CHAPTER X.

ABEL AT HOME.--JAN OBJECTS TO THE MILLER'S MAN.--THE ALPHABET.--THE
CHEAP JACK.--"PITCHERS."

Poor Abel was not fated to get much regular schooling. He
particularly liked learning, but the interval was all too brief
between the time when his mother was able to spare him from
housework and the time when his father began to employ him in the
mill.

George got more lazy and stupid, instead of less so, and though in
some strange manner he kept his place, yet when Master Lake had once
begun to employ his son, he found that he would get along but ill
without him.

To Jan, Abel's being about the windmill gave the utmost
satisfaction. He played with his younger foster-brothers and
sisters contentedly enough, but his love for Abel, and for being
with Abel, was quite another thing.

Mrs. Lake, too, had no confidence in any one but Abel as a nurse for
her darling; the consequence of which was, that the little Jan was
constantly trotting at his foster-brother's heels through the round-
house, attempting valiant escalades on the ladders, and covering
himself from head to foot with flour in the effort to cultivate a
miller's thumb.

One day Mrs. Lake, having sent the other children off to school, was