Next to Miss Cann, Miss Flinders is John James's greatest friend
and benefactor. She has remarked him when he was quite a little man, and
used to bring his father's beer of a Sunday. Out of her novels he has
taught himself to read, dull boy at the day-school though he was, and
always the last in his class, there. Hours, happy hours, has he spent
cowering behind her counter, or hugging her books under his pinafore when
he had leave to carry them home. The whole library has passed through his
hands, his long, lean, tremulous hands, and under his eager eyes. He has
made illustrations to every one of those books, and been frightened at
his own pictures of Manfroni or the One-handed Monk, Abellino the
Terrific Bravo of Venice, and Rinaldo Rinaldini Captain of Robbers. How
he has blistered Thaddeus of Warsaw with his tears, and drawn him in his
Polish cap, and tights, and Hessians! William Wallace, the Hero of
Scotland, how nobly he has depicted him! With what whiskers and bushy
ostrich plumes!--in a tight kilt, and with what magnificent calves to his
legs, laying about him with his battle-axe, and bestriding the bodies of
King Edward's prostrate cavaliers! At this time Mr.
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