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Updated: June 18, 2025
Jan felt as if his brain were on fire. "If 'ee'll get me the things, Master Chuter," he gasped, "and'll let me paint it in your place, I'll do it for 'ee for nothin'." The innkeeper was not insensible to this consideration, but his chief wish was to spite Master Linseed.
Since the pressing nature of the commission was Master Linseed's excuse for not adopting his idea for the sign, it seemed strange to Jan that he did not set about it in some fashion. But he delayed and delayed, till Master Chuter was goaded to repeat the old rumor that real sign-painting was beyond his powers.
But the many occasions on which he could not take his paints with him led him to observe closely, and taught him to paint from memory with wonderful exactness. He was also obliged to reduce his outlines and condense his effects to a very small scale to economize paper. About this time he heard that Master Chuter was going to have a new sign painted for the inn. Master Linseed was to paint it.
You know about signs, Master Linseed," continued the landlord. For there was a tradition that the painter could "do picture-signs," though he had only been known to renew lettered ones since he came to the neighborhood. "Master Lake should 'prentice him with you when he's older," Master Chuter said in conclusion. But Master Linseed did not respond warmly.
It was within a week of the dinner that the little innkeeper burst indignantly into the painter's shop. Master Linseed was ill in bed, and the sign-board lay untouched in a corner. "It be a kind of fever that's on him," said his wife. "It be a kind of fiddlestick!" said the enraged Master Chuter; and turning round his eye fell on Jan, who was looking as disconsolate as himself.
"Haw, haw, haw!" roared the other members of the company, as they slowly realized Master Chuter's irony at the expense of the "voolish" Gearge. George took their rough banter in excellent part. He sipped his beer, and grinned like a cat at his own expense. But after the guffaws had subsided, he said, "Thee's not told un about that five pound yet, Master Chuter."
A were somethin' more in the gentry way," said Master Chuter, not, perhaps, quite without malice in the distinction. "He were what they calls in genteel talk a" "Artis'," said Master Linseed, removing his pipe, to supply the missing word with a sense of superiority. "No, not a artis'," said Master Chuter, "though it do begin with a A, too. 'Twasn't a artis' he was, 'twas a"
"Scrawling on a slate," the painter and decorator began and at this point he paused, after the leisurely customs of the district, to light his pipe at the leaden-weighted candlestick which stood near; and then, as his hearers sat expectant, but not impatient, proceeded: "Scrawling on a slate is one thing, Master Chuter: painting and decorating's another.
It was whilst he was going with an anxious countenance towards the village shop that Master Chuter met him with open arms. When the innkeeper discovered Jan's errand, he insisted on packing up a prime cut of bacon, some new-laid eggs, and a bottle of "crusty" old port, such as the squires drank at election dinners, to take to the schoolmaster.
"I be thinking," continued Master Chuter, "of a gentlemen as draad out that mare of my father's that ran in the mail. You remember the coaches, Daddy Angel?" "Ay, ay, Master Chuter. Between Lonnon and Exeter a ran. Fine days at the Heart of Oak, then, Master Chuter." "He weren't a sign-painter, that I knows on.
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