The Dreamer | Page 9

to the full height of his graceful little
figure and thumping his chest with his closed fist, he said, "Any boy
who wants to may hit me here, as hard as he can."
The boys looked at each other inquiringly for a moment--they were
uncertain, whether this was a specimen of American humor or to be
taken literally. Presently the largest and strongest among them stepped
forward. He was a stalwart fellow for his years, but his excessively
blond coloring, together with the effeminate style in which his mother
insisted upon dressing him, caused the boys to give him the name of
"Beauty," which was soon shortened into "Beaut," and had finally
become "the Beau."
"Will you let me hit you?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Edgar. "Count three and hit. You can't hurt me."
As "the Beau" counted, "One--two--three"--Edgar gently inflated his
lungs, expanding his chest to its fullest extent, and then, at the moment
of receiving the blow, exhaled the air. He did not stagger or flinch,
though his antagonist struck straight from the shoulder, with a brawny,
small fist.
The rest of the boys, in turn, struck him--each time counting
three--with the same result. Finally "the Beau" said,
"You hit me."

Edgar counted, "One--two--three"--and struck out with clenched fist,
but "the Beau" not knowing the trick, was promptly bowled over on the
grass--the shock making quick tears start in his forget-me-not blue
eyes.
The boys were, one and all, open and clamorous in their admiration.
"Pshaw," said young Edgar, indifferently. "It's nothing. All the boys in
Virginia can do that."
"Can you play leap-frog?" asked "Freckles"--a wiry looking little
fellow, with carotty locks and a freckled nose, whose leaping had
hitherto been unrivalled.
"I'll show you," was the reply.
Instantly, a dozen backs were bent in readiness for the game, and over
them, one by one, vaulted Edgar, with the lightness of a bird, his brown
curls blowing out behind him, as his baggy yellow thighs and thin red
legs flew through the air.
"Freckles" magnanimously owned himself beaten at his own game.
"Let's race," said "Goggles"--a lean, long-legged, swathy boy, with a
hooked nose and bulging, black eyes.
Like a flash, the whole lot of them were off down the gravel walk,
under the elms. Edgar and "Goggles"--abreast--led for a few moments,
then Edgar gradually gained and came out some twenty feet ahead of
"Goggles," and double that ahead of the foremost of the others.
It was not only these accomplishments in themselves that made the
American boy at once take the place of hero and leader of his form in
this school of old England, but the quiet and unassuming mien with
which he bore his superiority--not seeming in the least to despise the
weakest or most backward of his competitors, and good-humoredly
initiating them all into the little secrets of his success in performing
apparently difficult feats.

It was the same way with his lessons. Without apparent effort he
distanced all of his class-mates and instead of pluming himself upon it,
was always ready to help them with their Latin or their sums, whose
answers he seemed to find by magic, almost.
CHAPTER IV.
During the winter before Edgar went to Stoke-Newington, he had
attended an "infant school," in Richmond, taught by a somewhat gaunt,
but mild-mannered spinster, with big spectacles over her amiable blue
eyes, a starchy cap and a little bunch of frosty cork-screw curls on each
side of her face. As a child, she had played with Mr. Allan's father on
their native heath, in Ayrshire, and to her, little Edgar was always her
"ain wee laddie." She had spoiled him inordinately and unblushingly.
Also, as she contentedly drew at the pipe filled with the offerings of
choice smoking-tobacco which he frequently turned out of his pockets
into her lap, she had taught him to read in her own broad Scottish
accent, and to cypher.
She had furthermore drilled him in making "pothooks and hangers,"
with which he covered his slate in neat rows, daily. But it was at the
Manor House, in Stoke-Newington, that he was initiated into the
mysteries of writing. His hands were as shapely as a girl's, with deft,
taper fingers that seemed made to hold a pen or brush, and he soon
developed a neat, small, but beautifully clear and graceful
hand-writing.
This new accomplishment became at once a delight to him, and as time
went on opened a new world to Edgar the Dreamer, who now began,
when he could snatch an opportunity to do so unobserved, to put down
upon paper the visions of his awakening soul. Sometimes these
scribblings took the form of little stories--crudely conceived and
incoherently expressed, but rich in the picturesque thought and
language of an exceptionably imaginative and precocious child.
Sometimes they