It was within a week of the dinner that the little innkeeper burst indignantly into the painter’s shop. Master Linseed was ill in bed, and the sign-board lay untouched in a corner.
“It be a kind of fever that’s on him,” said his wife.
“It be a kind of fiddlestick!” said the enraged Master Chuter; and turning round his eye fell on Jan, who was looking as disconsolate as himself. Day after day had he come in hopes of seeing Master Linseed at work, and now it seemed indefinitely postponed. But the innkeeper’s face brightened, and, seizing Jan by the shoulder, he dragged him from the shop.
“Look ’ee here, Jan Lake,” said he. “Do ’ee thenk thee could paint the sign? I dunno what I’d give ’ee if ’ee could, if ’twere only to spite that humbugging old hudmedud yonder.”
Jan felt as if his brain were on fire. “If ’ee’ll get me the things, Master Chuter,” he gasped, “and’ll let me paint it in your place, I’ll do it for ’ee for nothin’.”
The innkeeper was not insensible to this consideration, but his chief wish was to spite Master Linseed. He lost no time in making ready, and for the rest of the week Jan lived between the tallet (or hay-loft) of the inn and the wood where he had first studied trees. Master Chuter provided him with sheets of thick whitey-brown paper, on which he made water-color studies, from which he painted afterwards. By his desire no one was admitted to the tallet, though Master Chuter’s delight increased with the progress of the picture till the secret was agony to him. Towards the end of the week they were disturbed by a scuffling on the tallet stairs, and Rufus bounced in, followed at a slower pace by the schoolmaster, crying, “Unearthed at last!”
“Come in, come in! That’s right!” shouted Master Chuter. “Let Master Swift look, Jan. He be a scholar, and’ll tell us all about un.”
But Jan shrank into the shadow. The schoolmaster stood in the light of the open shutter, towards which the painting was sloped, and Rufus sat by him on his haunches, and blinked with all the gravity of a critic; and in the half light between them and the stairs stood the fat little innkeeper, with his hands on his knees, crying, “There, Master Swift! Did ’ee ever see any thing to beat that? Artis’ or ammytoor!”
Jan’s very blood seemed to stand still. As Master Swift put on his spectacles, each fault in the painting sprang to the front and mocked him. It was indeed a wretched daub!
But Jan had been studying the scene under every lovely light of heaven from dawn to dusk for a week of summer days: Master Swift carried no such severe test in his brain. As he raised his head, the tears were in his eyes, and he held out his hand, saying, “My lad, it’s just the spirit of the woods.