The Dreamer | Page 9

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 were in verse. For subjects these infant effusions had generally to do with the lonely grave in the churchyard in Richmond and the sad joy of the heart that mourns evermore; with the beauty of flowers--the more beautiful because doomed to a brief life; with the Gothic steeple, asleep in the still, blue air, and the bell in whose deep iron throat dwelt a note that was hollow and ghostly; with the great wall around the Manor House grounds and with the mighty gate that swung upon hinges in which the voice of a soul in torment seemed to be imprisoned, and with other