The Post-Girl. Edward Charles Booth
the validity of the agreement, and show the Spawer that nothing—short of repealing the penny—could save him from the inexorable machinery that his own hand had set in motion, there was little real need of the bond, except to guarantee that the bath-water should be up to time. More often than not Jeff came upon a man alertly drawn up in bed, with a full score spread across his knees, who had been writing and erasing hard since sunrise.
Early in the morning after the girl's visit the sun peeped over the Spawer's sill according to custom, and the Spawer jumped out of bed to let him in. Already Nature's symphony was in full swing—a mighty, crescive, spinning movement of industry, borne up to him on a whirr of indefatigable wings. The sun had cleared the cliff railings and was traveling merrily upward on an unimpeded course, though still the grassland lay grey in the shadow beneath its glistening quilt of dew, and every spider's web hung silver-weighted like a net new-drawn with treasure from the sea. He stayed by the window a space, and then let go the curtain with an amused, reminiscent laugh.
"I wonder who on earth she is?" he said.
He scooped up the bulky armful of music-sheets that constituted his present labors at the concerto, and went back to bed with them. But though he made a determined desk of his knees and spread the papers out with a business-like adjustment of pages, the work prospered but poorly when it came to the pencil. After a short spell of it he sat back in bed, with his hands locked under his neck staring at the window. For the events of last night were a too inviting vintage to be left uncorked and untasted, and out of this glowing wine of remembrance he attempted to win back the girl's face, and did not altogether succeed. He reclaimed certain shifting impressions of red lips exaggeratedly curled; of great round eyes; of multiplied freckles about the brows and nose; of a startling white throat beyond where the sun had dominion; of a shabby blue Tam-o'-Shanter and a perfect midnight of hair—but all of them seen grotesquely, as it might be at the bottom of the cup, with himself blowing on the wine.
"The thing is," he decided, "I was a fool not to stare harder and ask more questions. This comes of trying to act the gentleman."
Duly before seven came Jeff Dixon stumbling up the staircase, and dumped the first bucket down at the Spawer's door with a ringing clash of handle.
"Noo then," he called under the door, when he had summoned the Spawer lustily by name, and hit the panel several resounding flat-handers (as specified in the agreement). "It 's tonned [turned] seven o'clock, an' another gran', fine day for ye an' all. Arny 's gotten ye some mushrooms—some right big uns an' some little conny [tiny] uns, a gret basket full oot o' big field. Will ye 'ev 'em for breakfast?"
"Will I?" The Spawer shot together the loose sheets gathered in attendance upon an idle muse, and tossed them dexterously on to the nearest chair, as though they were a pancake. "Ah, me bhoy! me bhoy!" he called out, in the rich, mellow brogue of one whose heart was on a sudden turned to sunlight.
"Ay, will ye?" inquired the mouth behind the door-crack.
"Ay, wull Oi?" echoed the voice of glowing fervor. "Wull Oi, bedad! me bhoy? Mushrooms, ye say! Is 't me the bhoy for mushrooms! Arrah, thin, me bonny bhoy, is 't me the bhoy for mushrooms!"
After a pause: "D' ye mean yes?" asked the mouth dubiously, and with meekness.
"Ah, phwat a bhoy it is to read the very sowl o' man an' shpake it! Yis 's the word, bi the beard o' St. Pathrick, iv he had wan (which Oi 'm doubtin'), an' a small, inconsiderable jug o' rale cowld boilin' wather whin ye retoorn convanient wid yer next bucket, me bhoy, bi yer lave an' savin' yer prisince!"
"Will yon little un wi' yaller stripes do?" says the mouth, brimming with the enthusiasm of willing, and making from the door-crack for immediate departure.
