Julia and Her Romeo: A Chronicle of Castle Barfield | Page 8

Richard, smitten with envy and admiration. 'Are you? Really?'
'Yes,' Joe answered. 'I'm agooin' to Liverpool, to begin wi'.'
This was exquisitely large and vague, and Master Richard began to yearn for a share in the high enterprise upon which his friend had entered. He had half a mind to run away from home himself, though, to be sure, there was nothing else to run away from. In Joe's case there was a difference.
'Where are you going to stay to-night?' asked Master Richard. The question sounded practical, but at bottom it was nothing of the sort. It was part of the romance of the thing, and yet it threw cold water on Joe's newly-lighted courage, and put it out again.
'I don't know,' said Joe, somewhat forlornly.
'I say,' interjected Ichabod, 'is that young Mountain, Master Richard?'
'Yes,' said Master Richard.
'Thee know'st thy feyther is again thy speakin' to him, and his feyther is again his speakin' to thee.'
'You mind your own business, Ichabod,' said the young autocrat, who was a little spoiled perhaps, and had been accustomed to have his own way in quite a princely fashion.
'I'm mindin' it,' returned Ichabod. 'It's a part o' my business to keep thee out o' mischief.'
'Ah!' piped Master Richard, 'you needn't mind that part of your business to-night.'
'All right,' said Ichabod, reshouldering the sack he had meanwhile balanced on the coping of the bridge. 'See as thee beesn't late for tay-time.'
With that, having discharged his conscience, he went on again, and the two boys stayed behind.
'What are you running away for?' asked Eichard.
'Why, feyther said it was brought to him as you and me had shook hands and had took on to be friends with one another, and he told me to go into the brewus and take my shirt off.'
'Take your shirt off?' inquired the other. In Joe's lifetime, short as it was, he had had opportunity to grow familiar with this fatherly formula, but it was strange to Master Richard. 'What for?'
'What for! Why, to get a hidin', to be sure.'
'Look here!' said Richard, having digested this, 'you come and stop in one of our barns. Have you had your tea?'
'No,' returned Joe, 'I shouldn't ha' minded so much if I had.'
'I'll bring something out to you,' said the protector.
So the two lads set out together, and to evade Ichabod, struck off at a run across the fields, Joe pantingly setting forth, in answer to his comrade's questions, how he was going to be a sailor or a pirate, 'or summat,' or to have a desert island like Crusoe. Of course, it was all admirable to both of them, and, of course, it was all a great deal more real than the fields they ran over.
The runaway was safely deposited in a roomy barn, and left there alone, when once again a life of adventures began to assume a darkish complexion. It was cold, it was anxious, it seemed to drag interminably, and it was abominably lonely. If it were to be all like this, even the prospect of an occasional taking off of one's shirt in the brewhouse looked less oppressive than it had done.
The hidden Joe, bound for piracy on the high seas, or a Crusoe's island somewhere, gave a wonderful zest to Master Richard's meal But an hour, which seemed like a year to the less fortunate of the two, went by before a raid upon the well-furnished larder of Perry Hall could be effected. When the opportunity came, Master Richard, with no remonstrance from conscience, laid hands upon a loaf and a dish of delicious little cakes of fried pork fat, from which the lard had that day been 'rendered,' and thus supplied, stole out to his hereditary enemy and fed him. The hereditary enemy complained of cold, and his host groped the dark place for sacks, and, having found them, brought them to him.
'I say,' said Joe, when he had tasted the provender, 'them's scratchings. That's gay and fine. I never had as many as I should like afore. Mother says they're too rich, but that's all rubbish.'
He made oily feast in the dark, with the sacks heaped about him. With Master Richard to help him, he began to swim in adventure, and the pair were so fascinated and absorbed that one of the farm-servants went bawling 'Master Richard' about the outlying buildings for two or three minutes before they heard him. When at last the call reached their ears they had to wait until it died away again before the surreptitious host dare leave the barn, lest his being seen should draw attention to the place.
Then Joe, who had been hunting wild beasts of all sorts with the greatest possible gusto, began in turn to be hunted by them. The rattlesnake, hitherto unknown to Castle Barfield, became a common