"Don't Care"--so
they say--fell into a goose-pond; and "I won't" is apt to come to no
better an end. At least, my grandmother tells me that was how the Miller
had to quit his native town, and leave the tip of his nose behind him.
It all came of his being allowed to say "I won't" when he was quite a
little boy. His mother thought he looked pretty when he was pouting, and
that willfulness gave him an air which distinguished him from other
people's children. And when she found out that his lower lip was
becoming so big that it spoilt his beauty, and that his willfulness
gained his way twice and stood in his way eight times out of ten, it was
too late to alter him.
Then she said, "Dearest Abinadab, do be more obliging!"
And he replied (as she had taught him), "I won't."
He always took what he could get, and would neither give nor give up to
other people. This, he thought, was the way to get more out of life than
one's neighbours.
Amongst other things, he made a point of taking the middle of the
footpath.
"Will you allow me to pass you, sir?--I am in a hurry," said a voice
behind him one day.
"I won't," said Abinadab; on which a poor washerwoman, with her basket,
scrambled down into the road, and Abinadab chuckled.
Next day he was walking as before.
"Will you allow me to pass you, sir?--I am in a hurry," said a voice
behind him.
"I won't," said Abinadab. On which he was knocked into the ditch; and
the Baron walked on, and left him to get out of the mud on whichever
side he liked.
He quarreled with his friends till he had none left, and he quarreled
with the tradesmen of the town till there was only one who would serve
him, and this man offended him at last.
"I'll show you who's master!" said the Miller. "I won't pay a penny of
your bill--not a penny."
"Sir," said the tradesman, "my giving you offence now, is no just reason
why you should refuse to pay for what you have had and been satisfied
with. I must beg you to pay me at once."
"I won't," said the Miller, "and what I say I mean. I won't; I tell you,
I won't."
So the tradesman summoned him before the Justice, and the Justice
condemned him to pay the bill and the costs of the suit.
"I won't," said the Miller.
So they put him in prison, and in prison he would have remained if his
mother had not paid the money to obtain his release. By and by she died,
and left him her blessing and some very good advice, which (as is
sometimes the case with bequests) would have been more useful if it had
come earlier.