His mother smiled tenderly back upon him. He was very dear to her, and not the less so for his tenderness to Jan.
Then she stooped to kiss her foster-child, who opened his black eyes very wide, and caught the sleeping kitten round the head, in the fear that it might be taken from him.
“Tell Abel the name of pretty young lady you see to-day, love,” said Mrs. Lake.
But Jan was well aware of his power over the miller’s wife, and was apt to indulge in caprice. So he only shook his head, and cuddled the kitten more tightly than before.
“Tell un, Janny dear. Tell un, there’s a lovey!” said Mrs. Lake. “Who did daddy put in the hopper?” But still Jan gazed at nothing in particular with a sly twinkle in his black eyes, and continued to squeeze poor Sandy to a degree that can have been little less agonizing than the millstone torture; and obdurate he would probably have remained, but that Abel, bending over him, said, “Do ’ee tell poor Abel, Jan.”
The child fixed his bright eyes steadily on Abel’s well-loved face for a few seconds, and then said quite clearly, in soft, evenly accented syllables,—
And the sandy kitten, having escaped with its life, crept back into Jan’s bosom and purred itself to rest.
ABEL AT HOME.—JAN OBJECTS TO THE MILLER’S MAN.—THE ALPHABET.—THE CHEAP JACK.—“PITCHERS.”
POOR Abel was not fated to get much regular schooling. He particularly liked learning, but the interval was all too brief between the time when his mother was able to spare him from housework and the time when his father began to employ him in the mill.
George got more lazy and stupid, instead of less so, and though in some strange manner he kept his place, yet when Master Lake had once begun to employ his son, he found that he would get along but ill without him.
To Jan, Abel’s being about the windmill gave the utmost satisfaction. He played with his younger foster-brothers and sisters contentedly enough, but his love for Abel, and for being with Abel, was quite another thing.
Mrs. Lake, too, had no confidence in any one but Abel as a nurse for her darling; the consequence of which was, that the little Jan was constantly trotting at his foster-brother’s heels through the round-house, attempting valiant escalades on the ladders, and covering himself from head to foot with flour in the effort to cultivate a miller’s thumb.