“Show this poor woman and her child to Mrs. Craddock’s, James,” said Mr. Spires, “and tell Mrs. Craddock to make them very comfortable; and if you will come to my warehouse to-morrow,” added he, addressing the poor woman, “perhaps I can be of some use to you.”
The poor woman poured out her heartfelt thanks, and following the old man-servant, soon disappeared, hobbling over the pebbly pavement with her living load, her limbs stiffened almost to stone by her fatigue and cold ride.
We must not pursue too minutely our narrative. Mrs. Deg was engaged to do the washing and getting up of Mr. Spires’s linen, and the manner in which she executed her task, insured her recommendations to all their friends. Mrs. Deg was at once in full employ. She occupied a neat house in a yard near the meadows below the town, and in these meadows she might be seen spreading out her clothes to whiten on the grass attended by her stout little boy. In the same yard lived a shoemaker, who had two or three children of almost the same age as Mrs. Deg’s child. The children, as time went on, became playfellows. Little Simon might be said to have the free run of the shoemaker’s house, and he was the more attracted thither by the shoemaker’s birds, and his flute, on which he often played when his work was done.
Mrs. Deg took a great liking to the shoemaker: and he and his wife, a quiet, kind-hearted woman, were almost all the acquaintances that she cultivated. She had found out her husband’s parents; but they were not of a description that at all pleased her. They were old and infirm, but they were of the true pauper breed, a sort of persons whom Mrs. Deg had been taught to avoid and to despise. They looked on her as a sort of second parish, and insisted that she should come and live with them, and help to maintain them out of her earnings. But Mrs. Deg would rather that her little boy had died than have been familiarised with the spirit of these old people. Despise them she struggled hard not to do, and she agreed to allow them sufficient to maintain them, on condition that they desisted from any further application to the parish. It would be a long and disgusting tale to recount all the troubles, annoyances, and querulous complaints and even bitter accusations that she received from her connections, whom she could never satisfy; but she considered it one of her crosses in life, and patiently bore it, seeing that they suffered no real want, so long as they lived, which was for years; but she would never allow her little Simon to be with them alone.
The shoemaker neighbour was a stout protector to her against the greedy demands of the old people, and of others of the old Degs, and also against another class of inconvenient visitors, namely suitors, who saw in Mrs. Deg a neat and comely young woman, with a flourishing business, and a neat and well-furnished house, a very desirable acquisition. But Mrs. Deg had resolved never again to marry, but to live for the boy, and she kept her resolve with firmness and gentleness.
The shoemaker often took walks in the extensive town-meadows, to gather groundsel and plantain for his canaries and gorse-linnets, and little Simon Deg delighted to accompany him with his own children. There William Watson, the shoemaker, used to point out to the children the beauty of the flowers, the insects, and other objects of nature; and while he sat on a stile and read in a little old book of poetry, as he often used to do, the children sate on the summer grass, and enjoyed themselves in a variety of plays.
The effect of these walks, and the shoemaker’s conversation on little Simon Deg, was such as never wore out of him through his whole life, and soon led him to astonish the shoemaker by his extraordinary conduct. He manifested the greatest uneasiness at their treading on the flowers in the grass; he would burst into tears if they persisted in it; and when asked why, he said they were so beautiful, and that they must enjoy the sunshine, and be very unhappy to die. The shoemaker was amazed, but indulged the lad’s fancy. One day he thought to give him a great treat, and when they were out in the meadows, he drew from under his coat a bow and arrow, and shot the arrow high up into the air. He expected to see him in an ecstasy of delight; his own children clapped their hands in transport, but Simon stood silent, and as if awestruck. “Shall I send up another?” asked the shoemaker.
“No, no!” exclaimed the child, imploringly. “You say God lives up there, and He mayn’t like it.”
The shoemaker laughed, but presently he said, as if to himself, “There is too much imagination there. There will be a poet there if we don’t take care.”
The shoemaker offered to teach Simon to read, and to solidify his mind, as he termed it, by arithmetic, and then to teach him to work at his trade. His mother was very glad; and thought shoemaking would be a good trade for the boy; and that with Mr. Watson she should have him always near her. He was growing now a great lad, and was especially strong, and of a frank and daring habit. He was greatly indignant at any act of oppression of the weak by the strong, and not seldom got into trouble by his championship of the injured in such cases amongst the boys in the neighbourhood.