“Who are your parents?” he asked. The service had recalled Jan’s highest associations, and he was anxious to tell the strict truth.
“I don’t rightly know, sir,” said he.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes, sir,” sobbed poor Jan.
They were stopping before a large house, and the gentleman said, “Look here, my boy. If you had a good home, and good food, and clothes, would you work? Would you try to be a good lad, and learn an honest trade?”
“I’d be glad, sir,” said Jan.
“Have you ever worked? What can you do?” asked the gentleman.
“I can mind pigs; but I do think ’twould be best for I to be in a mill, and I’ve got a miller’s thumb.” Jan said this because the idea had struck him that if he could only get home again he might hire himself out at a mop to Master Lake. A traditional belief in the force of the law of hiring made him think that this would protect him against any claim of the Cheap Jack. Before the gentleman could reply, the house-door was opened by a boy some years older than Jan, who was despatched to fetch “the master.” Jan felt sure that it must be a school, though he was puzzled by the contents of the room in which they waited. It was filled with pretty specimens of joiner’s and cabinet-maker’s work, some quite and some partly finished. There were also brushes of various kinds, so that, if there had been a suitable window, Jan would have concluded that it was a shop. In two or three moments the master’s step sounded in the passage.
Jan had pleasant associations with the word “master,” and he looked up with some vague fancy of seeing a second Master Swift. Not that Master Swift, or any one else in the slow-going little village, ever walked with this sharp, hasty tread, as if one hoped to overtake time! With such a step the gentleman himself went away, when he had said to Jan, “Be a good boy, my lad, and attend to your master, and he’ll be a good friend to you.”
He was not in the least like Master Swift. He was young, and youthfully dressed. A schoolmaster with neither spectacles nor a black coat was a new idea to Jan; but he seemed to be kind, for, with a sharp look at Jan’s pinched face, he said, “You’ll be glad of some breakfast, my lad, I fancy; and breakfast’s only just over. Come along.” And away he went at double quick time down the passage, and Jan ran after him.