“Well, dear,” said Lucy, calmly, “I wish you were a horseman, too, if you would like it so very much.”
“You don’t understand,” cried the child, “you don’t understand! I couldn’t be like Chiron; he had four legs, he was a man-horse. He brought up a little boy once, lots of little boys, and taught them. I say, Lucy, if Chiron was living now I should like to go to school to him.”
“You are a silly little boy,” said Lucy. “Who ever heard of a school-master that had four legs? I wonder papa lets you read so many silly books.”
“They are not silly books at all; it is only because you don’t know,” said Jock, reddening. “Suppose we were cast on a desert island, what would you do? You don’t know any stories to tell round the fire; but I know heaps of stories, I know more stories than any one. Aunty Ford is pretty good,” the little fellow went on, reflectively: “she knows some; and she likes me to tell her out of Shakespeare, and about the ‘Three Calenders’ and the ‘Genii in the Bottle,’ and that improves her mind; but if you were in a desert island what should you do? You don’t know one story to tell.”
“I should cook your suppers, and mend your clothes, and make the fire.”
“Ah!” said the boy with a little contempt; “bread and milk would do, you know, or when we shot a deer we’d just put him before the fire and roast him. We shouldn’t want much cooking; and the skin would do for clothes.”
“You would not be at all comfortable like that,” said Lucy gravely, shocked by the savagery of the idea; “even Robinson Crusoe had to sew the skins together and make them into a coat; and how could you have milk,” she added, “without some one to milk the cow?”
“I will tell you something that is very strange,” said Jock: “Aunty Ford never read ‘Robinson Crusoe;’ but she knows Christian off by heart, and all about Mary and Christiana and the children. And she knows the history of Joseph, and David, and Goliath; so you can not say she is quite ignorant; and she makes me tell her quantities of things.”
“You should not mix up your stories,” said Lucy; “the Bible is not like other books. About Joseph and David and those other—” (Lucy had almost said gentlemen, which seemed the most respectful expression; but she paused, reflecting with a little horror that this was too modern and common a title for Bible personages). “They are for Sunday,” she went on, more severely, to hide her own confusion; “they are not like ‘Robinson Crusoe’ or the ‘Genii in the Bottle;’ you ought not to mix them up.”
“It is Christian that is the most Sunday,” said Jock; “she explains it to me, and all what it means, about the House Beautiful and the ladies that lived there. There is a Punch, Lucy! and there’s Cousin Philip; never mind him, but run, run, and let us have a good look at the Punch.”