Book One – Chapter Four.
Harry Milvaine, Landed Proprietor – His Bungalow, and how he Built it – “I’ll be a Sailor, to be Sure.”

Were I to tell one-half of the adventures of the child Harold, as his father called him, I would fill this whole book with them, and would not have space to say a word about his career as a youth and young man. So I shall not begin.

No more vivacious reader of books of biography, travel, and adventure, perhaps ever existed than Harry Milvaine was when about the age of ten. I have often wondered when he slept.

At midsummer in the far north of Scotland there is light enough all night to read by. Harry took advantage of this, and would continue at a book from sunset till sunrise.

The boy had a deal of independence of character and real good feeling.

“I must have light to read by all night in winter,” he said to himself, “but it would be unfair to burn my father’s candles. I’ll make some.”

There was an odd old volume in Mr Milvaine’s library, called “The Arts and Sciences,” which was a very great favourite with Harry because it told him everything.

It taught him how to make moulded candles. He possessed a tin pen-and-pencil case. This made a first-rate mould. He collected fat, he got a wick and fixed it to the bottom of the case and held it in the position described by the book, then he poured in the melted fat, and lo! and behold, when it cooled, a candle was the result. He worked, in his own little tool-house, away down among the shrubbery at the bottom of the lawn, and made many candles. John, the coachman, admired them very much, and so did the female servants.

“Dear me?” said one old milk-maid, “it’s your father, Master Harry, that should be proud of his bonnie, bonnie boy.”

This old milk-maid had a beard and moustache that many a city clerk would have envied, and she was reputed to be a witch accordingly, but she dearly loved little Harry, and Harry loved her, and made a regular confidante of her.

She did not give him bad advice either. One example in proof of this. Harry came to her one day in great grief. He was not crying, but his mouth was pursed up very much, and he was very red in the face.

“Oh, Yonitch, Yonitch!” he exclaimed, in bitterness, “what shall I do? I’ve shot papa’s favourite cock.”

“Shot him dead? Have you, dear?” said Yonitch.

“Oh, dead enough, Yonitch. I fired at him, and my arrow has gone clean through his breast. I don’t think I really meant it, though.”

Yonitch ran down with him to the paddock to view the body, and there certainly never was a much “deader” cock. The arrow was still sticking in his breast.

“What shall I do? Shall I bury the cock and run away?”

“That would not be brave, dear. No Highlander runs away. Go straight to your father and tell him.”

Harry did so.

“What’s the matter, lad?” said his father. “Hold up your head. What is it?”

“Papa,” replied the boy, not daring to look up, but speaking to a plough that stood near. “Papa, I took my bow and arrows – ”

“Yes, boy.”

“And I went down the paddock.”

“Well?”

“And I fired at the cock.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m afraid he – wants to be – buried.”

“Well, well, well, never mind, boy; I forgive you because you’ve come like a man and like a Highlander and told me. We’ll put the poor cock in the pot and have him for dinner.”

“Oh, no, no, dear papa,” cried Harry, looking up now for the first time, “I could not bear to see him cooked.”

“Well, go and bury him yourself, then.”

Harry ran off happy, and Yonitch and he dug a grave and buried the poor cock’s corpse, and it took Harry a whole week’s work in the tool-house to fashion him a “wooden tombstone,” and write an epitaph. The epitaph ran as follows: —

 
here lies
papa’s poor cotching chiney cock
croolly slane by harry
with his bow and arrie.
 
 
he sleeps in peas.
 

That tool-house and workshop of Harry’s was quite a wonderful place. And wonderful, indeed, were the things Harry turned out of it. I’m not joking. He really did make good useful articles – boxes, picture frames, a footstool for his mother, a milking-stool for Yonitch, and an extraordinary rustic-looking, but comfortable, arm-chair for his father. It had a high back and a carpet bottom, and seated in it, on the verandah on a summer’s evening, with his pipe and his paper, papa did look the very quintessence of comfort and jollity.

But Harry might often have been seen at the village carpenter’s shop, taking lessons in the useful art of joinery.

