the rill into a beautiful sticky consistency. Minna watched the familiar operation with deepest interest, and added from time to time a word or two of connoisseur criticism: ‘Now thee’st got it too wet, Colin;’ or, ‘Take care thee don’t putt in too much of thik there blue earth yonder; or, ‘That’s about right vor the viggeread now, I’m thinkin’; thee’d better begin makin’ it now avore the clay gets too dried up.’
As soon as Colin had worked the clay up to what he regarded as the proper requirements of his art, he began modelling it dexterously with his fingers into the outer form and fashion of a ship’s figure-head: ‘What’ll ‘ee ‘ave virst, Minna?’ he asked as he roughly moulded the mass into a bold outward curve, that would have answered equally well for any figure-head in the whole British merchant navy.
‘I’ll ‘ave the Mariar-Ann,’ Minna answered with a nod of her small black head in the direction of the mouth in the valley, where the six petty fishing vessels of Wootton Mandeville stood drawn up together in a long straight row on the ridge of shingle. The Mariar-Ann was the collier that came monthly from Cardiff, and its figure-head represented a gilded lady, gazing over the waves with a vacant smile, and draped in a flowing crimson costume of no very particular historical period.
Cohn worked away at the clay vigorously for a few minutes with fingers and knife by turns, and at the end of that time he had produced a very creditable figure-head indeed, accurately representing in its main features the gilded lady of the Mariar-Ann.
‘Oh, how lovely!’ Minna cried, delighted. ‘Thik’s the best thee’st made, Colin. Let’s bake un and keep un always.’
‘Take un ‘ome an’ bake un yourself, Minna,’ the boy answered. ‘We ain’t got no vire ‘ere. What’ll I make ‘ee now? ‘Nother vigger-’ead?’
‘No!’ Minna cried, with a happy inspiration.
‘Make myself, Colin.’
The boy eyed her carefully from head to foot. ‘I don’t s’pose I can do ‘ee, Minna,’ he answered after a pause. ‘Howsonedever, I’ll try;’ and he took a fresh lump of the kneaded clay, and began working it up loosely into a rough outline of the girl’s figure. It was his first attempt at modelling from life, and he went at it with careful deliberation. Minna posed before him in her natural attitude, and Colin called her back every minute or two when she got impatient, and kept his little sitter steadily posed till the portrait statuette was fairly finished. Critical justice compels the admission that Colin Churchill’s first figure from life was not an entirely successful work of sculpture. Its expression was distinctly feeble; its pose was weak and uncertain; its drapery was marked by a frank disregard of folds and a bold conventionalism; and, last of all, it ended abruptly at the short dress, owing to certain mechanical difficulties in the way of supporting the heavy body on a pair of slender moist clay legs. Still, it distinctly suggested the notion of a human being; it remotely resembled a little girl; and it even faintly adumbrated, in figure at least, if not in feature, Minna Wroe herself.
But if the work of art failed a little when judged by the stern tribunal of adult criticism, it certainly more than satisfied both the young artist and the subject of his plastic skill. They gazed at the completed figure with the deepest admiration, and Minna even ventured to express a decided opinion that anybody in the world would know it was meant for her. Which high standard of artistic portraiture has been known to satisfy much older and more exalted critics, including many ladies and gentlemen of distinction who have wasted the time of good sculptors by ‘having their busts taken.’
Meanwhile, down in the village by the shore, Geargey Wroe, Minna’s father, was standing by a little garden gate, where Sam Churchill the elder was carefully tending his cabbages and melons. ‘Zeen our Minna, Sam!’ he asked over the paling. ‘Wher’s ‘er to, dost know? Off zumwhere with yer Colin, I’ll be bound, Sammy. They’re always off zumwhere together, them two is, I vancy. ‘E’s up to ‘is drawin’ or zummat down to lake there. Such a lad vor drawin’ an’ that I never did zee. ‘Ow’s bisness, Sammy?’
