The Squire of Sandal-Side, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [the reading list book TXT] 📗

poor
Joe. He had thought over what father said, and _how_ he said it, on
his road down till he found himself getting rather mad about it;
and the way they all snorted and laughed when he came to Skeal-Hill
made him madder; and that bedgown fellow, with his "Joe, sir," made
him madder than ever; but when the old jolly-jist--that he thought
would be so fain to see him, if it was only for the sake of their
sprogue on the fells together--when he wondered "how Joe durst show
his face there," it set Joe rantin' mad, and he _did_ make a burst.

At this point the squire was laughing so noisily that Sophia had to stop; and his hearty ha, ha, ha! was so contagious, that Harry and Julius and Charlotte, and even Mrs. Sandal, echoed it in a variety of merry peals. Sophia was calmer. She sat by the lamp, pleasantly conscious of the amusement she was giving; and, considering that she had already laughed the circumstance out in her room, quite as well entertained as any of the party. In a few minutes the squire recovered himself. "Let us have the rest now, Sophia. I'd have given a gold guinea to have heard Joe's 'burst.'"

"Show my face?" said Joe; "and what should I show, then? If it
comes to showing faces, I've a better face to show than ever
belonged to one of your breed, if the rest of them are aught like
the sample they have sent us. But if you must know," said Joe, "I
come of a stock that never would be frightened to show their face
to a king, let alone an old noodles that calls himself a
jolly-jist. And I defy the face of clay," said Joe, "to show that
any of us ever did aught he need to be ashamed of, wherever we show
our faces. Dare to show my face, eh?" said Joe again, "My song! but
this is a bonnie welcome to give a fellow that has come so far to
see you such a hot morning." Joe said a deal more of the same make;
and all the time he was saying it, the old man laid himself back in
his great chair, and kept twiddling his thumbs, and glancing up at
Joe with a half-smirk on his face, as if he had got something very
funny before him.

"Joe is like all these shepherd lads," said the squire, "as independent as never was. They are a manly race, but the Bulteels all come of a good kind."

Julius laughed scornfully, but the squire took him up very short. "You need not laugh, nephew. It is as I say. The Bulteels are as good stock as the Sandals; a fine old family, and, like the Sandals, at home here when the Conqueror came. Joe would do the right thing I'll be bound. Let us hear if he didn't, Sophia."

After a while Joe stopped, for he had run himself very near short
of wind; and he began rather to think shame of shouting and
bellering so at an old man, and him as whisht as a trout through it
all. And when Joe pulled in, he only said, as quietly as ever was,
that Joe was a "natural curiosity."

Joe didn't know very well what this meant; but he thought it was
sauce, and it had like to have set him off again; but he beat
himself down as well as he could, and he said, "Have you any thing
against me? If you have, speak it out like a man; and don't sit
there twiddling your thumbs, and calling folks out of their names
in this road." Then it came out plain enough. All this ill-nature,
Miss Sandal, was just because poor Joe hadn't brought him the same
stones as he had gathered on the fells; and he said that changing
them was either a very dirty trick, or a very clumsy joke.

"Trick," said Joe. "_Joke_, did you say? It was ratherly past a
joke to expect me to carry a load of broken stones all the way
here, when there was plenty on the spot. I'm not such a fool as
you've taken me for," said Joe. The jolly-jist took off his
spectacles, and glowered at Joe without them. Then he put them on
again, and glowered at Joe with them; and then he laughed, and
asked Joe, if he thought there could be no difference in stones.
"Why!" answered Joe, "you hardly have the face to tell me that one
bag of stones isn't as good as another bag of stones; and surely to
man you'll never be so conceited as to say that you can break
stones better than old Abraham Atchisson, who breaks them for his
bread, and breaks them all day long and every day."

