you, Miss; and the man at the book-stall, he said they banged iverything for picturs; he said they was a fust-rate article.”
“And you’ve bought them for me, Bob?” said Maggie, deeply touched by this simple kindness. “How very, very good of you! But I’m afraid you gave a great deal of money for them.”
“Not me!” said Bob. “I’d ha’ gev three times the money if they’ll make up to you a bit for them as was sold away from you, Miss. For I’n niver forgot how you looked when you fretted about the books bein’ gone; it’s stuck by me as if it was a pictur hingin’ before me. An’ when I see’d the book open upo’ the stall, wi’ the lady lookin’ out of it wi’ eyes a bit like your’n when you was frettin’,—you’ll excuse my takin’ the liberty, Miss,—I thought I’d make free to buy it for you, an’ then I bought the books full o’ genelmen to match; an’ then”—here Bob took up the small stringed packet of books—“I thought you might like a bit more print as well as the picturs, an’ I got these for a sayso,—they’re cram-full o’ print, an’ I thought they’d do no harm comin’ along wi’ these bettermost books. An’ I hope you won’t say me nay, an’ tell me as you won’t have ’em, like Mr. Tom did wi’ the suvreigns.”
“No, indeed, Bob,” said Maggie, “I’m very thankful to you for thinking of me, and being so good to me and Tom. I don’t think any one ever did such a kind thing for me before. I haven’t many friends who care for me.”
“Hev a dog, Miss!—they’re better friends nor any Christian,” said Bob, laying down his pack again, which he had taken up with the intention of hurrying away; for he felt considerable shyness in talking to a young lass like Maggie, though, as he usually said of himself, “his tongue overrun him” when he began to speak. “I can’t give you Mumps, ’cause he’d break his heart to go away from me—eh, Mumps, what do you say, you riff-raff?” (Mumps declined to express himself more diffusely than by a single affirmative movement of his tail.) “But I’d get you a pup, Miss, an’ welcome.”
“No, thank you, Bob. We have a yard dog, and I mayn’t keep a dog of my own.”
“Eh, that’s a pity; else there’s a pup,—if you didn’t mind about it not being thoroughbred; its mother acts in the Punch show,—an uncommon sensible bitch; she means more sense wi’ her bark nor half the chaps can put into their talk from breakfast to sundown. There’s one chap carries pots,—a poor, low trade as any on the road,—he says, ‘Why Toby’s nought but a mongrel; there’s nought to look at in her.’ But I says to him, ‘Why, what are you yoursen but a mongrel? There wasn’t much pickin’ o’ your feyther an’ mother, to look at you.’ Not but I like a bit o’ breed myself, but I can’t abide to see one cur grinnin’ at another. I wish you good evenin’, Miss,” said Bob, abruptly taking up his pack again, under the consciousness that his tongue was acting in an undisciplined manner.
“Won’t you come in the evening some time, and see my brother, Bob?” said Maggie.
“Yes, Miss, thank you—another time. You’ll give my duty to him, if you please. Eh, he’s a fine growed chap, Mr. Tom is; he took to growin’ i’ the legs, an’ I didn’t.”
The pack was down again, now, the hook of the stick having somehow gone wrong.
“You don’t call Mumps a cur, I suppose?” said Maggie, divining that any interest she showed in Mumps would be gratifying to his master.
“No, Miss, a fine way off that,” said Bob, with pitying smile; “Mumps is as fine a cross as you’ll see anywhere along the Floss, an’ I’n been up it wi’ the barge times enow. Why, the gentry stops to look at him; but you won’t catch Mumps a-looking at the gentry much,—he minds his own business, he does.”
The expression of Mump’s face, which seemed to be tolerating the superfluous existence of objects in general, was strongly confirmatory of this high praise.
“He looks dreadfully surly,” said Maggie. “Would he let me pat him?”
“Ay, that would he, and thank you. He knows his company, Mumps does. He isn’t a dog as ’ull be caught wi’ gingerbread; he’d smell a thief a good deal stronger nor the gingerbread, he would. Lors, I talk to him by th’ hour together, when I’m walking i’ lone places, and if I’n done a bit o’ mischief, I allays tell him. I’n got no secrets but what Mumps knows ’em. He knows about my big thumb, he does.”
“Your big thumb—what’s that, Bob?” said Maggie.
“That’s what it is, Miss,” said Bob, quickly, exhibiting a singularly broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey. “It tells i’ measuring out the flannel, you see. I carry flannel, ’cause it’s light for my pack, an’ it’s dear stuff, you see, so a big thumb tells. I clap my thumb at the end o’ the yard and cut o’ the hither side of it, and the old women aren’t up to’t.”
“But Bob,” said Maggie, looking serious, “that’s cheating; I don’t like to hear you say that.”
“Don’t you, Miss?” said Bob regretfully. “Then I’m sorry I said it. But I’m so used to talking to Mumps, an’ he doesn’t mind a bit o’ cheating, when it’s them skinflint women, as haggle an’ haggle, an’ ’ud like to get their flannel for nothing, an’ ’ud niver ask theirselves how I got my dinner out on’t. I niver cheat anybody as doesn’t want to cheat me, Miss,—lors, I’m a honest chap, I am; only I must hev a bit o’ sport, an’ now I don’t go wi’ th’ ferrets, I’n got no varmint to come over but them haggling women. I wish you good evening, Miss.”
“Good-by, Bob. Thank you very much for bringing me the books. And come again to see Tom.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Bob, moving on a few steps; then turning half round he said, “I’ll leave off that trick wi’ my big thumb, if you don’t think well on me for it, Miss; but it ’ud be a pity, it would. I couldn’t find another trick so good,—an’ what ’ud be the use o’ havin’ a big thumb? It might as well ha’ been narrow.”
Maggie, thus exalted into Bob’s exalting Madonna, laughed in spite of herself; at which her worshipper’s blue eyes twinkled too, and under these favoring auspices he touched his cap and walked away.
The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke’s grand dirge over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the pack on his back, had as respectful an adoration for this dark-eyed maiden as if he had been a knight in armor calling aloud on her name as he pricked on to the fight.
That gleam of merriment soon died away from Maggie’s face, and perhaps only made the returning gloom deeper by contrast. She was too dispirited even to like answering questions about Bob’s present of books, and she carried them away to her bedroom, laying them down there and seating herself on her one stool, without caring to look at them just yet. She leaned her cheek against the window-frame, and thought that the light-hearted Bob had a lot much happier than hers.
Maggie’s sense of loneliness, and utter privation of joy, had deepened with the brightness of advancing spring. All the favorite outdoor nooks about home, which seemed to have done their part with her parents in nurturing and cherishing her, were now mixed up with the home-sadness, and gathered no smile from the sunshine. Every affection, every delight the poor child had had, was like an aching nerve to her. There was no music for her any more,—no piano, no harmonized voices, no delicious stringed instruments, with their passionate cries of imprisoned spirits sending a strange vibration through her frame. And of all her school-life there was nothing left her now but her little collection of school-books, which she turned over with a sickening sense that she knew them all, and they were all barren of comfort. Even at school she had often wished for books with more in them; everything she learned there seemed like the ends of long threads that snapped immediately. And now—without the indirect charm of school-emulation—Télémaque was mere bran; so were the hard, dry questions on Christian Doctrine; there was no flavor in them, no