"Quick, Johnny! run you to the woodstack while I unpack the baskets.
Mother will be arriving in an hour, and we are to give her supper out
here, with baked potatoes. Run, that's a good soul: and on your way
get Jane to give you a tin of oatmeal--tell her I must have it if she
has to scrape the bottom of the bin; _and_ a gridiron, _and_ a
rolling-pin. We will have griddle-cakes. Run--and whatever you do,
don't forget the rolling-pin!"

Johnny ran with long ungainly strides, his coat-tails flapping like a
scarecrow's. The coat, in fact, was a cast-off one of Mr. Wesley's,
narrow in the chest, short in the sleeves, but inordinately full in
the skirts. The Rector had found and taken Johnny from the Charity
School at Wroote to help him with the maps and drawings for his great
work, the _Dissertationes in Librum Jobi_, and in return the lad
found board and lodging and picked up what scraps he could of Greek
and Latin. He wrote a neat hand and transcribed carefully; his
drawings were atrocious, and he never attempted a woodcut without
gashing himself. But he kept a humble heart, and for all the family
a devotion almost canine. To him the Rector, with his shovel-hat and
stores of scholarship, was a god-like man; with his air, too, of
apostolical authority--for Johnny, whom all Epworth set down as good
for nothing, reflected the Wesley notions of the Church's majesty.
In his dreams--but only in his dreams--he saw himself such a man, an
Oxford scholar, treading that beatific city of which the Rector
disclosed a glimpse at times; his brows bathed by her ineffable aura,
and he--he, Johnny Whitelamb--baptized into her mysteries, a
participant with the Rector's second son John, now at Christ Church--
of whom (he noted) the family spoke but seldom and with a constraint
which hinted at hopes too dear to be other than fearful. Meanwhile
he did his poor tasks, stayed his stomach when he could, and rewarded