Whereupon, in receipt of the Spawer's agreement, the boots stumbled down the stairs again, as though there were no feet in them, but had been thrown casually from top to bottom. A minute or so later, when they had staggered up with the second bucket, and been cast down again to fetch the jug, and come back with it, the owner of them bestrode all these accumulated necessities laid out upon the little landing, and let himself into the Spawer's room—a blue-eyed, fair-haired Saxon of thirteen, with white teeth and a quick smile, sharpened like a razor on the cunning whetstone of the district.
"'Ere 's yer cold," said he, stooping to lift it in after him. "An' 'ere 's yer warm," bringing to view the steaming wooden pail, with as much reminiscence of milk about the water as we have to pay for by the gill in town. "An' 'ere 's yer rale cold boilin'. 'Ow div ye fin' yersen this mornin'?"
"In bed," says the Spawer, "thanking you kindly, where I put myself last night."
"Noo then, noo then!" with that indulgent tone of grown-up wisdom which is the birthright of every baby in Ullbrig, and on which it practises its first lisp; "are ye agate o' that road already? Ye mun 'a got the steel i' bed wi' ye, ah think—ye seem strange an' sharp, ti-morn." He pulled the bath from its hiding under the bed, set the mats about it, and brought the pails over within reach. "Noo, it 's all ready an' waitin', so ye 'ad n't need to start shuttin' yer eyes. Let 's see ye movin', an' ah 'll be away."
The Spawer made a feeble shuffle of legs under the blankets, and smiled with the seraphic content of one who has done his duty.
"Nay, ah s'll want to see ye on end, an' all," Jeff said sternly, "before ah gan mi ways. Come noo, Mr. Wynne—one, two, three!"
Thus adjured, the Spawer found strength to raise his eyelids after a few moments of bland inertness under Jeff's regard, and turned out affably (with them down again) on to the pegged rug alongside.
"That 's better," said Jeff, with conciliatory admiration.
"Is it?" the Spawer inquired sweetly, sitting down on the bedside to think over the matter, and rubbing form contemplatively into his hocks. "Oh! ... Then get me the third razor from the right-hand side of the case, and I 'll kill myself. Also the strop and the brush and jug and soap-tube...."
"D' ye mean a shave?" asked Jeff, with some curiosity.
"Merely another name for it," the Spawer told him.
"What div ye want ti get shaved for?" Jeff persisted.
"Oh!" ... The Spawer sifted a few replies under rapid survey, as though he were rolling a palmful of grain, and picked out one at random. "... For fun."
"Ah thought ye was n't gannin' to shave no more while ye 'd gotten that there piece o' yours written!"
"Whatever put that idea into your head?" asked the Spawer, in surprise.
"You," said Jeff, with forceful directness. "It was you telt me."
"I? How wicked of me to tell such a story," the Spawer said warmly.
"Ah do believe you 're gannin' after some young lady or other," Jeff declared, by a quick inspiration.
"How dare you," said the Spawer, rising from the bed in protest, "try to put such ideas into the head of an innocent young man, old enough to be your father. Hither with the razor at once," he commanded, "and let 's shave your head."
But inside, out of sight behind all this laughter, he sent a knowing, sagacious glance to his soul.
"The young divil!" he said.
He shaved, like the Chinese executioners, with despatch; whistled blithely through his bath as though he were a linnet hung out in the sun, and was downstairs as soon as might be. The little room greeted him cheerfully in its cool breakfast array, holding forth a great, heavenly-scented garland of wall-flowers and sweet-williams and mignonette—for all the world like some dear, diminutive, old-fashioned damsel in white muslin—and his eye softened unconsciously to an appreciative smile. There, too, was the sofa consecrate to Dixon. He looked at it with a more conscious extension of smile—thinking, no doubt, of Dixon. Then he shook the bell for breakfast, being an-hungered, and smelling the mushrooms.
The door flew wide to Miss Bates' determined toe, as she entered with the mushrooms in company with the bacon and toast and steaming hot milk and coffee on the big, battered tray of black Japan, securely held at either foremost corner with a salmon-colored fist.
Now