‘Purty good, Geargey, purty good. Volks be a-comin’ in now an’ takin’ lodgin’s, wantin’ garden stuff and such like. First-rate family from London come yesterday down to Walker’s. Turble rich volk I should say by the look o’ un. Ordered a power o’ fruit and zum vegetables.‘Ow’s vishin’, Geargey?’ ‘Bad,’ Geargey answered, shaking his head ominously: ‘as bad as ur could be. Town’s turble empty still: nobody come ‘ceptin’ a lot o’ good-vor-nothin’ meetingers. ‘Ootton ain’t wot it ‘ad used to be, Sammy, zince these ‘ere rail-rawds. Wot we wants is the rail-rawd to come ‘ere to town, so volks can get ‘ere aisy, like they can to Sayton. Then we’d get zum real gintlevolk who got money in their pockets to spend, an’ll spend it vree and aisy to the tradesmen, and the boatmen, and the vishermen; that’s wot we wants, don’t us, Sammy?’
‘Us do, us do,’ Sam Churchill assented, nodding.
‘Ah, I do mind the time, Sammy,’ Geargey said regretfully, wiping his eyes with the corner of his jersey, ‘w’en every wipswile I’d used to get a gintleman to go out way, who’d gi’ us share an’ share alike o’ his grub, and a drap out o’ his whisky bottle: and w’en we pulls ashore, he sez, sez’e: “I don’t want the vish, my man,” sez’e; “I only wants the sport, raly.” But nowadays, Lard bless ‘ee, Sam, we gets a pack o’ meetingers down from London, and they brings along a hunk o’ bread and some fat pork, or a piece o’ blue vinny cheese, as ‘ard as Portland stone. Now I can’t abare fat pork without a streak o’ lean in it, ‘specially when I smells the bait; and I can’t tackle the blue vinny, ‘cos I never ‘as my teeth with me: thof my mate, Bill-o’-my-Soul, ‘e can putt ‘isself outside most things in the way o’ grub at a vurry short notice, as you do well know, Sam, and I never seed as bate made no difference to ‘e nohow. But these ‘ere meetingers, as I was a sayin’ (vor I’ve got avore my story, Sammy), they goes out an’ haves vine sport, we’ll say; and then, w’en we comes ‘ome they out and lugs out dree or vower shillin’s or so, vor me an’ my mate, an’ walks off with ‘arf-a-suvren’s worth o’ the biggest vish, quite aisy-like, an’ layves all the liddle fry an’ the blin in the boat; the chattering jackanapes.’
‘’Ees, ‘ees, lad, times is changed,’ Sam murmured meditatively, half to himself; ‘times is changed turble bad since old Squire’s day. Wot a place ‘Ootton ‘ad used to be then, ‘adn’t ur, Geargey? Coach from Darchester an’ ‘bus from Tilbury station, bringin’ in gurt folks from London vor the sayson every day; dinner party up to vicarage with green paysen an’ peaches, an’ nectarines, – ‘’An’ a ‘ole turbat,’ Geargey put in parenthetically. ‘Ay, lad, an’ a ‘ole turbot every Saturday. Them was times, Geargey; them was times. I don’t s’pose they ther times ull never come again. Ther ain’t the gentry now as ther’d used to be in old Squire’s day. Pack o’ trumpery London volk, with one servant, comin’ down ‘ere vor the sayson – short sayson – six week, or murt be seven – an’ then walkin’ off agin, without so much as spending ten poun’ or so in the’ole parish. I mind the times, Geargey, when volks used to say ‘Ootton were the safety valve o’ the Bath sayson. Soon as sayson were over up to Bath, gentlevolk and ladies a-comin’ down ‘ere to enj’y thesselves, an’ spendin’ their money vree and aisy, same as if it were water. Us don’t see un comin’ now, Geargey: times is changed turble: us don’t see un now.’
‘It’s the dree terms as ‘as ruined ‘Ootton,’ Geargey said, philosophically – the research of the cause being the true note of philosophy.
‘It’s they dree terms as ‘as done it, vor sartin.’
‘Why, ‘ow’s that, Gearge?’
‘Well, don’t ‘ee see, Sam, it’s like o’ thik. W’en they
