“There,” said Swythe, “a good writer makes all his own ink. Now you grind that up till it is well mixed. Gently,” cried Swythe; “that ink is too precious to be spread all over the slab. Grind it round and round. That’s the way! That will do!”
As he spoke, Swythe took a thin-bladed knife and a good-sized, nicely-cleaned fresh-water mussel-shell, and let the boy carefully scrape up all the ink from the slab and place it in the shell.
“That’s well done!” he said. “Now we’ll write a line of letters.”
“Yes,” cried the boy; “let me write them.”
“I wish you could, Fred, my boy,” said the monk, smiling; “but you must first learn.”
“That’s what I want to do,” cried the boy eagerly. “But how am I to learn?”
“By watching me. Now see.”
Swythe rose from the table and opened a box, out of which he took a crisp clean piece of nearly transparent sheepskin and a couple of quill pens, sat down again, and then from another box he drew out a piece of lead and a flat ruler—not a lead-pencil such as is now used, but a little pointed piece of ordinary lead—with which he deftly made a few straight lines across the parchment, and then very carefully drew a beautiful capital A, which he finished off with scrolls and turns and tiny vine-leaves with a running stalk and half-a-dozen tendrils.
“But you have put no grapes,” cried Alfred.
“Give me time,” said Swythe good-humouredly, and directly after he faintly sketched in a bunch of grapes, broad at the top and growing narrower till it ended in one grape alone.