It did dry, but any thing but right. Jan rubbed out the mass of thick and blotted strokes, and when the Dame was not looking, he made William’s figures for him. Jan was behindhand in spelling, but to copy figures was no difficulty to him.
Having helped his friend thus, he pulled his smock, to draw attention to his own slate. The other children wrote so slowly that time had hung heavy on his hands; and, instead of copying the figures in a row, he had made a drawing of the clock-face, with the figures on it; but instead of the hands, he had put eyes, nose, and mouth, and below the mouth a round gray blot, which William instantly recognized for a portrait of the mole on Dame Datchett’s chin. This brilliant caricature so tickled him, that he had a fit of choking from suppressed laughter; and he and Jan, being detected “in mischief,” were summoned with their slates to the Dame’s chair.
William came off triumphant; but when the Dame caught sight of Jan’s slate, without minutely examining his work, she said, “Zo thee’s been scraaling on thee slate, instead of writing thee figures,” and at once began to fumble beneath her chair.
But William had slightly moved the strap with his foot, as he stood with a perfectly unmoved and vacant countenance beside the Dame, which made some delay; and as Mrs. Datchett bent lower on the right side of her chair, William began upon the left a “hum,” which, with a close imitation of the crowing of a cock, the grunting of a pig, and the braying of a donkey, formed his chief stock of accomplishments.
“Drat the thing! Where be un?” said the Dame, endangering her balance in the search.
“B-z-z-z-z!” went William behind the chair; and he added, sotto voce, to Jan, “She be as dunch as a bittle.”
At last the Dame heard, and looked round. “Be that a harnet, missus, do ’ee think?” said William, with a face as guileless as a babe’s.
Dame Datchett rose in terror. William bent to look beneath her chair for the hornet, and of course repeated his hum. As the hornet could neither be found nor got rid of, the alarmed old lady broke up the school, and went to lay a trap of brown sugar outside the window for her enemy. And so Jan escaped a beating.
But this and the story of his first fight are digressions. It yet remains to be told how he took to drawing pigs.