In return for the high-backed chair, his father presented him, when Christmas came round, with a turning lathe. Then I think that Harry’s cup of bliss was full to overflowing.

But his workshop soon proved too small to hold all his belongings. He secured a piece of ground from his father in a quiet and sheltered corner of the paddock, and within this he determined to do great things, as soon as spring brought out the daisies, and the ground was dry.

Now let me tell the reader, before I go a line farther on with my story, that though I am bound, in justice to my young hero, to say that he never neglected his lessons, nor his prayers, dear lad, still I do not wish to make him out a greater saint than perhaps most boys of his age are.

He is painted from the life, mind you, and I have not hid his failings from you. Nor need I hesitate to say that a fight between Harry and some village lad was of no very rare occurrence, and it was no uncommon thing to meet him coming homewards after one of these tulzies, with his jacket all covered with mud and his face all covered with blood.

So there! I hide nothing, good or bad.

Harry was going to do great things then with his bit of ground. He felt himself to be a small landed proprietor, a laird in miniature. He thought and planned in his spare moments all the livelong winter. He even put his plans on paper. This he did in the stillness of night, by the light of his own moulded candles.

Harry was immensely rich – at least he thought himself so. He had a money-box in the shape of a dog-kennel that stood on the mantelpiece of his own room, and goodness only knows how much money it did not contain. For years back, whenever he had received sixpence or a shilling from a relation or friend, pop! it had gone into the kennel. Half-crowns were too big to go in, but he changed them for smaller coins, and in they went. There was one whole sovereign in and one half one.

But Harry had not depended altogether for his riches on the charity of friends and relations. No, for he was a wealthy dealer in live stock. Not cattle and horses, nor sheep and pigs. Harry’s was a London market, and a world-wide market. His medium for sale was a paper called The Exchange and Mart, and his stock consisted of canaries, siskins, and British birds of all kinds. The latter he found in the woods and wilds, and reared by hand. He also sold guinea-pigs, white rats, piebald mice, hedgehogs, and snakes.

So no wonder he had amassed wealth.

And now spring came. The robin left the gateway where he had been singing so sweetly all the winter, and went away to the woods to build himself a nest. The primroses came out in the copses, and as soon as the blackbird and thrush saw them they started singing at once.

The trees all burst into bud and then into leaf. The young corn grew green in the fields, seeing which the lark tried how high he could mount and how loud he could sing.

And the wind blew soft and warm from the west, and the sun shone forth bright and clear, and dried up the roads and the fields, and chased every bit of snow away from the glens and straths, only permitting it to remain here and there in the hollows on the mountain tops.

Then Harry prepared for action.

It may be thought strange that Harry had no companions of his own age. But I am writing the history of a strange and wayward boy, a boy who never wanted or sought for companionship, a kind of miniature edition of Robinson Crusoe he was, only he liked Yonitch to come and look at his work sometimes. There was also the joiner’s man, who used to come up now and then and give Harry hints about “this, that, or t’other.” So the boy did not feel lonely.

Andrew was this joiner’s man’s name. He was a kind of Jack-of-all-trades.

And never went about without his snuff-box.

He was very fond of Harry. In two evenings he dug and levelled and raked all Harry’s estate for him, and Harry was duly thankful, because digging is very hard work.

Harry bought snuff for Andrew, and Andrew was happy.

Wire fencing now occupied our hero’s attention. He went all by himself (accompanied by Eily, of course) to a neighbouring town to buy the galvanised iron mesh, and found that the money he had taken from his kennel for this purpose was more than sufficient.

Next he planned his garden, and laid out and gravelled his walks, bordering them nicely with old bricks. He gravelled quite a large space at one end, because here he was to build his house.

The floor of this was laid first and plastered over with a mixture of Portland cement and sand, and when dry it was as hard and firm as marble.

Then the uprights were put in, one for each corner, and the roof put on. At this work he received valuable assistance from Andrew, and paid him in snuff.

