Free Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink Page A

Tom and Kat—” began Hetty, but Caddie suddenly thrust a butternut into her mouth, and the rest of what she had intended to say was lost.
    â€œI cannot blame him for falling in love,” said Father. “That little seamstress was very beautiful and sweet. She was my mother. They were married secretly, and then they went to old Lord Woodlawn and told him. They thought that he would forgive them, after it was done and past repair. But they hadn’t reckoned on theold man’s stubbornness and wounded pride. You see, my mother was the daughter of the village shoemaker. God knows, the old shoemaker earned an honest living and lived an upright life, but to my Grandfather Woodlawn’s notion anything connected with such a trade was low and shameful.”
    â€œHow funny!” said Caddie, “if he was a good shoemaker.”
    â€œThe old lord was beside himself with anger. He ordered Father to forsake his bride, but that my father would not do, so the old man turned them out together. ‘Never come back,’ he told my father. ‘You are no longer my son.’ If my father had been the eldest son, the laws of England would have restored his position to him at the death of the old lord. But a disinherited second son has nothing to look forward to. So now he found himself penniless and with a wife to support.”
    â€œBut I don’t understand!” said Caddie.
    â€œNo, my dear,” said her father. “It is hard to understand an old man’s selfish pride. He had planned his son’s life, and he could not endure to have his plans lightly set aside. He might have taken my father back if Father had forsaken Mother, but that was not my father’s way. And so the two young things went out into the world to make a living for themselves. My father had been trained to ride a horse to hounds, toread a little Latin, and to grace a drawing room, but he knew no more about any useful trade than baby Joe. There was one thing he could do, however. He had always had some skill at drawing and painting, and, as a boy, his father had humored him by letting him have lessons in the art. Now he found that he could get occasional work by painting panels and murals in taverns and public houses. It was a sorry comedown for the son of a nobleman. Sometimes they paid him only in food and lodging and he and his wife were obliged to stay there eating and sleeping out his earnings. Truly they were glad enough to have a roof over their heads and something in their stomachs, I imagine. I, myself, remember the long walks and the slim dinners and sometimes nights spent under a haycock, when we could not find a tavern which wanted decorating.”
    â€œPoor Father!” cried Caddie softly.
    â€œBut worse was to come,” said Mr. Woodlawn slowly. “The tramping about, the worry and hunger and cold were too much for my father, who did not have the peasant hardiness of my mother and me. I was about ten years old when he died, and I was a little lad who looked scarce half my years.”
    â€œAnd what did you do then?” breathed the little Woodlawns anxiously.
    â€œMy mother had no money to take us home again,



and what could she have expected for us if she had gone? The old lord was not likely to forgive her after his son was dead, and the shoemaker was as annoyed with his daughter for marrying out of her class as the old lord was himself. And then my mother had her own amount of pride. In those days the worst vice in England was pride, I guess—the worst vice of all, because folks thought it was a virtue.”
    â€œBut, Father, what about the clogs and breeches?” asked Caddie.
    â€œHave patience,” said Mrs. Woodlawn. “He’ll get to them presently.”
    â€œMy mother earned what she could as a seamstress. But that was not enough. We had no home of our own and we wandered from lodgings to lodgings always half-hungry and owing money. I did what odd jobs