Then the lad decided in his own mind that he must leave his Cheshire home, and seek occupation elsewhere, if he was to become anything better than a yeoman. He accordingly sought counsel of his elders—his relatives and friends—and made known his ambitions to them. But the elders only laughed at him, and discouraged his scheming.
“Banish all such dreams from thy foolish pate,” said one. “Thou art a good lad, and a clever one to boot, but the life thy fathers led is good enough for thee. Lords and ladies are above thy station; thou wilt have to work for thy living, and, as for holding thy head high, and bothering thy brains with affairs of State—why, lad, thou art a fool to think about it.”
Such discouragement was kindly meant, but other folk, to whom the lad told his hopes and longings, were less sympathetic. Some openly jeered at him, called him a dreamer, denounced him as a conceited fop, upbraided him with the fault of considering himself superior to other people, and finally snubbed him and treated him as a snob.
Young Shaa bore all this quietly enough in the presence of his tormentors; but the bitterness of it was keenly felt by him, and when alone, he gave way to grief. Often he would seek the quiet of some secluded spot in the woodland glades of Longdendale, and sob as though his heart would break, for it seemed that the obstacles in his path were too great for him to overcome.
One day when he thus lay lamenting in solitude over his fate, a great weariness stole over him, the hot summer’s day overpowered him, and presently he fell into a doze. Then it was that the good fairies stole from their tiny palaces under the leaves in the forest, where no mortal may ever find them even if he looks, and, taking pity upon the handsome youth who lay sleeping near, decided to help him to achieve that goal of greatness upon which his soul was set. The little sprites gathered around him, and whispered in his ears a wondrous tale of the wealth and honour awaiting in London town all those bold English lads who dared seek fortune there. They drew phantom pictures of a young man’s struggle in London, of his success by honest industry and skill, of civic functions in which the young man bore a part, of a grand procession, where the youth,—now grown to manhood’s prime,—was become Lord Mayor; and to Edmund Shaa, who saw the pictures in his sleep, it seemed as though the face of that phantom Lord Mayor was his own face.
Then the fairies sang a song, and the words of the dream song were these:—
“If thou would’st win great renown,
Make thy way to London town;
Fortune waits to greet thee there
Even London’s civic chair;