Benjamin Farjeon - Joshua Marvel

Joshua ran out of Dan's room and returned in a very few minutes with a flowerpot with mignonette growing in it. He was almost breathless with excitement.

"It is mine, Dan," he said, "and it is yours. I bought it with my own money; and it shall be Golden Cloud's coffin."

"Kiss me, Jo," said Dan.

Joshua kissed him, and then carefully lifted the flower-roots from the pot, and placed Golden Cloud in the soft mould beneath. A few tears fell from Dan's eyes into the flowerpot coffin, as he looked for the last time upon the form of his pet canary. Then Joshua replaced the flower-roots, and arranged the earth, and Golden Cloud was ready for burial.

"Play something, Jo," said Dan.

Joshua took his accordion in his hands, and played a slow solemn march; and the birds, directed by Dan, hopped gravely round the flower-pot, the tomtit keeping its eye sternly fixed upon the rebellious blackbird, expressing in the look an unmistakable determination to put an instant stop to the slightest exhibition of indecency.

"I don't know where to bury it," said Dan, when the ceremony was completed. "Ellen has been trying to pick out a flagstone in the yard, but she made her fingers bleed, and then couldn't move it. And if it was buried there, the stone would have to be trodden down, and the flowers in the coffin couldn't grow."

"There's that little bit of garden in our yard," said Joshua. "I can bury it there, if you don't mind. I can put the flowerpot in so that the mignonette will grow out of it quite nicely. It isn't very far, Dan," continued Joshua, divining Dan's wish that Golden Cloud should be buried near him; "only five yards off; and it is the best place we know of."

Dan assenting, Joshua took the flowerpot, and buried it in what he called his garden; which was an estate of such magnificent proportions that he could have covered it with his jacket. He was proud of it notwithstanding, and considered it a grand property. A boundary of oyster-shells defined the limits of the estate, and served as a warning to trespassing feet. In the centre of this garden Golden Cloud was buried. When Joshua returned to Dan's room, the mourning-cloaks were taken off the birds-who seemed very glad to get rid of them-and they were sent to bed.

Dan was allowed to sit up an hour longer than usual that night, and he and Joshua occupied those precious minutes in confidential conversation. First they spoke of Golden Cloud, and then of Joshua's prospects.

"You haven't made up your mind yet what you are going to be, Jo," said Dan.

"I haven't made up my mind," replied Joshua, "but I have an idea. I don't want you to ask me what it is. I will tell you soon-in a few weeks perhaps."

"Where have you been to-day? You were late."

"I went to the waterside."

"To the river?"

"To the river."

"To the river that runs to the sea," said Dan musingly, with a dash of regret in his voice. "What a wonderful sight it must be to see the sea, as we read of it! Would you like to see it, Jo?"

"Dearly, Dan!"

"And to be on it?"

"Dearly, Dan!"

Dan looked at Joshua sadly. There was an eager longing in Joshua's eyes, and an eager longing in the parting of his lips, as he sat with hands clasped upon his knee.

"I can see a great many things that I have never seen," said Dan; "see them with my mind, I mean. I can see gardens and fields and trees, almost as they are. I can fancy myself lying in fields with the grass waving about me. I can fancy myself in a forest with the great trees spreading out their great limbs, and I can see the branches bowing to each other as the wind sweeps by them. I can see a little stream running down a hill, and hiding itself in a valley. I can even see a river-but all rivers must be muddy, I think; not bright, like the streams. But I can't see the sea, Jo. It is too big-too wonderful!"

Rapt in the contemplation of the subject, Dan and Joshua were silent for a little while.

"Ships on the top of water-mountains," resumed Dan presently, "then down in a valley like, with curling waves above them. That is what I have read; but I can't see it. 'Robinson Crusoe' is behind you, Jo."

Joshua opened the book-it was a favorite one with the lads, as with what lads is it not? – and skimmed down the pages as he turned them over.

"'A raging wave, mountain-like, came rolling astern of us,'" he said.

"That is the shipwreck," said Dan, looking over Joshua's shoulder. "Then here, farther down: 'I saw the sea come after me as high as a great hill, and as furious as an enemy.' Think of that! Here picture."

The lads looked for the thousandth time at the rough wood-cut, in which Robinson was depicted casting a look of terror over his shoulder at the curling waves, ten times as tall as himself; his arms were extended, and he was supposed to be running away from the waves; although, according to the picture, nothing short of a miracle could save him.

"Look!" said Joshua, turning a few pages back and reading, "'yonder lies a dreadful monster on the side of that hillock, fast asleep.'"

"'I looked where he pointed,'" read Dan-it was a favorite custom with them to read each a few lines at a time-"'and saw a dreadful monster indeed, for it was a terrible great lion that lay on the side of the shore, under the shade of a piece of the hill that hung as it were a little over him. Xury, says I, you shall go on shore, and kill him.'"

"Could you kill a lion, Jo?" asked Dan, breaking off in his reading.

"I don't know," said Joshua, considering and feeling very doubtful of his capability.

Dan resumed the reading: -

"I took our biggest gun, which was almost musket-bore, and loaded it with a good charge of powder and with two slugs, and laid it down; then I loaded another gun with two bullets; and the third (for we had three pieces), I loaded with five smaller bullets.'"

"No, I couldn't kill a lion," said Joshua, in a tone of disappointed conviction; "for I can't fire off a gun. But that occurred nearly two hundred years ago, Dan. I don't suppose there are as many lions now as there used to be."

"And ships are different, too, to what they were then, Jo," said Dan, closing the book. "Stronger and better built. I dare say if it had been a very strong ship that Robinson Crusoe went out in, he wouldn't have been wrecked."

"I am glad he was, though; if he hadn't been, we shouldn't have been able to read about him. It is beautiful, isn't it?"

"Beautiful to read," replied Dan. "But he was dreadfully miserable sometimes; for twenty-four years and more he had no one to speak to. It appears strange to me that he didn't forget how to speak the English language, and that he didn't go mad. Now, Jo, supposing it was you! Do you think, if you had no one to speak to for twenty years, that you would be able to speak as well as you do now? Don't you think you would stammer over a word sometimes, and lose the sense of it?"

Dan asked these questions so earnestly, that Joshua laughed, and said, -

"Upon my word, I don't know, Dan."

But the time was to come when the memory of Dan's questions came to Joshua's mind with a deep and solemn significance. "He had his parrot certainly," continued Dan; "but what used he to say to it? 'Robin, Robin, Robin Crusoe! Poor Robin Crusoe! How came you here? Where have you been, Robin?' That wasn't much to say, and to be always saying; and I am sure that if he kept on saying it for so many years, he must have entirely forgotten what the meaning of it was. You try it, – say a word, or two or three words, for a hundred times. You will begin to wonder what it means before you come to the end."

"But he had his Bible; and you know what a comfort that was to him."

"Perhaps that was the reason he didn't go mad. I dare say, too, that some qualities in him were strengthened and came to his aid because he was so strangely situated. What qualities now, Jo?"