48 THE LOVE-CHILD. 



of the whole human race, should be so marked out so separated 

 visited with such an infliction oh, God ! 'tis almost beyond endu- 

 rance I can't support it much longer." The fellow began to cry, 

 and, never having seen a man shed tears before, I was frightened 

 and sneaked off; but Master Nicholas insisted that I should return 

 to the charge. I told him that I could not, for Mint had let out a 

 dreadful secret. " Pooh ! Pooh !" said he, " he has only been 

 making his grand confession, which he does to every new-comer. 

 All the world knows it the fat fool can't sweat. Go back, pretend 

 to pity him, and he'll tell you more ; he has a yard and a half of 

 troubles on his tongue's tip about this. Your patiently listening to 

 them is the only chance we have of making him forget his glue-pot. 

 While we were friends he used to talk to me for hours of the plea- 

 sure he should feel of finding f one liquid inborn pearl begemming 

 his sultry brow.' If he doesn't use those identical words within five 

 minutes, I'll forfeit you half my bread and butter at breakfast time." 



I went back to the carpenter tears stood upon his mallet I tried 

 to cheer him, but he seemed disconsolate still, however, keeping 

 his keen grey eye fastened on the glue-pot. " Lavolta says," quoth 

 he, " that I consume one minute out of every five in wiping my 

 forehead ; but it's a pleasant fiction, which he would forgive if he 

 had the heat of six-and-thirty sultry summers boiling in his veins. If 

 next year's dog-days don't bring about a change, I shall go abroad and 

 try the effect of the tropics." I did not know what " the tropics" 

 meant, and, in the utmost simplicity of heart, begged him to enlighten 

 me. He took a piece of chalk and drew some explanatory lines upon 

 his bench : meanwhile, his back being turned, Master Nicholas ap- 

 proached and purloined the glue-pot. The goat was drowsily 

 bobbing his head up and down at a few paces distant; Master 

 Nicholas, with admirable alacrity, placed the pot just beneath 

 Llewellyn's long, thick, grizly beard, and at the next bob of his 

 head, the surface of the boiling glue nearly reached his chin. He 

 started, but was too sleepy to rouze himself. Master Nicholas ven- 

 tured to let him have another bob, and then quietly replaced the 

 glue-pot on the brazier. It was not until long after he had retired, 

 unseen, that Mint's illustrations on his carpenter's bench were con- 

 cluded, and I left him whistling the tune composed by his father, 

 the itinerant trumpeter. 



Meanwhile the goat dozed, and by the time he thought fit to get 

 up, his long hoary beard had become a solid mass, jutting down 

 many inches beneath his chin. If he attempted to pick up a cabbage 

 leaf, the hard shaft of glue embedded in hair, prevented him from 

 bringing his nether lip to the ground. After having experienced 

 repeated shocks on his lower jaw, he began to grow savage, but find- 

 ing ferocity of no avail, he slunk into a corner, disconsolate and 

 hopeless. Lavolta of course soon discovered what had occurred; 

 Master Nicholas and I, rejoicing, kept our secret, and nobody could 

 conceive by what calamity Llewellyn had been brought to clip his 

 beard in the glue-pot. Mint was petrified. The utensil he solemnly 

 affirmed had never been out of his sight. Various expedients were 

 tried to unglue the goat's beard it was boiled, but without effect 



