The very funniest thing happened when the calf had grown into a young and gamesome bull. Mitt and his parents were all in the pasture, trying to mend a place where the dike bank was giving. The bull stood watching them, rather interested. Life was a little dull in the pasture. Then Hadd’s rent collector climbed over the fence and stalked irritably over to the dike.
“I’ve been all the way to the house,” he said. “Why couldn’t you—?”
The bull, with a look of pure mischief in his merry red eye, lowered his horns and charged. He would not have dreamed of harming any of the family, but the rent collector was another matter. And in a misty, bullish way, he may have noticed that the family was not altogether pleased to see the rent collector. Anyway, up went the rent collector in a graceful arc, moneybag and all, and down he went again, moneybag and all, into the dike, where he gave out a truly tremendous splash. He came up. He swore horribly. He floundered to the bank and tried to get out. The bull was there to meet him and simply prodded him back in again. It was the funniest thing Mitt had ever seen. It never occurred to the rent collector to cross the dike and get out on the opposite bank where the bull could not reach him. He kept floundering up, clutching his moneybag. And prod, prod went the bull, and the rent collector was sitting in the dike again. Over and over again, with the rent collector, floundering, reeling, sitting down splash, and squawking “Can’t one of you control this beast!” and Mitt’s parents leaning head to head, too helpless with laughter to do a thing about it. It was Mitt, laughing as hard as anyone, who at last hooked his finger in the ring on the bull’s nose and let the raging rent collector scramble out. And the rent collector was not pleased.
“I’ll teach you to laugh, boy!” he snarled.
He did. Next time he came for the rent, he asked double. When Mitt’s father protested, he said, “Nothing to do with me. Earl Hadd needs the money.”
Probably Hadd was short of money. The rents were put up all over the Flate. Rumor said that there were riots in the town of Holand, and the Earl needed to pay more soldiers to deal with the rioting. But only at Dike End was the rent doubled. That was the rent collector’s private revenge. And there was nothing Mitt’s parents could do about it. Theoretically they could have gone to law and accused the rent collector of extortion. But the rent collector was the Earl’s official, and judges always upheld the Earl’s employees against ordinary people—unless, of course, you gave the judge a big enough bribe. Mitt’s parents had no money for bribes. They needed more than they had to pay the rent collector. They had to sell the bull.
Next quarter they sold the mule. Then some furniture. And by that time they were in a vicious circle: The more things they sold from the farm to pay the rent, the less they had to make money with to pay the next quarter’s rent, and the more things they had to sell. Mitt’s parents stopped laughing. That winter Mitt’s father took to spending most of the week away in the port of Holand, earning what money he could there, while Milda tried to run the farm with what help Mitt could give. It was desperately hard work. Milda’s pretty face acquired a seam of worry down one side—a sort of pucker where her dimple had been. Mitt hated that pucker. He did not remember how his father looked at that time. He remembered a curt, bitter voice and his father’s square back plodding away from them down the causeway to Holand to find work.
He could not have found much work. He spent longer and longer away in Holand, and brought very little money back, but what he did bring enabled them to drag on at Dike End for the following summer. But Milda on her own was a poor, forgetful manager. Mitt did all he could to help, but they lost money steadily. There were still a few times when Mitt was able to lie on his back by the dike, looking up at the rattling leaves, and think yearningly about his perfect land. As times grew harder, he seemed to want it more and more. He longed to set off again to find it, but of course he was older now and he knew he had to stay and help his mother.
Then quarter day came round again, and there was no money at all. It did no good for Milda to beg the rent collector to wait a day or so. He came back the next day with the bailiff and three of the Earl’s soldiers, and Mitt and Milda were turned out of Dike End. A short while before Mitt’s sixth birthday, he helped his mother pack their few belongings into a handcart and push it into Holand to join his father.
2
Mitt always hated to remember that first winter in Holand. His father was living in one room in a big tenement block down by the harbor. Mitt and Milda joined him there. The tenement had perhaps once been the house of a wealthy man. Outside, on its greenish, peeling walls, there were the remains of pictures—once fine paintings of garlands of flowers and people out of stories, sheaves of wheat, and bunches of fruit. But they were so old that Mitt could not quite tell what they were, and anyway, the inside of the building was what he saw most. The large rooms had been chopped into as many small ones as possible, so the house was crowded as full as it would hold of people. It was filthy. The buckets on the dark stairs stank. Bedbugs lived in all the walls. They came out at night and bit, viciously. What with that, and the strangeness, and the noise of all the people, Mitt could not sleep very well. He lay awake and listened to his parents quarreling as they had never quarreled before.
Mitt could not understand what the quarrels were about. It seemed as if his father was not pleased to have them with him in Holand. “Hanging round my neck!” he put it. He wanted them to go back to Dike End. When Milda shrieked at him that there was no rent, he cursed her for laziness.
“Why should I work my fingers to the bone to keep you in idleness?” Milda screamed at him. But after a week of quarreling, she found a job in a workroom which made fine embroidered hangings, and she was there, sewing, from early morning until light failed in the evening.
After this the quarrels Mitt’s parents had became even harder for Mitt to understand. His mother kept saying to his father, “You and your Free Holanders! Free Holanders! There’s no such thing as freedom in this place!” Mitt had no idea what that meant.
Mitt was shocked and shattered by the town of Holand itself. He hated the dirt and the noise and all the people. His job for the day was to carry their bucket to the waterfront and tip it in the harbor. As Milda said, the one advantage of living in that tenement was that you did not have to go far to get rid of your rubbish. Mitt hated the smell on the greasy waterfront, where fish scales glimmered on the flagstones like sequins on a dirty dress. The crowded harbor appalled him. There were tall ships with many masts and pennants flying, merchant ships, ships of the Earl’s fleet, loading and unloading going on most of the time. In between were small boats, packed and bustling, rowing boats, cutters, jollyboats, and a good hundred fishing boats. Mitt was always glad when the fishing fleet sailed out, because the crowded water seemed a little emptier then.
After Mitt had brought the bucket back to the door of their room, he was all on his own once Milda had found work. He had nothing to do but keep out of the way of the other children. He hated them most of all. They were town children, shrewd, nimble, and knowing. They made rings around Mitt. They jeered at him for not understanding town ways. They made him look a fool, then ran away laughing.
Mitt hid from them, usually, in the dark holes and corners of the house or the waterfront. But one day he felt he had had enough of that and ran away instead, up the hill from the harbor, into the better part of the town. Here, to his surprise, the streets were cleaner, and became wider and cleaner still as he went upward. The air smelled almost fresh. There was a tang in it of the sea, and an autumn smell from the Flate. Better still, most of the houses were painted, and unlike the tenement, the paint was fresh and bright, and Mitt could see what the pictures were about. He walked slowly, looking at trees and fruit, red swirls and blue flowers, until he came to a particularly fine tall house, where the painting was in gold as well as other colors. On one gable, a stiff sort of lady in a green dress held out a very purple bunch of grapes to a stiff man on the other gable, whose hair seemed to be solid gold. Mitt much admired them. They reminded him a little of the figureheads on the fronts of the big ships. And perhaps because of the fresh air smell, they made him think of his perfect land.