After that, Colin went many days and evenings to see Cicolari: and the more he talked with him and the more he watched him, the more dissatisfied did the boy get with the intractability of wood, and the more enamoured did he become of the absolute plasticity of clay and marble. How could he ever have been such a fool, he thought to himself, after having once known what he could do with the kneaded mud of Wootton lake, as to consent—nay, to consent gladly—to work in stupid, hard, irresponsive walnut, instead of in his own familiar, plastic, all potential material? Why, wood, do what you would to it, was wood still: clay, and after clay marble, would answer immediately to every mood and fancy and idea of the restless changeable human personality. The fact was the ten or twelve months Colin Churchill had spent at Exeter had made a vast difference to his unfolding intellect. He was going to school now—to the university of native art; he was learning himself and his own powers; learning to pit his own views and opinions against those of other and less artistic workmen. Every day, though he couldn\'t have told you so himself, the boy was beginning to understand more and more clearly that while the other artificers he saw around him had decent training, he himself had instinctive genius. He ought to have employed that genius upon marble, and now he was throwing it away upon mere wood. When one of the canons called in one day patronisingly to praise his wooden roses, he could scarcely even be civil to the good man: praising his wooden roses, indeed, when he saw that fellow Cicolari engaged in modelling from the life a smiling Bacchus! It was all too atrocious!

\'Mai friend,\' Cicolari said to him one day, as he was moulding a bit of clay in his new acquaintance\'s room, into the counterfeit presentment of Cicolari\'s own bust, \'you should not stop at ze wood wawrk. You have no freedom in ze wood, no liberty, no motion. It is all flat, stupid, ungraceful. You are fit for better sings. Leave ze wood and come, here and wawrk wiz me.\'

Colin sighed deeply. \'I wish I could, Mr. Cicolari,\' he said eagerly. \'I was delighted with the wood at first, and now I\'m disgusted at \'un. But I can\'t leave \'un till I\'m twenty-one, because I\'m bound apprentice to it, and I\'ve got to go on with the thing now whether I like \'un or not.\'

Cicolari made a wry face, expressive of a very nasty taste, and went through a little pantomime of shrugs and open hand-lifting, which did duty instead of several vigorous sentences in the Italian language. Colin readily translated the pantomime as meaning in English: \'If I were you, I wouldn\'t trouble myself about that for a moment.\'

\'But I can\'t help it,\' Colin answered in his own spoken tongue; \'I\'m obliged to go on whether I choose to or not.\'

Cicolari screwed himself up tightly, and held his hands, palms outward, on a level with his ears, in the most suggestive fashion. \'England is a big country,\' he observed enigmatically.

Colin\'s face flushed at the vague hint, but he said nothing.

\'You see,\' Cicolari went on quickly, \'you are a boy yet. When you come to Exeter, you are still a child. You come from your own village, your country, and you know nossing of ze wawrld. Zis master and ze priest of your village between zem, zey bind you down and make you sign a paper, indenture you call it, and promise to wawrk for zem zese six years. It is ridiculous. When you come here, you do not know your own mind: you do not understand how it differs, wood and marble. Now you are older: you understand zat; it is absurd zat you muss stand by ze agreement.\'

Cohn listened and took in the words eagerly. \'But what can I do, Mr. Cicolari?\' he asked in suspense. \'Where can I go to?\' \'England is a big country,\' the Italian repeated, with yet another speaking pantomime. \'Zere are plenty railways in England. Zere is wawrk for clever lads in London. I have friends zere who carve in marble. Why should you not go zere?\'\'

\'Run away?\' Cohn said, interrogatively.

\'Run away, if you call it zat,\' Cicolari replied, bowing with his curved hands in front of his breast, apologetically. \'What does it matter, ze name? Run away if zey will not let you go. I care not what you call it. Zey try to keep you unjustly; you try to get away from zem. Zat is all.\'

\'But I\'ve got no money to go with,\' Colin cried, faltering

\'Zen get some,\' Cicolari answered with a shrug.

Colin thought a good deal about that suggestion afterwards, and the more he thought about it, the more did it seem to him just and proper. A week or two later, little Minna came over to Exeter for a trip, nominally to do a few errands of household shopping, but really of course to see Colin; and to her the boy confided this difficult case of conscience. Was the signature obtained from him when he first came to Exeter binding on him now that he knew more fully his own powers, and rights, and capabilities?

Colin was by this time a handsome lad of sixteen, while little black-eyed gipsy-faced Minna, though two years younger than him, was already budding out into a pretty woman, as such dark types among the labouring classes are apt to do with almost Oriental precocity.

