While this second lesson was yet in progress, Dirk and one or two other fishermen came up from their boats, and stopped to look on, with wonder and astonishment written on their countenances.
"I don' know," said Dirk, shaking his head as he eyed the mystic characters traced before him; "we be all poor folk, anyhow, an' this do beat me! Why, what be this?" he exclaimed, pointing at a letter staring up at him from the sand at his feet.
"That be A!" said half a dozen voices at once.
"An' what be this?" said Hark Darby, pointing to a character by his feet.
"That be B!" chorused the voices again.
The two fishermen exchanged wondering glances. "That do beat me!" said poor Dirk, regarding the letters before him with much awe. "Ah, lad," turning to Noll, "my little gal w'u'd liked yer teaching, an' yer B's an' A's, eh?" and Dirk drew his hand across his eyes.
Noll went home much encouraged after this second alphabet lesson. Time and patience would do something for these Culm children, after all, he thought. And could he have the patience and skill which was necessary? "I'll try,—I'll try hard for it!" he thought, "and pray Christ to keep me from losing my patience and courage. It's his work, and he'll help me to teach them, and by winter there'll be something accomplished." And of his help he had great need, for patience and courage were often sorely tried in the days which followed, and it was not always his pupils' obtuseness which brought the greatest strain to bear upon them. One old fish-wife, the oldest woman in the village, had regarded the whole plan of teaching the children as suspicious and ill-omened.
"It be a bad day fur us, lads," she warned, standing on Dirk's door-step among the fishermen, and looking frowningly upon Noll as he instructed his pupils in the making of U. "It be no good fur yer chile to be ther', Hark Darby, learnin' ye don' know what! Yes, lads, I say it be an evil day, and ye'll find no good cum from it! I warn ye, I warn ye!" shaking her skinny forefinger and solemnly nodding her head. Noll's face flushed at these words, and he half resolved to go home, and leave these Culm children to their parents' ignorance.
"I warn ye! I—" The old crone was about to continue her forebodings; but Dirk interposed with a gruff, "Hush ye, hush ye, Mother Deb! ye be doin' the lad wrong. D'ye think he be one to teach our young uns wrong, eh? Be it evil, think ye? W'u'd he be doin' us a bad turn who's mendin' the housen an' makin' us comf'table? I'd like ye ter show't, mother, ef it be!"
"Ay," said Hark Darby, "an' ef he ken do us evil, who ha' been so good an' kind in the sickness, we w'u'd like ye ter show't, Mother Deb!"