I used to leave work at six o'clock, and Mr. Cornwall told me that if I would come to the parsonage and pull up the weeds in his garden path he would give me a shilling. The idea of having a whole shilling, all in a lump, frightened me. I had never possessed a coin of the realm above the value of a halfpenny, and such halfpennies were, like angels' visits, few and far between, for the wages which I earned had to go for my maintainance. So I went every evening to accomplish the work, and was very particular to do it well, so that nothing should prevent the free and unconditional receipt of the shilling. I had been to Crewkerne a few weeks previously and had seen a book in the printseller's window; it was _Pinnock's Catechism on Astronomy_. My heart had been aching to obtain that book, but the price was ninepence, and I knew that if I saved up those very scarce halfpennies it would be years before I got ninepence, and so I thought I should never get the book. But now a new light had unexpectedly fallen upon the subject. My dream of possessing "Pinnock" would now be realized, and that much sooner than I ever had imagined. I should now be able to run over to Crewkerne and buy the book and have threepence change. Therefore I finished my task, and swept and cleaned up all the weeds, and with a joyous heart I presented myself at the parsonage door for my promised shilling. "Put not thy trust in Princes" is a trite saying, but oh, how deeply and grievously I realized its truth, for I never received that shilling. Mr. Cornwall was laid up with a fit of gout, and what with the twinges of the malady and the business of his curacy, I suppose he had forgotten me.
When Mr. Cornwall was upon his feet again I was too shy to ask him for the shilling and so it was passed by, and I was compelled to go without the pleasure of reading "Pinnock" for several years. About two years after this Mr. Cornwall came out to see me in the fields. I had gone to another field a mile away, but had left my jacket and some tools and my fragment of a Testament, all rolled up together in a corner of the hedge which I had been in the habit of using as a dining-room. So the parson thought he would be inquisitive. He opened my jacket and found an assortment of things that I had cut out of sticks and turnips. There were ships, soldiers, sailors, anything and everything, and I afterwards heard him tell father that he had fairly roared with laughter on finding them.