Lucian the dreamer

by J. S. Fletcher

‘Did it lose its tongue, then?’ she said teasingly. ‘It seemed to have a very long and very ready one when it was swearing at poor old Boggles. What made him use such bad language to you, Boggles?’

‘Lord bless ’ee, missie,’ said Boggles hurriedly, ‘he didn’t mean no harm, didn’t Master Lucian—he was telling me how they swear in Eye-talian. Not but what it didn’t sound very terrible—but he wouldn’t hurt a fly, wouldn’t Master Lucian, miss, he wouldn’t indeed.’

‘Dear little lamb!’ she said mockingly, ‘I shouldn’t think he would.’ She turned on the boy with a sudden twist of her shoulders. ‘So you are Lucian, are you?’ she asked.

‘I am Lucian, yes,’ he answered.

‘Do you know who I am?’ she asked, with a flashing look.

Lucian stared back at her, and the shadow of a smile stole into his face.

‘I think,’ he said musingly, ‘I think you must be Sprats.’

Then the two faced each other and stared as only stranger children can stare.

Mr. Boggles, his watery old eyes keenly observant, leaned his chin upon his hoe and stared also, chuckling to himself. Neither saw him; their eyes were all for each other. The girl, without acknowledging it, perhaps without knowing it, recognised the boy’s beauty and hated him for it in a healthy fashion. He was too much of a picture; his clothes were too neat; his collar too clean; his hands too white; he was altogether too much of a fine and finicking little gentleman; he ought, she said to herself, to be stuck in a velvet suit, and a point-lace collar, and labelled. The spirit of mischief entered into her at the sight of him.

Lucian examined this strange creature with care. He was relieved to find that she was by no means beautiful. He saw a strong-limbed, active-looking young damsel, rather older and rather taller than himself, whose face was odd, rather than pretty, and chiefly remarkable for a prodigality of freckles and a healthy tan. Her nose was pugnacious and inclined to be of the snub order; her hair sandy and anything but tidy; there was nothing beautiful in her face but a pair of brown eyes of a singularly clear and honest sort. As for her attire, it was not in that order which an exacting governess might have required: she wore a blue serge frock in which she had evidently been climbing trees or scrambling through hedgerows, a battered straw hat wherein she or somebody had stuck the long feathers from a cock’s tail; there was a rent in one of her stockings, and her stout shoes looked as if she had tramped through several ploughed fields in them. All over and round her glowed a sort of aureole of rude and vigorous health, of animal spirits, and of a love of mischief—the youthful philosopher confronting her recognised a new influence and a new nature.