At the Back of the North Wind

“What do you do with it, then?”

“Give it to cripple Jim.”

“Who’s cripple Jim?”

“A boy in the Row. His mother broke his leg when he wur a kid, so he’s never come to much; but he’s a good boy, is Jim, and I love Jim dearly. I always keeps off a penny for Jim—leastways as often as I can.—But there I must sweep again, for them busses makes no end o’ dirt.”

“Diamond! Diamond!” cried his father, who was afraid he might get no good by talking to the girl; and Diamond obeyed, and got up again upon the box. He told his father about the gentleman, and what he had promised him if he would learn to read, and showed him the gentleman’s card.

“Why, it’s not many doors from the Mews!” said his father, giving him back the card. “Take care of it, my boy, for it may lead to something. God knows, in these hard times a man wants as many friends as he’s ever likely to get.”

“Haven’t you got friends enough, father?” asked Diamond.

“Well, I have no right to complain; but the more the better, you know.”

“Just let me count,” said Diamond.

And he took his hands from his pockets, and spreading out the fingers of his left hand, began to count, beginning at the thumb.

“There’s mother, first, and then baby, and then me. Next there’s old Diamond—and the cab—no, I won’t count the cab, for it never looks at you, and when Diamond’s out of the shafts, it’s nobody. Then there’s the man that drinks next door, and his wife, and his baby.”

“They’re no friends of mine,” said his father.

“Well, they’re friends of mine,” said Diamond.

His father laughed.

“Much good they’ll do you!” he said.

“How do you know they won’t?” returned Diamond.

“Well, go on,” said his father.

“Then there’s Jack and Mr. Stonecrop, and, deary me! not to have mentioned Mr. Coleman and Mrs. Coleman, and Miss Coleman, and Mrs. Crump. And then there’s the clergyman that spoke to me in the garden that day the tree was blown down.”

“What’s his name!”

“I don’t know his name.”

“Where does he live?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you count him, then?”

“He did talk to me, and very kindlike too.”

His father laughed again.

“Why, child, you’re just counting everybody you know. That don’t make ‘em friends.”

“Don’t it? I thought it did. Well, but they shall be my friends. I shall make ‘em.”

“How will you do that?”

“They can’t help themselves then, if they would. If I choose to be their friend, you know, they can’t prevent me. Then there’s that girl at the crossing.”

“A fine set of friends you do have, to be sure, Diamond!”

“Surely she’s a friend anyhow, father. If it hadn’t been for her, you would never have got Mrs. Coleman and Miss Coleman to carry home.”

His father was silent, for he saw that Diamond was right, and was ashamed to find himself more ungrateful than he had thought.

“Then there’s the new gentleman,” Diamond went on.

“If he do as he say,” interposed his father.

“And why shouldn’t he? I daresay sixpence ain’t too much for him to spare. But I don’t quite understand, father: is nobody your friend but the one that does something for you?”

“No, I won’t say that, my boy. You would have to leave out baby then.”

“Oh no, I shouldn’t. Baby can laugh in your face, and crow in your ears, and make you feel so happy. Call you that nothing, father?”

The father’s heart was fairly touched now. He made no answer to this last appeal, and Diamond ended off with saying:

“And there’s the best of mine to come yet—and that’s you, daddy—except it be mother, you know. You’re my friend, daddy, ain’t you? And I’m your friend, ain’t I?”

“And God for us all,” said his father, and then they were both silent for that was very solemn.

CHAPTER XX. DIAMOND LEARNS TO READ

THE question of the tall gentleman as to whether Diamond could read or not set his father thinking it was high time he could; and as soon as old Diamond was suppered and bedded, he began the task that very night. But it was not much of a task to Diamond, for his father took for his lesson-book those very rhymes his mother had picked up on the sea-shore; and as Diamond was not beginning too soon, he learned very fast indeed. Within a month he was able to spell out most of the verses for himself.

But he had never come upon the poem he thought he had heard his mother read from it that day. He had looked through and through the book several times after he knew the letters and a few words, fancying he could tell the look of it, but had always failed to find one more like it than another. So he wisely gave up the search till he could really read. Then he resolved to begin at the beginning, and read them all straight through. This took him nearly a fortnight. When he had almost reached the end, he came upon the following verses, which took his fancy much, although they were certainly not very like those he was in search of.

LITTLE BOY BLUE

Little Boy Blue lost his way in a wood.
Sing apples and cherries, roses and honey;
He said, “I would not go back if I could,
It’s all so jolly and funny.”
He sang, “This wood is all my own,
Apples and cherries, roses and honey;
So here I’ll sit, like a king on my throne,
All so jolly and funny.”
A little snake crept out of the tree,
Apples and cherries, roses and honey;
“Lie down at my feet, little snake,” said he,
All so jolly and funny.