When Philip Maylands came to reside with Solomon, he was allowed to use this shed as a workroom.

 

Phil was by nature a universal genius—a Jack-of-all-trades—and formed an exception to that rule about being master of none, which is asserted, though not proved, by the proverb, for he became master of more than one trade in the course of his career. Solomon owned a few tools, so that carpentry was naturally his first attempt, and he very soon became proficient in that. Then, having discovered an old clock among the lumber of the shed, he took to examining and cleaning its interior of an evening after his work at the Post-Office was done. As his mechanical powers developed, his genius for invention expanded, and soon he left the beaten tracks of knowledge and wandered into the less trodden regions of fancy.

 

In all this Phil had an admirer and sympathiser in his sister May; but May’s engagements, both in and out of the sphere of her telegraphic labours, were numerous, so that the boy would have had to pursue his labours in solitude if it had not been for his friend Peter Pax, whose admiration for him knew no bounds, and who, if he could, would have followed Phil like his shadow. As often as the little fellow could manage to do so, he visited his friend in the shed, which they named Pegaway Hall. There he sometimes assisted Phil, but more frequently held him in conversation, and commented in a free and easy way on his work,—for his admiration of Phil was not sufficient to restrain his innate insolence.

 

One evening Phil Maylands was seated at his table, busy with the works of an old watch. Little Pax sat on the table swinging his legs. He had brought a pipe with him, and would have smoked, but Phil sternly forbade it.

 

“It’s bad enough for men to fumigate their mouths,” he said, with a smile on his lip and a frown in his eye, “but when I see a thing like you trying to make yourself look manly by smoking, I can’t help thinking of a monkey putting on the boots and helmet of a Guardsman. The boots and helmet look grand, no doubt, but that makes the monkey seem all the more ridiculous. Your pipe suggests manhood, Pax, but you look much more like a monkey than a man when it’s in your mouth.”

 

“How severe you are to-night, Phil!” returned Pax, putting the pipe, however, in his pocket; “where did you graduate, now—at Cambridge or Oxford? Because w’en my eldest boy is big enough I’d like to send ’im w’ere he’d acquire sitch an amazin’ flow of eloquence.”

分享到：