\'What should you do, Colin?\' she repeated warmly, as the boy propounded his question in casuistry to her for her candid solution. \'Why, just you go and do what Mr. Chickaleary tells you, won\'t \'ee, sure?\'

\'But would it be right, Minna?\' Colin asked. \'You know I signed the agreement with them.\'

\'What\'s the odds of that, stupid?\' Minna answered composedly. \'That were a year ago an\' more, weren\'t it? You weren\'t no more nor a boy then, Lord bless \'ee.\'

\'A year older nor you are now, Minna,\' Colin objected.

\'Ah, but you didn\'t know nothing about this sculpturin\' then, you see, Colin. They tooked advantage of you, that\'s what they did. They hadn\'t ought to have done it.\'

\'But I say, Minna, why shouldn\'t I wait till I\'m twenty-one, an\' then take up the marble business, eh?\'

\'What rubbish the boy do talk,\' Minna cried, imperiously. \'Twenty-one indeed! Talk about twenty-one! Why, by that time you\'d \'a\' got fixed in the wood-carving, and couldn\'t change your trade for marble or nothin\'. If you\'re goin\' to change, you must do it quickly.\'

\'I hate the wood-carving,\' Colin said, gloomily.

\'Then run away from it and be done wi\' it.\'

\'Run away from it! Oh, Minna, do you know that they could catch me and put me in prison?\'

\'I\'d go to prison an\' laugh at \'em, sooner nor I\'d be bound for all those years against my will,\' Minna answered firmly. \'Leastways I would if I was a man, Colin.\'

That last touch was the straw that broke the camel\'s back with poor Colin. \'I\'ll go,\' he cried; \'but where on earth can I go to? It\'s no use goin\' back to Wootton. Vicar\'d help \'em to put me in prison.\'

\'I\'d like to see \'em,\' Minna answered, with her little eyes flashing. \'But why can\'t you go to London like Mr. Chickaleary told you?\' \'Cicolari, Minna,\' Colin said, correcting her as gravely and distinctly as the vicar had corrected Miss Eva. \'The Italians call it Cicolari. It\'s as well to be right whenever we can, ain\'t it? Well, I can\'t go to London, because I\'ve got no money to go with. I don\'t know as I could get any work when I got there; but I know I can\'t get there without any money; so that settles it.\'

Minna rose from the seat in the Northernhay where they were spending Colin\'s dinner-hour together and walked slowly up and down for a minute or two without speaking. Then she said, with a little hesitation, \'Colin!\'

\'Well, Minna.\'

\'I could lend \'ee—lend you—nine shillin\'.\' \'Nine shillings, Minna! Why, where on earth did you get \'em from?\'

\'Saved \'em,\' Minna answered laconically. \'Fish father give me. In savin\'s bank.\'

\'What for, Minna?\'

Minna hesitated again, still more markedly. Though she was only fourteen, there was a good deal of the woman in her already. \'Because,\' she said at last timidly,\' \'I thought it was best to begin savin\' up all my money now, in case—in case I should ever want to furnish house if I was to get married.\'

Country boy as he was, and child as she was, Colin felt instinctively that it wouldn\'t be right of him to ask her anything further about the money. \'But, Minna,\' he said, colouring a little, \'even if I was to borrow it all from you, all your nine shillings, it wouldn\'t be enough to take me to London.\'

Minna had a brilliant idea. \'Wait for a \'scursion,\' she said simply.

Colin looked at her with admiring eyes. \'Well, Minna,\' he cried enthusiastically, \'you are a bright one, and no mistake. That\'s a good idea, that is. I should never have thought of that. I could carve you, Minna, so that a stranger anywhere\'d know who it was the minute he set eyes on it; but I should never have thought of that, I can tell you.\' Minna smiled and nodded, the dimple in her brown cheek growing deeper, and the light in her bright eye merrier than ever. What a vivacious, expressive little face it was, really! \'I\'ll tell you what I\'d do,\' Minna said, with her sharp determination as if she were fifty. \'I\'d go first and ask Mr. What\'s-his-name to let me off the rest of my \'prenticeship. I\'d tell him I didn\'t like wood, an\' I wanted to go an\' make statues. Then if he said to me: “You go on with the wood-carvin\' an\' don\'t bother me,” I\'d say: “No, I don\'t do another stroke for you.” Then if he hit me, I\'d leave off, I would, an\' refuse to work another turn till he was tired of it. But if he hardened his heart then, an\' wouldn\'t let \'ee go still, I\'d wait till there was a \'scursion, I would, and then I\'d run away to Mr. Chick-o-lah-ree\'s friends in London. That\'s what I\'d do if I was you, Colin.\'

\'I will, Minna,\' Colin faltered out in reply; \'I will.\'

\'Do \'ee, Colin,\' Minna cried eagerly, catching his arm. \'Do \'ee, Colin, and I\'ll send \'ee the money. Oh, Colin, I know if you\'d only get \'prenticed to the sculpturin\', you\'d grow to be as grand a man—as grand as parson.\'

\'Minna,\' Colin said, taking her hand in his as if it were a lady\'s, \'thank you very much for the money, an\' ............