The Little Bookroom by Eleanor Farjeon Read Free Book Online Page B

beyond the use of his hands, and a love of animals; and much in the same way he loved his father, whom he often helped with the chopping, though neither the Lord of the Manor nor his Steward knew of his existence.
    Old Mr Jolly was taken ill of a Thursday evening, when last week’s wages were spent. He sat down in his old chair and said, ‘Joe, I see a better world ahead of me.’ Next day he couldn’t get up, so Joe did a man’s day’s work, and at the end of it went to the Steward for his father’s shillings. The Steward asked, ‘Who may you be?’ and Joe replied, ‘John Jolly’s son.’
    â€˜And why doesn’t John Jolly come himself?’
    â€˜He’s sick.’
    â€˜And who’ll do his work till he’s well?’
    â€˜I will,’ said Joe.
    The Steward counted out the three shillings, and left it at that. In the back of his mind was the thought that if, by the grace of God, John Jolly died, he might put in his place an old uncle of his wife’s who was considered by the Steward both a nuisance and an expense, as he was obliged to keep him under his own roof. But John Jolly lasted a month, during which time Joe tended him like a woman, and did all his work besides. As three shillings did not go far, with sickness in the house, he sold up their sticks, bit by bit, to get his father extra little comforts. By the fourth Thursday everything was sold but the chair and his mother’s brass wedding-ring, John Jolly lay at peace under the grass, and Joe, for the first time in his life, considered his future.
    He did not consider it for long; here he was, at the age of eighteen, a fine upstanding young chap, as limber as a squirrel, with a skin like the red tan on a pine tree, and no trade to his hands except the power to chop wood. So he decided to put in for his father’s job.
    When he went as usual on the Friday evening for his pay, he said to the Steward, ‘Dad’ll not be cutting timber for you any more.’
    â€˜How’s that?’ asked the Steward, hoping for the best.
    â€˜He’s gone to a better world,’ explained Joe.
    â€˜Ah!’ said the Steward. ‘Then the post of Lord’s Woodcutter falls vacant after fifty years.’
    â€˜I’d like to put in for it,’ said Joe.
    But the Steward’s chance to rid himself of his uncle had come; so he pursed his lips, scratched his nose, shook his head, and said, ‘It wants a man of experience.’ Then he counted out three shillings, wished Joe well, and sent him away.
    Joe was not one for arguing; he knew he was experienced by craft, but not by years, and if the Steward thought one way, it was no manner of use his thinking another. He went back to the hut, looked at his father’s chair, and thought, ‘Well, I can’t take it with me, and I don’t want to sell it, and I’d never chop it up for firewood, and the next woodcutter will want something to sit on, and over and above that it’ll like to stay where it has always been, as much as I should do. But it can’t be helped, goodbye to you, old chair!’ And so, with three shillings and a brass ring in his pocket, Joe left the the only home that he had ever known.
II
    It was quite a new experience for Joe to be walking along a highroad many miles from his dwelling. Loving his wood better than most things, he had seldom seen reason to go out of it; but within forty hours of his father’s death he was strolling through the world, with a bright eye and a quick ear for anything he might see and hear. Not minding which way he turned, he told himself to follow the first sound he heard. He had no sooner cocked his ear than he heard, very faint and distant, the familiar tapping of the axe-stroke on the tree. It was so far away that it might have come from another world. However, Joe heard it clear enough, and let it lead him on his way.
    About noontime on the Saturday he heard a