The roof Andrew thatched, and when the house was built, it was a very rustic and very romantic one indeed; partly bungalow, partly summer-house.

Lovely flowering climbers were planted, quick growing ones, wild convolvulus and clematis, with a few roses, and before the summer was half done all the walls were covered with a wealth of floral beauty.

Inside everything was neatness and regulation. One end was the working end, tool-bench, and lathe. All the rest of the house or room was like a boudoir, a sofa, chairs, a bookcase, brackets, candlesticks, a mirror or two, flower vases – all perfect and beautiful.

And all devised by Harry’s own hands.

Am I not right in saying he was a kind of second edition of Robinson Crusoe?

The garden, too, was well planted, and all along the wire fence, entirely covering it, were wild convolvuluses.

Miss Campbell was permitted to visit the hermit Harry in his charming abode. But not to mention lessons. Harry’s was quite a pleasure-house, and lessons would have been out of keeping altogether in it. But she had to read stories to him.

Yonitch was another invited guest. She did not read stories. But she told the most wonderful fairy tales, and even ghost stories, that ever any one listened to.

One day, when Harry was away fishing, his father happened to look into his quarters and took the liberty of having a peep through his books. They were nearly all books of adventure and travel, and mostly sea stories, with just a sprinkling of poetry.

Harry’s father went away – thinking.

How was this to end? He wished his son, his only son, to remain at home with him, to grow up with him, and help to farm his little estate. But those books? What could the boy’s bent be?

That evening, after supper, he asked Harry straight what he would like to be.

Harry had an old-fashioned way of speaking, as boys have who are brought up by themselves, and only hear their elders talk.

He cocked his head consideringly on one side and replied —

“Oh! a sailor, papa. There can’t be any question about that.”

“Ah! boy, I’ll send you to school, and that’ll knock all that nonsense out of your head.”

Harry looked at his father wonderingly. He could not understand what his father meant any more than if he had talked Greek.

“Draw your stool near my knee, my lad, and I’ll suggest to you what you’ll be, and you shall choose. Well, then, first and foremost, how would you like to be a doctor? Fine thing to be a doctor, drive about in a beautiful white-lined carriage, have the entrée of all the best houses, have a splendid house yourself, and – ”

“Nasty man!” said Harry.

“Who?” said Mr Milvaine.

“Why, the doctor to be sure. Dear papa, I wouldn’t take physic myself even, and I’m sure I wouldn’t ask anybody else to. No, papa, I’ll be a sailor.”

“Well, how would you like to enter the Church? how would you like to be a clergyman? No one in the world so highly respected as a clergyman. He is fit to sit down side by side with royalty itself, and his holy mission, Harold – ”

“Stop, stop, papa. I say my prayers every morning and I say my prayers every night, but somehow I go and do naughty things just the same. You know I tree’d poor guvie for a whole night, and I tease poor Towsie, and I slew the Cochin China cock. No, no, dear papa; I’m not good enough to be a clergyman. I’ll be a sailor.”

“Well, how would you like to enter business, and rise, perhaps, to be Lord Mayor of London, and ride in a gilded coach, and live in a house like a palace – ”

“Papa, papa, don’t; I would rather live in the beech tree in the forest than in a palace. I’ll be a sailor.”

His father bent down, and took Harry’s hand in his. “Wouldn’t you like to stay at home and help your papa, when he grows old, to farm, and take your poor old mother to church every Sunday on your arm?”

“If you wished it very much, papa; but you see, papa – ”

The boy ceased speaking, and gazed into the fire for fully a minute.

Then up he jumped and clapped his hands.

“Ha?” he laughed, “I have it, dear papa. I have it. I’ll do both.”

“Both what?”

“Why, I’ll go to sea first, and visit all kinds of strange places and strange countries, and kill, oh! such lots of lions and tigers and savages; and then, papa, come back and help you to farm, and take my mamma to church. Isn’t it fun?”

His father laughed, and took up his pipe. Shouldn’t wonder, he thought to himself, but there may be some little truth in that old saying: “The child is the father of the man.”