“Hush!” said the deacon. “Don’t you see thet thar young un wakin’ up? The tarnation boy hes been shakin’ him like an earthquake. I didn’t know es you kep’ your baby in the kitchin or I wouldn’t hev troubled to come. When thet thar table kinder began to dance and jump, you wouldn’t thank me fur rousin’ the innocent baby, hey? Sleep, sleep, thet’s what a baby wants! A baby kin’t hev too much sleep an’ a grown-up person kin’t hev too little, hey? They’re a lazy slinky lot, the young men o’ the Province, sleepin’ with their mouths open, expectin’ johnny-cakes to fall into ’em. I wonder this young man here don’t get into a cradle hisself. He’d be es much use to his fellow-critters es makin’ picters, I do allow. This life’s a battle, I allus thinks, an’ star-gazin’ ain’t the way to sight the enemy, hey? I reckon I’ll git back now, Mrs. Cattermole. There’s ’nough time been wasted over thet limb of Satan. Jest you tell Cattermole what I say ’bout him, an’ if ever you git durned sick an’ tired feedin’ an onthankful lazybones, es you’re bound to git, sure es skunks, jest you remember Deacon Hailey is the Christian you’re lookin’ fur. An’ don’t you forgit it!” And very solemnly he strode without.
Mrs. Cattermole lifted her hands and brought them down again on the table with a thump. “The tarnation ole fox!” she cried, “tryin’ to bamboozle me with tales ’bout turnin’ tables. ’Tain’t likely es a table is goin’ to dance of itself, an’ tell me ’bout Maria’s sickness. Jest you come here, Matt, an’ lay your hands alongside o’ mine. What’s thet you’re doin’?”
For Matt had begun pensively adorning the hood of the cradle by means of a burned stick he had pulled from the stove.
“It’s on’y Ole Hey,” he said, reddening.
“Jest you leave off makin’ fun o’ your elders an’ betters,” she said, sharply. “There’ll be plenty of work fur you in the paint-shop.”
There was plenty of work, Matt found, in numerous other directions, too. Many more things than mechanical wood-cutting did the boy practise at Cattermole’s saw-mill. To begin with, Mrs. Cattermole’s apprehensions were justified and the spring freshets swept away the dam, and so Matt was set to work hauling brushwood and gravel and logs to build up a kind of breast-work. Cattermole was really a house-joiner and house-builder, so Matt acquired cabinet-making, decoration, and house-building. His farming and cattle-rearing experience was also considerably enlarged. He milked the cows, looked after four stage-horses (driven by Mrs. Cattermole’s brother) and thirty-six sheep, cut firewood, cleared out barns, turned churns, hoed potatoes, mowed hay, fed fowls and pigs, and rocked the cradle, and, in the interval of running the circular and up-and-down saws in the mill, worked in the paint-shop at the back, graining and scrolling the furniture and ornamenting it with roses and other gorgeous flowers, sometimes even with landscapes. This was his only opportunity of making pictures, for recreation hours he had none. He rose at four in the morning and went to bed at ten at night. His wages were his food and clothes, both left off.
Mrs. Cattermole made his garments out of her husband’s out-worn wardrobe, itself of gray homespun.
But the hours in the paint-shop threw their aroma over all the others and made them livable.
And Cattermole, though a hard was not a harsh taskmaster, and had gentle flashes of jest when Mrs. Cattermole was out of ear-shot. And, though winter was long, yet there were seasons of delicious sunshine, when the blueberries ripened on the flats, or the apples waxed rosy in the orchard; when the air thrilled with the song of birds, and the dawn was golden.
In one of these seasons of hope he wrote to his uncle of his father’s death and his own existence, and Cattermole paid the postage; an ingenuous letter full of the pathetic, almost incredible ignorance of obscure and sequestered youth, and inquiring what chances there would be for him to reap fortune by painting pictures in London. He addressed the letter—with vague recollection of something in his school reading-book—to Mr. Matthew Strang, Painter, National Gallery, London.