If any thing could have rivalled the interest of a sudden death for Mrs. Lake, it must have been such a wedding as this. She hurried to the front, and was just in time to catch sight of the happy couple as they passed down the street, escorted by a crowd of congratulating boys.
“Well done, Cheap John!” roared one. “You’ve chose a beauty, you have,” cried another. “She’s ’arf a ’ead taller, anyway,” added a third. “Many happy returns of the day, Jack!” yelled a fourth.
Jan was charmed, and again and again he drew Mrs. Lake’s attention to the fact that it really was the Cheap Jack.
But the windmiller’s wife was staring at the bride. Not merely because the bride is commonly considered the central figure of a wedding-party, but because her face seemed familiar to Mrs. Lake, and she could not remember where she had seen her. Though she could remember nothing, the association seemed to be one of pain. In vain she beat her brains. Memory was an almost uncultivated quality with her, and, like the rest of her intellectual powers, had a nervous, skittish way of deserting her in need, as if from timidity.
Mrs. Lake could sometimes remember things when she got into bed, but on this occasion her pillow did not assist her; and the windmiller snubbed her for making “such a caddle” about a woman’s face she might have seen anywhere or nowhere, for that matter; so she got no help from him.
And it was not till after the Cheap Jack and his wife had left the neighborhood, that one night (she was in bed) it suddenly “came to her,” as she said, that the dwarf’s bride was the woman who had brought Jan to the mill, on the night of the great storm.
CHAPTER XIV.
SUBLUNARY ART.—JAN GOES TO SCHOOL.—DAME DATCHETT AT HOME.—JAN’S FIRST SCHOOL SCRAPE.—JAN DEFENDS HIMSELF.
Even the hero of a tale cannot always be heroic, nor of romantic or poetic tastes.