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Updated: May 23, 2025
Ancrum in school? began Reuben, affecting a brisk manner, oddly unlike him. 'Naw. It wor Brother Winterbotham from Halifax, or soom sich name. 'Wor he edifyin, Davy? 'He wor he wor a leather-yed, said David, with sudden energy, and, taking up a stone again, he flung it at a tree trunk opposite, with a certain vindictiveness as though Brother Winterbotham were sitting there.
By the end of the week he had found a post as errand-boy at a large cheap bookseller's and stationer's in Deansgate, at eight shillings a week, his good looks, manner, and education evidently helping him largely, as Mr. Ancrum could perceive through the boy's very matter-of-fact account of himself.
Then it appeared that the old cashier at Heywood's bank, who had taken a friendly interest in the young bookseller since the opening of his account, had dropped a private word to John in the course of conversation, which had alarmed that youth not a little. His own last scrawl from David had puzzled and disquieted him, and he straightway marched off to Mr. Ancrum to consult.
The lame, solitary minister, who only got through his week's self-appointed tasks at a constant expense of bodily torment, was dazzled and bewildered by the spectacle of so much vitality spent with such ease and impunity. 'How many years of Manchester must one give him? said Ancrum to himself one night, when he was making his way home from a reading of the 'Electra' with David.
'What wages ull yo get? inquired Louie sharply. 'Nothin very fat, that's sure, laughed David. 'If Mr. Ancrum can do as he says, an find me a place in a book-shop, they'll, mebbe, gie me six shillin to begin wi. 'An what ull yo do wi 'at? 'Live on't, replied David briefly. 'Yo conno, I tell yo! Yo'll ha food an firin, cloos, an lodgin to pay out o't. Yo conno do 't soa theer.
Send a line to Ancrum, there's a dear, to say I will go and see him to-night. Four months! I am afraid he has been very bad. Lucy stood by the fire a little, lost in many contradictory feelings. There was in her a strange sense as of some long strain slowly giving way, the quiet melting of some old hardness.
'An I wouldna advise yo, Reuben Grieve, to begin now no, I wouldna. I gie yo fair noatice. Soa theer's not enough for t' lad to do, Mr. Ancrum, he thinks? Perhaps he'll tak th' place an try? I'd not gie him as mich wage as ud fill his stomach i' th' week noa, I'd not, not if yo wor to ask me a bletherin windy chap as iver I saw.
I took up my lodgings that night in a small miserable inn in the village of Ancrum, of which the people seemed alike poor and ignorant. Before going to bed, I asked if it was customary with them to have family worship of evenings. The man answered that they were so hard set with the world they often could not get time, but if I would be so kind as to officiate they would be much obliged to me.
His thoughts about them found occasional outlet, either in his talks with Ancrum whose love soothed him, and whose mind, with all its weaknesses and its strong Catholic drift, he had long found to be infinitely freer and more hospitable in the matter of ideas than the average Anglican mind or in his journal. A few last extracts from the journal may be given.
'Oh, why not? said Ancrum, with a shrug, 'if life's long enough' and he absently lifted and let fall a book which lay on the table beside him; it was Newman's 'Dream of Gerontius' 'if life's long enough, and happy enough! Well, so you've been learning French, I can hear. Teaching yourself? 'No; there's an old Frenchman, old Barbier do you know him, sir? He gives lessons at a shilling an hour.
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