‘What, and turned him off?’
‘Well, that’s what I want to know,’ said Harold, going on with his tea. ‘Paul said to me he didn’t know how he could stand the like of that—and yet he didn’t like to be off—he’d taken a fancy to the place, you see, and there’s me, and there’s old Cæsar—and so he said he wouldn’t go unless the farmer sent him off when he came to be paid this evening—and old Skinflint has got him so cheap, I don’t think he will.’
‘For shame, Harold; don’t call names!’
‘Well, there he is,’ said Alfred, pointing into the farm-yard, towards the hay-loft door. This was over the cow-house in the gable end; and in the dark opening sat Paul, his feet on the top step of the ladder, and Cæsar, the yard-dog, lying by his side, his white paws hanging down over the edge, his sharp white muzzle and grey prick ears turned towards his friend, and his eyes casting such appealing looks, that he was getting more of the hunch of bread than probably Paul could well spare.
‘How has he ever got the dog up the ladder?’ cried Harold.
‘Well!’ said Mrs. King, ‘I declare he looks like a picture I have seen—’
‘Well, to be sure! who would go for to draw a picture of the like of that!’ exclaimed Ellen, pausing as she put on her things to carry home some work.
‘It was a picture of a Spanish beggar-boy,’ said Mrs. King; ‘and the housekeeper at Castlefort used to say that the old lord—that’s Lady Jane’s brother—had given six hundred pounds for it.’
Ellen set out on her walk with a sound of wonder quite beyond words. Six hundred pounds for a picture like Paul Blackthorn! She did not know that so poor and feeble are man’s attempts to imitate the daily forms and colourings fresh from the Divine Hand, that a likeness of the very commonest sight, if represented with something of its true spirit and life, wins a strange value, especially if the work of the great master-artists of many years ago.
And even the painter Murillo himself, though he might pleasantly recall on his canvas the notion of the bright-eyed, olive-tinted lad, resting after the toil of the day, could never have rendered the free lazy smile on his face, nor the gleam of the dog’s wistful eyes and quiver of its eager ears, far less the glow of setting sunlight that shed over all that warm, clear, ruddy light, so full of rest and cheerfulness, beautifying, as it hid, so many common things: the thatched roof of the barn, the crested hayrick close beside it; the waggons, all red and blue, that had brought it home, and were led to rest, the horses drooping their meek heads as they cooled their feet among the weed in the dark pond;—the ducks moving, with low contented quacks and quickly-wagging tails, in one long single file to their evening foraging in the dewy meadows; the spruce younger poultry pecking over the yard, staying up a little later than their elders to enjoy a few leavings in peace, free from the persecutions of the cross old king of the dung-hill;—all this left in shade, while the ruddy light had mounted to the roofs, gave brilliance to every round tuft of moss, and gleamed on the sober foliage of the old spreading walnut tree.