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Updated: May 27, 2025
As the smallest and swiftest of the flock, his tail tightly curled, and indescribable jauntiness in his whole demeanor, came bounding to the river's brink, followed by his fellows, driving, pushing, snuffing, winking, and gobbling, and lastly by a small boy in a large coat, with a long switch, Jan was witness of the whole scene from Dame Datchett's door.
"Which be the young varment as said a F was a Q?" she rather unfairly inquired. "A didn't say a F was a Q" began Jan; but a chorus of cowardly little voices drowned him, and curried favor with the Dame by crying, "Tis Jan Lake, the miller's son, missus." And the big boy, conscious of his own breach of good manners, atoned for it by officiously dragging Jan to Dame Datchett's elbow.
"Do ye know me, my lad?" "No, sir," said Jan. "Swift Master Swift, they call me. You've heard tell of Master Swift, the schoolmaster?" Jan shrank back. He had heard of Master Swift as a man whose stick was more to be dreaded than Dame Datchett's strap, and of his school as a place where liberty was less than with the Dame.
It was the force of circumstances which led Jan to "make pigs" on his slate so constantly, instead of nobler subjects; and it dated from the time when his foster-mother began to send him with the other children to school at Dame Datchett's. Dame Datchett's cottage was the last house on one side of the village main street.
More perishable even than the pig- drawings, the evening breeze generally cast these paintings to the winds, but none the less was Jan happy with them, and sometimes in quiet weather, or a sheltered nook, they remained undisturbed for days. Dame Datchett's school reopened, but Jan would not leave his pigs. He took the shilling faithfully home each week to his foster-mother.
Master Swift's death was a great shock to the windmiller, who was himself in frail health; and Jan gave as much time as he could to cheering his foster-father. He had been spending an afternoon at the windmill, and the painter had been sketching the old church from the water-meadows, when they met on the little bridge near Dame Datchett's, and strolled together to the Heart of Oak.
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