Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/500

492 mother’s bed was made ready for him—Dan himself sharing the accommodation of a dark closet in an ordinary way, in common with his brothers—and Jan carried him up to it. There he somewhat revived, sufficiently to answer a question or two rationally. It must be confessed that Jan felt some curiosity upon the subject: to suppose the boy had been thrown into that state, simply by seeing a white cow in the pound, was ridiculous.

“What frightened you?” asked Jan.

“I see’d a dead man,” answered the boy. “Oh, lor!”

“Well?” said Jan, with composure, “he didn’t eat you. What is there in a dead man to be alarmed at? I have seen scores—handled ’em, too. What dead man was it?”

The boy pulled the bed-clothes over him, and moaned. Jan pulled them down again.

“Of course you can’t tell! There’s no dead man in Deerham. Was it in the churchyard?”

“No.”

“Was it in the pound?” asked Jan, triumphantly, thinking he had got it right this time.

“No.”

The answer was an unexpected one.

“Where was it, then?”

“Oh-o-o-o-oh!” moaned the boy, beginning to shake and twitch again.

“Now, Dan Duff, this won’t do,” said Jan.

“Tell me quietly what you saw, and where you saw it.”

“I see’d a dead man,” reiterated Dan Duff. And it appeared to be all he was capable of saying.

“You saw a white cow on its hind legs,” returned Jan. “That’s what you saw. I am surprised at you, Dan Duff. I should have thought you more of a man.”

Whether the reproof overcame Master Duff’s nerves again, or the remembrance of the “dead man,” certain it was, that he relapsed into a state which rendered it imprudent, in Jan’s opinion, to continue for the present the questioning. One more only he put—for a sudden thought crossed him, which induced it.

“Was it in the copse at Verner’s Pride?”

’Twas at the Willow-pool: he was a-walking round it. Oh-o-o-o-o-oh!”

Jan’s momentary fear was dispelled. A night or two back there had been a slight affray between Lionel’s gamekeeper and some poachers: and the natural doubt arose whether anything fresh of the same nature had taken place. If so, Dan Duff might have come upon one of them, lying dead or wounded. The words—“walking round the pool”—did away with this. For the present, Jan departed.

But, if Dan’s organs of disclosure are for the present in abeyance, there’s no reason why we should not find out what we can for ourselves. You may be very sure that Deerham would not fail to do it.

The French madmizel—as Mrs. Duff styled her, meaning, of course, Mademoiselle Benoite—had called in at Mrs. Duff’s shop and made a purchase. It consisted—if you are curious to know—of pins and needles, and a staylace. Not a parcel that would have weighed her down, certainly, had she borne it herself: but it pleased her to demand that Dan should carry it for her. This she did, partly to display her own consequence, chiefly that she might have a companion home, for Mademoiselle Benoite did not relish the walk alone by moonlight to Verner’s Pride. Of course young Dan was at the beck and call of Mrs. Duff’s customers, that being, as Mademoiselle herself might have said, his spécialité. Whether a customer bought a parcel that would have filled a van, or one that might have gone inside a penny thimble. Master Dan was equally expected to be in readiness to carry the purchase to its destination at night, if called upon. Master Dan’s days being connected now with the brickfields, where his “spécialité” appeared to be, to put layers of clay upon his clothes.

Accordingly, Master Dan started with Mademoiselle Benoite. She had been making purchases at other places, which she had brought away with her—shoes, stationery, and various things, all of which were handed over to the porter, Dan. They arrived at Verner’s Pride in safety, and Dan was ordered to follow her in, and deposit his packages on the table of the apartment that was called the steward’s room.

“One, two, three, four,” counted Mademoiselle Benoite, with French caution, lest he should have dropped any by the way. “You go outside now, Dan, and I bring you something from my pocket for your trouble.”

Dan returned outside accordingly, and stood gazing at the laundry windows, which were lighted up. Mademoiselle dived in her pocket, took something from thence, which she screwed carefully up in a bit of newspaper, and handed it to Dan. Dan had watched the process in a glow of satisfaction, believing it could be nothing less than a silver sixpence. How much more it might prove, Dan’s aspirations were afraid to anticipate.

“There!” said Mademoiselle, when she put it into his hand. “Now you can go back to your mother.”

She shut the door in his face somewhat inhospitably, and Dan eagerly opened his cadeau. It contained—two lumps of fine white sugar.

“Mean old cat!” burst forth Dan. “If it wasn’t that mother ’ud baste me, I’d never bring a parcel for her again, not if she bought up the shop. Wouldn’t I like to give all the French a licking!”

Munching his sugar wrathfully, he passed across the yard, and out at the gate. There he hesitated which way home he should take, like he had hesitated that far gone evening, when he had come up upon the errand to poor Rachel Frost. More than four years had elapsed since then, and Dan was now fourteen: but he was a young and childish boy of his age, which might be owing to the fact of being so kept under by his mother.

“I have a good mind to trick her!” soliloquised he; alluding, it must be owned, to that revered mother. “She wouldn’t let me go out to Bill Hook’s to night; though I telled her as it wasn’t for no nonsense I wanted to see him, but about that there grey ferret. I will, too! I’ll