rose, and going close to the man shouted shrilly in his ear:

"Little chap wants summat t'eat."

The man nodded.

"He's welcome to jine at tea," he said, "and he can work it out arterwards. Where dost come from?" to Frank.

Frank hesitated; then he thought of a village several miles beyond Danecross, and answered boldly, "Dinton."

"And where art goin'?"

"I'm seekin' work," said Frank.

These answers having been yelled into his ear by the boy, the man asked no further questions, though he gravely considered the stranger with his large quiet eyes. Shortly afterwards, having been joined by the mate who was sawing in the other shed, the company disposed themselves round the fire, and to Frank's great joy the meal began. And what a meal it was! Roasted potatoes, tea, thick hunches of bread, small fragments of fat bacon, all pervaded with a slight flavour of smoke--could anything be more delicious to a famished boy? Frank abandoned himself silently to the enjoyment of it; and though his companions cast interested glances at him from time to time, no one spoke. It was a very quiet assembly. All round and above them the new little green leaves danced and twinkled, and on the ground the old ones made a rich brown carpet; the blue smoke of the fire rose thinly up in the midst.

At last Frank gave a deep sigh of contentment as he put down his tin mug, and the deaf man clapped him kindly on the shoulder.

"Hast taken the edge off, little chap?" he said.

Then the two men, stretched luxuriously on the ground, filled their pipes and smoked in silence. The boy, who was about Frank's own age, but brown-faced and stoutly built, busied himself in clearing away the remains of the meal, and in carefully making up the fire with dry chips and shavings; he seemed to have caught the infection of silence from his companions, and eyed the stranger guest without speaking a word. But Frank, who was revived and cheered by his food, felt inclined for a little conversation; he was always of an inquisitive turn of mind, and he was longing to ask some questions; so as the boy passed near him he ventured to say, pointing to the neat piles of wood:

"What be yon?"

The boy stared.

"Yon?" he repeated; "why, yon be legs and rungs of cheers--that's what we make 'em fur."

"Where be the cheers?" pursued Frank.

"We send all yon down to Wickham, to the cheer factory," answered the boy; "we don't fit 'em together here."

He seated himself at Frank's side as he spoke, and poked at the fire with a long pointed stick.

"How do they get 'em down to Wickham?" asked Frank, bent on getting as much information as possible.

The boy pointed to a broad cart-track, which descended abruptly from one side of the clearing.

"They fetch a cart up yonder, and take 'em down into the high-road."

"And how fur is it?"

"A matter of two miles, and then three miles further to the factory, and there they make 'em up into cheers, and then they send 'em up to Lunnon Town by the rail."

Frank remembered the great cart-loads of chairs that he had seen passing through Danecross, but what chiefly struck him in his companion's answer were the two words "Lunnon Town." They fell on his ear with a new meaning. He had read of Lunnon Town, and heard schoolmaster talk of it, but had never imagined it as a place he could see, any more than America. Now, suddenly, an idea of such vast enterprise seized on his mind, that it stunned him into silence. He would go to Lunnon Town! Everyone became rich there. He would become rich too; then he would go back to Green Highlands, and give all his money to mother; there would be no need for any more field-work, and they would all be happy. At the thought of mother his eyes filled with tears, for he knew how unhappy she would be when he did not come back, and how she would stand at the door and look out for him. He longed to set about making this great fortune at once, it seemed a waste of time to sit idle; but he knew he must rest that night, for his legs felt stiff and aching; besides he had to work out his meal.

In half an hour the deaf man's lathe was hard at work again, and the two boys busily employed near. Frank's new friend showed him how to arrange the pieces of wood neatly in piles when they were turned and smoothed. He hummed a tune in the intervals of conversation and presently asked:

"Can yer sing?"

Frank _could_ sing--very well. He was one of the best singers in Danecross choir, and Mrs Darvell held her head very high when she heard her boy's voice in church; so he answered with a certain pride:

"Ah, I can sing proper well."

"Sing summat," said the boy.

Frank waited a minute to choose a tune, and then sang "Ring the Bell, Watchman," straight through. The boy listened attentively, and joined, after the second verse, in the chorus, which was also taken up in a gruff and uncertain manner by the mate in the other shed. The deaf man looked on approvingly, and the lathe kept up a grinding accompaniment.

"That's fine, that is," said the boy when the last notes of Frank's clear voice died away. "Do yer know any more?"

"I know a side more," said Frank, "and hymns too."

"Can yer sing `Home Sweet Home?'" asked the boy.

"Ah."

But this song was not so successful, for after the chorus had been sung with great animation, and the second verse eagerly expected, something choked and gurgled in Frank's throat so that he could not sing any more. All that night, as he lay on the bed of shavings, which he shared with his new companion, he waked at intervals to hear those words echoing through the woods: "Home Sweet Home--There's no place like Home." But with the morning sun these sounds vanished, and he began his onward journey cheerily, refreshed by his rest and food. As he went down the cart-track the boy had pointed out to him he sang scraps of songs to himself, the birds twittered busily above his head, and the distant sound of the deaf man's lathe came more and more faintly to his ears. He felt sure now that he was on his way to make his fortune, and the wood seemed full of voices which said, "Lunnon Town, Lunnon Town," over and over again. The thought of his mother's sad face was, it is true, a little depressing. "But," he said to himself, "how pleased she'll be when I come back rich!" Then he considered what sort of shawl he would buy for her with the first money he earned--whether it should be a scarlet one, or mixed colours with an apple-green border, like one he had seen once in a shop at Daylesbury.

These fancies beguiled the way, and he was surprised when, after what seemed a short time, he found himself at the edge of the wood, and in a broad high-road; that must be the Wickham Road, and he had still three miles to walk before reaching the town and the chair factories, where he meant to ask for work as a first step on his way to London.

It was not a busy-looking road, and the carts and people who passed now and then seemed to have plenty of time and no wish to hurry; still, to Frank, who was used to the solitude of Green Highlands and the deeper quiet of the woods, it felt like getting into the world, and he looked down at his clothes, and wondered how they would suit a large town. He wore a smock, high brown leather gaiters reaching almost to his thighs, and very thick hobnailed boots. He wished he had his Sunday coat on instead of the smock, but the rest of the things would do very well, and they were so strong and good that they would last a long time. So this point settled he trudged on again, till, by twelve o'clock, he saw Wickham in the distance with its gabled red houses and tall factory buildings. And now