Julia and Her Romeo: A Chronicle of Castle Barfield | Page 8

and startled Master Richard and
Ichabod more than a little.
'That thee, Dick?'
He knew it well enough, but it was quite delightful to be able to ask it
with certainty.
'Hillo,' said Master Richard, recognising his sworn friend. 'What are
you doing? Are you trapping anything?'
'No,' the hereditary enemy answered. He had been crying, the poor little
chap, until he had been frightened into quiet, and now on a sudden he
was as brave and as glad again as ever he had been in his life. Once
more adventures loomed ahead for the adventurous, and he shone
within and grew warm with the sweet reflux of courage as he
whispered, 'I'm running away from home!'
Once again, the feat was glorious.
'No?' said Master Richard, smitten with envy and admiration. 'Are you?
Really?'
'Yes,' Joe answered. 'I'm agooin' to Liverpool, to begin wi'.'
This was exquisitely large and vague, and Master Richard began to

yearn for a share in the high enterprise upon which his friend had
entered. He had half a mind to run away from home himself, though, to
be sure, there was nothing else to run away from. In Joe's case there
was a difference.
'Where are you going to stay to-night?' asked Master Richard. The
question sounded practical, but at bottom it was nothing of the sort. It
was part of the romance of the thing, and yet it threw cold water on
Joe's newly-lighted courage, and put it out again.
'I don't know,' said Joe, somewhat forlornly.
'I say,' interjected Ichabod, 'is that young Mountain, Master Richard?'
'Yes,' said Master Richard.
'Thee know'st thy feyther is again thy speakin' to him, and his feyther is
again his speakin' to thee.'
'You mind your own business, Ichabod,' said the young autocrat, who
was a little spoiled perhaps, and had been accustomed to have his own
way in quite a princely fashion.
'I'm mindin' it,' returned Ichabod. 'It's a part o' my business to keep thee
out o' mischief.'
'Ah!' piped Master Richard, 'you needn't mind that part of your business
to-night.'
'All right,' said Ichabod, reshouldering the sack he had meanwhile
balanced on the coping of the bridge. 'See as thee beesn't late for
tay-time.'
With that, having discharged his conscience, he went on again, and the
two boys stayed behind.
'What are you running away for?' asked Eichard.
'Why, feyther said it was brought to him as you and me had shook

hands and had took on to be friends with one another, and he told me to
go into the brewus and take my shirt off.'
'Take your shirt off?' inquired the other. In Joe's lifetime, short as it was,
he had had opportunity to grow familiar with this fatherly formula, but
it was strange to Master Richard. 'What for?'
'What for! Why, to get a hidin', to be sure.'
'Look here!' said Richard, having digested this, 'you come and stop in
one of our barns. Have you had your tea?'
'No,' returned Joe, 'I shouldn't ha' minded so much if I had.'
'I'll bring something out to you,' said the protector.
So the two lads set out together, and to evade Ichabod, struck off at a
run across the fields, Joe pantingly setting forth, in answer to his
comrade's questions, how he was going to be a sailor or a pirate, 'or
summat,' or to have a desert island like Crusoe. Of course, it was all
admirable to both of them, and, of course, it was all a great deal more
real than the fields they ran over.
The runaway was safely deposited in a roomy barn, and left there alone,
when once again a life of adventures began to assume a darkish
complexion. It was cold, it was anxious, it seemed to drag interminably,
and it was abominably lonely. If it were to be all like this, even the
prospect of an occasional taking off of one's shirt in the brewhouse
looked less oppressive than it had done.
The hidden Joe, bound for piracy on the high seas, or a Crusoe's island
somewhere, gave a wonderful zest to Master Richard's meal But an
hour, which seemed like a year to the less fortunate of the two, went by
before a raid upon the well-furnished larder of Perry Hall could be
effected. When the opportunity came, Master Richard, with no
remonstrance from conscience, laid hands upon a loaf and a dish of
delicious little cakes of fried pork fat, from which the lard had that day
been 'rendered,' and thus supplied, stole out to his hereditary enemy and

fed him. The hereditary enemy complained of cold, and his host groped
the dark place for sacks, and, having found them, brought them to him.
'I say,' said Joe, when he had tasted the provender, 'them's