“I told you,” said Lucy, regretfully, “they are all nonsense books—nothing that is of any good.”
“Because you don’t know,” cried Jock, hotly. “You’ve no business to speak when you don’t know. He doesn’t think they’re windmills; he thinks they’re big giants, and they’re just like it—just like giants— I’ve thought so myself. He thinks they’ve got a lot of poor people carrying them off to be slaves, and there’s only him upon his own horse—nobody more; but do you think he’ll let them carry off the poor people for slaves? He goes at them like a dozen knights—he goes at them like an army,” cried Jock, his eyes flashing. “I wish I had been there, I’d have done it, too.”
“Ah, Don Quixote,” said St. Clair. “What! you, Jock! You that know such a lot—you’d have gone at the windmills, too?”
Jock grew red, for he did not like ridicule. “He didn’t know they were windmills,” he said.
“Didn’t I tell you, Mr. St. Clair,” said Lucy, “that is all he thinks about—windmills? what good can windmills do him? unless he were to learn all about the uses of them, and who began them, and the good they are to the country; that would be very different from a fairy tale.”
“It is not a bit a fairy tale,” Jock cried, indignant. “It’s a long time since I read any fairy tales—never any since Prospero and Ariel on the enchanted island. This is about a man. Fairy tales are very nice when you are quite little,” he added, with dignity, “just beginning to read plain; but when you are bigger you like the sense best, for you can think, I would do the same.”
“You see, Mr. St. Clair, that is just like him; it is not education,” said Lucy, with mild despair.
“I am not quite clear about that,” said St. Clair, who knew a little more than Lucy; “but, Jock, you will find a great many more books to read and men to hear about if you come to me and learn. Leave your tall gentleman to overcome the windmills, and come and speak to me. Tell me what you have learned,” he said, holding the child within his arm as he stood up reluctantly by his side. Lucy looked on with pleased approval, yet many excuses. “He has never been to school; he was so delicate papa didn’t like him to be out of his sight,” she said, reddening with much shame and self-reproach as the real state of the case was elucidated. When the cross-examination was over Jock, though not at all ashamed, escaped as quickly as he could from Mr. St. Clair’s detaining arm. He snatched up his book from the rug, and made assurance sure by putting a flight of stairs and the closed door of Mrs. Ford’s room between him and the inquisitor, who laughed and shook his head as the little fellow bolted. “We must begin from the beginning, I fear,” he said. “He has been neglected; but after all, there has not been much time lost.”
“I am very sorry he is so ignorant,” said Lucy, deprecatingly; “but, Mr. St. Clair, papa was old, and I was very young.”
“Yes; no one could expect you to think of it; you are very young now, Miss Trevor, to have such a charge.”