Squib and His Friends

by Evelyn Everett-Green

Squib listened with the concentrated attention which was one of his characteristics, and asked some questions about the bridge and the explosion, which led to a story from Herr Adler of such thrilling interest that they had almost reached Seppi’s knoll before the little boy realized it. What brought him back out of the past to the present was the sound of a joyful cry and as joyful a bark. Moor came bounding down the slope and made such a jump at Herr Adler that he was almost able to lick his face, whilst Seppi was scrambling down the greensward with a rapidity Squib had never seen in his movements before.

“Well, good creature! well, good creature!” said Herr Adler, caressing the eager and delighted dog.

“How well he knows you! How he remembers you!” cried Squib, looking on with a beaming smile. “Seppi, I have found Herr Adler! Here he is. He was coming to look for you, and I showed him the way.”

Then he stood aside and watched the meeting, noting the rapture of welcome in Seppi’s face which he could not put into words, but which brought the tears into his eyes, and thinking what a beautiful, kind face Herr Adler had as he stood talking to the little boy, holding his thin hands all the while, and asking him of his mother, his family and home, and how things had gone with them during the past winter.

Herr Adler spoke Seppi’s country patois as easily as he spoke English, and whilst he talked to Seppi, Moor kept putting up his paws and stuffing his nose into his hand to try to attract attention, and win one of those quiet caresses and kind words of which Herr Adler had many to give him.

After a little while they all moved up again towards the knoll in the pleasant shade of the pine trees, and Squib set himself to gather together Seppi’s chalks and papers, which, in his delight at seeing Herr Adler, he had cast hither and thither in unceremonious fashion.

“Do look at Seppi’s drawings, Herr Adler!” cried the little boy, as he took the sketch-book to his new friend; “doesn’t he draw beautifully? Hasn’t he got on well?” and he turned the leaves with pride, whilst Seppi sat with crimson cheeks, as though almost afraid to draw breath till he heard what the Herr thought of his work.

Herr Adler looked through the book very carefully, and said many kind things about the progress Seppi had made. But he also pointed out many faults in his work, and generally showed him how to avoid that fault another time. He also told Seppi that he did better when he took easy subjects, such as a goat, or a few ferns growing out of some stones, or a single clump of flowers, and advised him to give up for a time trying to make pictures of the great mountains and valleys, because he had not sufficient knowledge for that yet, but to content himself with progressing a step at a time, and then he would gradually find himself farther and farther along the road, and be able to succeed with larger things as his skill increased. But he said it all so kindly, and with so many illustrations and stories interspersed, that Seppi was not one whit discouraged, laughed quite merrily over some of his own obvious failures with difficult subjects, and agreed that it was far better to succeed with some study than to make a grand-looking daub which had so many glaring faults in it.

Squib thought it was very good and humble of Seppi to be willing to set aside the sort of drawing he loved so much.

“I think it was my fault that he stopped doing goats and things and did the mountains,” he remarked. “I wanted him to get on, and to be a great artist and make grand pictures. It seems tiresome always doing easy little things, and I thought his pictures were so very good.”