“Never mind, Opp; it isn’t that. You read it to me.”
Mr. Opp complied with great pleasure, and having once started, he found it difficult to stop. From “Lord Ullin’s Daughter” he passed to “Curfew,” hence to “Barbara Frietchie” and “Young Lochinvar,” and as he read Hinton sat with closed eyes and traveled into the past.
He saw a country school-house, and himself a youngster of eight competing for a prize. He was standing on a platform, and the children were below him, and behind him was a row of visitors. [p191] He was paralyzed with fear, but bursting with ambition. With one supreme effort he began his speech:
Oh, the young Lochinvar has came out of the west!
He got no further; a shout from the big boys and a word from the teacher, and he burst into tears and fled for refuge to his mother. How the lines brought it all back! He could feel her arms about him now, and her cheek against his, and hear again her words of comfort. In all the years since she had been taken from him he had never wanted her so insistently as during those few moments that Mr. Opp’s high voice was doing its worst for the long-suffering Lochinvar.
“Mr. D.,” said a complaining voice from the doorway, “Miss Kippy won’t lemme tek her dress off to go to baid. She ’low she gwine sleep in hit.”
Mr. Opp abruptly descended from his elocutionary flight, and asked to be excused for a few moments.
[p192]
“Just a little domestic friction,” he assured Hinton; “you can glance over the rest of the poems, and I’ll be back soon.”
Hinton, left alone, paced restlessly up and down the room. The temporary diversion was over, and he was once more face to face with his problem. He went to the table, and, taking a note from his pocket, bent over the lamp to read it. The lines blurred and ran together, but a word here and there recalled the contents. It was from Mr. Mathews, who preferred writing disagreeable things to saying them. Mr. Mathews, the note said, had been greatly annoyed recently by repeated errors in the reports of his secretary; he was neither as rapid nor as accurate as formerly, and an improvement would have to be made, or a change would be deemed advisable.
“Delicate tact!” sneered Hinton, crushing the paper in his hand. “Courtesy sometimes begets a request, and the shark shrinks from conferring favors. And I’ve got to stick it out, to go on [p193] accepting condescending disapproval until a ‘change is deemed advisable.’”