"Didn't du nort."
"I mean like Brother Briggs is an oilman and Brother Quaint keeps a baker's shop—"
"Oh I don't know thikky. 'Tis some 'undreds o' years agone since it all first 'appened, you knows. 'Owsomever—" And so on: the whole imperial tale.
When in later years I read the book for myself I found how accurately she had stressed the salient points. The father of young Robinson, always growlin' and scoldin' like some others she cude mention; the young raskel himself with whom these methods were not entirely displaced; the flight to sea; the ship doing battle with Turks and Portugeeses and Vrenchies and Spanyerds; the wreck on the desert island, young Robinson alone being saved; his infinite resource, practical, mechanical, architectural, culinary, dietetic; his ills, moral and physical.—Every known pain of the body he suffered, finding some slight alleviation, it is true, in the miniature Aunt Jaelian physic-cupboard from the all providing Wreck. His worst affliction was a malady—the Blues or Deliverums—at once moral and physical, a kind of soul's nightmare accompanied by sharp "abdominable pains." All around him, as he writhed in agony, roared an islandful of wild beasts; tigers and jeraffs and hullyfints and camyels and drumming-dairies—
"What's that?" I remember asking.
"Wull, either 'tis camyels wi' one 'ump to the back, or else 'tis camyels what 'ave one 'ump and drummy-dairies two; 'tis one or 'tother—and bears and munkeys and girt sarpints what they caal boy-constructors, I don't knaw fer why:—a regler munadgery like Tobbery Vair—and birds too. The pore chap 'ad one particler parrit or cocky-two as they caals 'un, what 'e taught to 'oller out: 'Pore ol' Robinson Crewjoe! pore ol' Robinson Crewjoe!' 'Tis true what I tell 'ee, my dear, 'tis true's I zit yer."
Nor did I doubt it. The notion of an invented story was one I could not have conceived.
The narrative came particularly near home with the arrival of the savages, and the domestication and conversion of Man Vriday—"or Man Zaturday maybe—I know 'tis one o' the days o' the wake." Robinson saw that he could atone for his own unholy past by snatching this black-skinned brand from the burning. I listened eagerly, with conscious professional interest; the snatching of black-skinned brands was the very work for which the Lord had set me apart.
"And so he praiched the Gospel to 'im, and shewed 'im all the mercies o' God A'mighty."