Mr. Poskitt's Nightcaps: Stories of a Yorkshire Farmer

by J. S. Fletcher

I thought as I rode into Sicaster that eventful morning of the story of its new mayor's life. Like myself, Abraham was the son of a farmer, but whereas my father was a man of considerable substance, his was a poor man who had to work hard, early and late, to make a living out of a farm the land of which was poor. I have always had an idea that it was my father who paid for Abraham's schooling at Sicaster Grammar School, though it is but an idea, because he was the last man in the world to let his left hand know what his right hand did. Anyway, Benjamin Kellet was a poor man, as things go, and had a growing family to keep, Abraham being the eldest, and none of his other children got more education than the village school afforded for the customary fee of two-pence a-week. Why Abraham went from the village school to Sicaster Grammar School was because he was regarded as a very promising youth, whose education ought to be improved. The village school-master, in fact, when Abraham was twelve years old, said that he could not teach him any more—no very great thing in those days when nothing was taught but reading, writing and arithmetic, with perhaps a smattering of English history and a little grammar and geography—and that it was no use his staying any longer at the red-tiled school-house, which lay under the shadow of the church. Possibly the parson and my father (who was vicar's churchwarden for many a long year before his death) put their heads together about Abraham. However the case may have been, Abraham was sent to Sicaster Grammar School with the understanding that he was to remain there two years, when it would be time for him to be apprenticed to some trade. He made his entrance there the same day that I did—that was where I got to know him better. I had known him, of course, all along, but not intimately, because my mother had insisted on having a governess for my two sisters—both dead now, many a long year ago!—and so I had never gone to the village school, nor had I mixed much with the village boys. But when I was nine years old, my father said I had had quite enough of apron-strings, and I must go to Sicaster Grammar School, as soon as the next half began.

"To Sicaster Grammar School!" said my mother, speaking as if my father had said I was to go to the Cannibal Islands. "Why, Sicaster's six miles off! The child can't walk twelve miles a day and learn his lessons as well."

"Who wants him to?" asked my father. "He can have the little pony and phaeton and drive himself in and out. I'll buy another for you and the girls. And there's that eldest lad of Keller's—he's going, too, and he can drive with him."

"And his dinner?" said my mother.

"Give him it in a basket every day," replied my father. "And—put plenty in for two. He can share with young Kellet."

That was how I came to go to school with Abraham Kellet. I used to set off with the little pony-phaeton at a quarter to eight every morning and pick Abraham up at the end of the lane which led to his father's farm. At first he used to bring his dinner with him, but it soon became an understood thing that his dinner was in my basket—we made no pretence, and had no false ideas about it on either side. We used to jog into Sicaster with great content, put the pony and trap up at the King George and go to school. In winter we used to eat our meat pasties and our fruit pies and drink our milk in one of the class-rooms; in summer we spread our cloth under the trees on a certain knoll in the play-ground. And afternoon, school over we jogged home again as easily as we had come.

I have no great recollection of what I did at school, except that I had the usual healthy boy's dislike of mere book-learning, and was always unfeignedly glad when half-past four struck. Horses and dogs and the open air, cricket and fishing, and running after the fox-hounds when they came our way, appealed much more to me than anything else. I believe Abraham did most of my home exercises as we drove to and from school. As for himself he learned all he could—within certain limits. He would have nothing of Latin or Greek, but he slaved like a nigger at French, and during play-hours was always scheming to get into the company of the French teacher. He cared little about history, but a good deal about geography—French, arithmetic, and, above all, book-keeping were Abraham's great loves. His handwriting brought tears of joy and pride into the eyes of the writing-master; his figures might have been printed; his specimens of book-keeping would have done credit to a chartered accountant.

The reason of Abraham's devotion to these particular subjects was this—he had set his mind on being a—Draper. Not a small, pettifogging draper, to deal in cheap lines of goods, but a draper of the big sort who would call himself Silk Mercer. There stood in the centre of the market-place at Sicaster such an establishment—it was the daily sight of it which inspired Abraham's dreams. A solid, highly respectable establishment it was—though it would be thought old-fashioned now, it was considered to be something very grand then, and in its windows were set out the latest London and Paris fashions. There was a severely plain sign in black and gold over the windows under the Royal Arms, with an equally plain inscription—Paulsford and Tatham, Silk Mercers and Drapers to H.M. the Queen.

"That's where I mean to be apprenticed, Poskitt," said Abraham, as we set out one afternoon across the market-place. "That's the trade I fancy. No farming for me. Farming! Slaving all day after a plough and coming home up to your eyes in clay and as tired as a dog—and then nothing to show at the year-end! No, thank you!"

"That's not my father's life," I said.