With that the old man laughed again, and told Joe to sit down; and
then he asked him what he thought made him take so much trouble
seeking bits of stone on the fells, if he could get what he wanted
on the road-side. "Well," Joe said, "if I must tell you the truth,
I thought you were rather soft in the head; but it made no matter
what I thought, so long as you paid me so well for going with you."
As Joe said this, it came into his head that it was better to
flatter a fool than to fight him; and after all, that there might
be something in the old man liking stones of his own breaking
better than those of other folks' breaking. We all think the most
of what we have had a hand in ourselves, don't we Miss Sandal? It's
nothing but natural. And as soon as this run, through Joe's head,
he found himself getting middling sorry for the old man; and he
said, "What will you give me to get you your own bits of stones
back again?"

He cocked up his ears at that, and asked if his "speciments," as he
called them, were safe. "Ay," said Joe, "they are safe enough.
Nobody hereabout thinks a little lot of stones worth meddling with,
so long as they don't lie in their road." With that the jolly-jist
jumped up, and said Joe must have something to eat and drink. Then
Joe thought to himself, "Come, come, we are getting back to our own
menseful way again." But he would not stir a peg till he heard
what he was to have for getting the stones again; for Joe knew he
would never hear the last of it, if he came home empty-handed. They
made it all right very soon, however; and the old man went
up-stairs, and brought down the two leather bags, and gave them to
Joe to carry, as if nothing had happened; and off they started,
very like as they did before.

The Skeal-Hill folk all gathered together about the door to look
after them, as if they had been a show; but they neither of them
minded for that, but walked away as thick as inkle-weavers till
they got to the foot of our great meadow, where the stones were all
lying just as Joe had turned them out of the bags, only rather
grown over with grass. And as Joe picked them up one by one, and
handed them to the old jolly-jist, it did Joe's heart good to see
how pleased he looked. He wiped them on his coat-cuff, and wet
them, and glowered at them through his spectacles, as if they were
something good to eat, and he was very hungry; and then he packed
them away into the bags till they were both chock full again.

Well, the bargain was, that Joe should carry them back to
Skeal-Hill; so back they put, the jolly-jist watching his bags all
the way, as if they were full of golden guineas, and our Joe a
thief. When they got there, he made Joe take them right into the
parlor; and the first thing he did was to call for some red wax and
a light, and he clapped a great splatch of a seal on either bag;
and then he looked at Joe, and gave a little grunt of a laugh, and
a smartish wag of the head, as much as to say, "Do it again, Joe,
if you can." But after that he said, "Here, Joe, is five shillings
for restoring my speciments, and here is another five shillings for
showing me a speciment of human nature that I did not believe in
until this day." [This story is told of Professor Sedgwick in broad
patois by Alexander Craig Gibson, F.S.A.]

"That is good," cried the squire, clapping his knee emphatically. "It was like the professor, and it was like Joe Bulteel. The story does them both credit. I am glad I heard it. Alice, fill our glasses again." Then he stood up, and looked around with a smile.

"God's blessing on this house, and on all beneath its roof-tree!

"Wife and children, a merry Christmas to you!

"Friends and serving hands, a merry Christmas to you!"


CHAPTER VII.


WOOING AND WEDDING.

"She was made for him,--a special providence in his behalf."

"Like to like,--and yet love may be dear bought."

"In time comes she whom Fate sends."

Until after Twelfth Night the Christmas festivities were continued; but if the truth had been admitted, the cumbrous ceremonials, the excessive eating and visiting, would have been pronounced by every one very tiresome. Julius found it particularly so, for the festival had no roots in his boyhood's heart; and he did not include it in his dreams of pre-existence.

"It is such semblance of good fellowship, such a wearisome pretence of good wishes that mean nothing," he said one day. "What value is there in such talk?"

"Well," answered the squire, "it isn't a bad thing for some of us to feel obliged once in a twelve months to be good-natured, and give our neighbors a kind wish. There are them that never do it except at Christmas. Eh? What?"

"Such wishes mean nothing."

"Nay, now, there is no need to think that kind words are false words. There is a deal of good sometimes in a mouthful of words. Eh? What?"

"And yet, sir, as the queen of the crocodiles remarked, 'Words mend none of the eggs that are broken.'"

"I know nothing about the queen of the crocodiles.