compromised: "Perhaps I'll make pulpits."
This was how he came to have a bedroom with a vaulted roof and a window that reached down below the floor.
CHAPTER II.
MUSIC IN THE TOWN SQUARE.
This window looked upon the Town Square, and across it to the Mayoralty. The square had once been the Franciscans' burial-ground, and was really no square at all, but a semicircle. The townspeople called it Mount Folly. The chord of the arc was formed by a large Assize Hall, with a broad flight of granite steps, and a cannon planted on either side of the steps. The children used to climb about these cannons, and Taffy had picked out his first letters from the words Sevastopol and Russian Trophy, painted in white on their lead-coloured carriages.
Below the Assize Hall an open gravelled space sloped gently down to a line of iron railings and another flight of granite steps leading into the main street. The street curved uphill around the base of this open ground, and came level with it just in front of the Mayoralty, a tall stuccoed building where the public balls were given, and the judges had their lodgings in assize time, and the Colonel his quarters during the militia training.
Fine shows passed under Taffy's window. Twice a year came the judges, with the sheriff in uniform and his chaplain, and his coach, and his coachman and lackeys in powder and plush and silk stockings, white or flesh-coloured; and the barristers with their wigs, and the javelin men and silver trumpets. Every spring, too, the Royal Rangers Militia came up for training. Suddenly one morning, in the height of the bird-nesting season, the street would swarm with countrymen tramping up to the barracks on the hill, and back, with bundles of clothes and unblackened boots dangling. For the next six weeks the town would be full of bugle calls, and brazen music, and companies marching and parading in suits of invisible green, and clanking officers in black, with little round forage caps, and silver badges on their side-belts; and, towards evening, with men lounging and smoking, or washing themselves in public before the doors of their billets.
Usually too, Whitsun Fair fell at the height of the militia training; and then for two days booths and caravans, sweet-standings and shooting-galleries lined the main street, and Taffy went out with a shilling in his pocket to enjoy himself. But the bigger shows—the menagerie, the marionettes, and the travelling Theatre Royal—were pitched on Mount Folly, just under his window. Sometimes the theatre would stay a week or two after the fair was over, until even the boy grew tired of the naphtha-lamps and the voices of the tragedians, and the cornet wheezing under canvas, and began to long for the time when they would leave the square open for the boys to come and play at prisoners' bars in the dusk.
One evening, a fortnight before Whitsun Fair, he had taken his book to the open window, and sat there with it. Every night he had to learn a text which he repeated next morning to his mother. Already, across the square, the Mayoralty house was brightly lit, and the bandsmen had begun to arrange their stands and music before it; for the Colonel was receiving company. Every now and then a carriage arrived, and set down its guests.
After a while Taffy looked up and saw two persons crossing the square—an old man and a little girl. He recognised them, having seen them together in church the day before, when his father had preached the sermon. The old man wore a rusty silk hat, cocked a little to one side, a high stock collar, black cutaway coat, breeches and gaiters of grey cord. He stooped as he walked, with his hands behind him and his walking-stick dangling like a tail—a very positive old fellow, to look at. The girl's face Taffy could not see; it was hidden by the brim of her Leghorn hat.
The pair passed close under the window. Taffy heard a knock at the door below, and ran to the head of the stairs. Down in the passage his mother was talking to the old man, who turned to the girl and told her to wait outside.
"But let her come in and sit down," urged Humility.
"No, ma'am; I know my mind. I want one hour with your husband."
Taffy heard the door shut, and went back to his window-seat.
The little girl had climbed the cannon opposite, and sat there dangling her feet and eyeing the house.
"Boy," said she, "what a funny window-seat you've got! I can see your legs under it."
"That's because the window reaches down to the floor, and the bench is fixed across by the transom here."
"What's your name?"
"Theophilus; but they call me Taffy."
"Why?"
"Father says it's an imperfect example of Grimm's Law."
"Oh! Then, I suppose you're quite the gentleman? My name's
Honoria."
"Is that your father downstairs?"
"Bless the boy! What age do you take me for? He's my grandfather. He's asking your father about his soul. He wants to be saved, and says if he's not saved before next Lady-day, he'll know the reason why. What are you doing up there?"
"Reading."
"Reading what?"
"The Bible."
"But, I say, can you really?"
"You listen." Taffy rested the big Bible on the window-frame; it just had room to lie open between the two mullions—"Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia they assayed to go into Bithynia; but the Spirit suffered them not. And they, passing by Mysia, came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. … "
"I don't wonder at it. Did you ever have the whooping-cough?"
"Not yet."
"I've had it all the winter. That's why I'm not allowed in to play with you. Listen!"
She coughed twice, and wound up with a terrific whoop.
"Now, if you'd only put on your nightshirt and preach, I'd be the congregation and interrupt you with coughing."
"Very well," said Taffy, "let's do it."
"No; you didn't suggest it. I hate boys who have to be told."
Taffy was huffed, and pretended to return to his book. By-and-by she called up to him:
"Tell me, what's written on this gun of yours?"
"Sevastopol—that's a Russian town. The English took it by storm."
"What! the soldiers over there?"
"No, they're only bandsmen; and they're too young. But I expect the
Colonel was there. He's upstairs in the Mayoralty, dining.
He's quite an old man, but I've heard father say he was as brave as a
lion when the fighting happened."
The
