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He had a noble new skeleton the skeleton of the late and only local celebrity, Jimmy Finn, the village drunkard a grisly piece of property which he had bought of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars, under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in the tan-yard a fortnight before his death.
I was not as soon as his voice reached me, John's own familiar voice. "It's something about the tan-yard?" "Yes; the waters are rising, and I have come to fetch your father; he may save a good deal yet. I am ready, sir" in answer to a loud call. "Now, Phineas, lie you down again, the night's bitter cold. Don't stir you'll promise? I'll see after your father."
"Phineas, are you tired?" "Not at all." "Do you feel strong enough to go to Coltham? Would it do you no harm? Would you LIKE to go?" To all these hurried questions I answered with as hurried an affirmative. It was sufficient to me that he evidently liked to go. "It is only for once your father would not grudge us the pleasure, and he is too busy to be out of the tan-yard before midnight.
But one look of his expressed as much as half-a-dozen sympathetic sentences of other people. "And how have you been, John? How do you like the tan-yard? Tell me frankly." He pulled a wry face, though comical withal, and said, cheerily, "Everybody must like what brings them their daily bread. It's a grand thing for me not to have been hungry for nearly thirty days." "Poor John!"
My father gave a start he had never seen or expressed a wish to see John's daughter. We knew he did not like babies. Again the little helpless wail; Ursula rose and stole away Abel Fletcher looked after her with a curious expression, then began to say something about going back to the tan-yard. "Do not, pray do not leave us," John entreated; "Ursula wants to show you our little lady."
"I should like to go with thee to the tan-yard this afternoon." Here Jael, who had been busy pulling back the table, replacing the long row of chairs, and re-sanding the broad centre Sahara of the room to its dreary, pristine aridness, stopped, fairly aghast with amazement. "Abel Abel Fletcher! the lad's just out of his bed; he is no more fit to " "Pshaw, woman!" was the sharp answer.
I dared not bring the poor wandering lad into this, my father's especial domain; but as soon as he was away in the tan-yard I sent for John. Jael brought him in; Jael, the only womankind we ever had about us, and who, save to me when I happened to be very ill, certainly gave no indication of her sex in its softness and tenderness. There had evidently been wrath in the kitchen.
I held the tan-yard in abhorrence to enter it made me ill for days; sometimes for months and months I never went near it. That I should ever be what was my poor father's one desire, his assistant and successor in his business, was, I knew, a thing totally impossible.
In a few minutes I saw him and my father enter the tan-yard together. He was talking earnestly, and my father was listening ay, listening and to John Halifax! But whatever the argument was, it failed to move him. Greatly troubled, but staunch as a rock, my old father stood, resting his lame foot on a heap of hides. I went to meet him. "Phineas," said John, anxiously, "come and help me.
On the Monday morning my father went to the tan-yard as usual. I spent the day in my bed-room, which looked over the garden, where I saw nothing but the waving of the trees and the birds hopping over the smooth grass; heard nothing but the soft chime, hour after hour, of the Abbey bells. What was passing in the world, in the town, or even in the next street, was to me faint as dreams.
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