“Well, you zee, zur,” said the farmer, speaking with more Somerset dialect than usual, “he’ve a been at Bristol Grammar School till just now. Masters all send good accounts of him. I don’t hold wi’ too much learning, so thought ’twere time he come home and helped me like. But not a bit o’ good he be on the varm; not a bit, zur! Spends near all his time messing about wi’ dirt.”
“Doing what?” asked Mr. Herbert, astonished.
“A-muddling and a-messing with bits o’ clay. Making little figgers, like, and tries to bake ’em in the oven.”
“Oh, I see what you mean. What sort of figures?”
“All sorts, sir. Little clay figgers of horses, dogs, pigs—why, you’d scarce believe it, sir—last week I found him making the figger of a naked ’ooman! A naked ’ooman! Why, the lad could never a’ seen such a thing.”
Abraham Leigh waited with open eyes to hear Mr. Herbert’s opinion of such an extraordinary, if not positively unusual, proceeding.
Mr. Herbert smiled. “Perhaps your son is a youthful genius.”
“Genius or not, I want to know, sir, what to do wi’ him. How’s the boy to make a living? A farmer he’ll never be.”
“You follow me and I will show you something.”