Do you think they were cruel to the little boy? But you know Maybee’s white apron had to be soaked, and rubbed, and boiled, and bleached, before it was fit to wear again.
And so, although naughty Dick was sadly to blame, we are sure, when Tod is a man, he will be thankful for all the suffering which helped take away the stain of that dreadful sin from his heart and tongue.
III.
NAUGHTY DICK.
“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
Whiz went a paper-wad past Ned Holden’s head. He didn’t need to look up from his Compound Interest to know where it came from: most of the mischief started with Dick Vance. Little Joe Burns, puzzling over c-o-u-g-h, b-o-u-g-h, d-o-u-g-h, caught a glimpse of Dick’s eyes through a pair of green goggles and giggled outright. Sue Sherman tripped and fell on her way to the grammar class, but the string was in Dick’s pocket before anybody saw it. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Wherever Dick was on the playground, there the boys played “for keeps,” cheated in “tallies,” swore over their quoits, and made ruinous bargains in jack-knives; and where Dick was, there too were more than two thirds of the other boys. You can easily guess he wasn’t an ugly, cross-grained, disobliging fellow. That isn’t the kind of stuff Satan chooses to make tools of. No one could learn more quickly than Dick, although he hated study and seldom had a perfect lesson; and a better-natured, kinder-hearted boy you couldn’t find in that school or any other. So whatever Dick said “Do,” the others generally did, and whatever Satan put into Dick’s head was generally the thing to be done. And Satan was leading him from bad to worse as fast as possible. A year ago, Dick would have scouted the idea of taking a twenty-five-cent scrip from Mr. Bower’s money-draw. It began with a few nuts “hooked” when Mr. Bowers was drawing molasses: it would end—where? Dick never stopped to think.
The week Tod began going to school, Dick played truant one day. It was the first time; for the boys, even the scape-grace Dick, stood very much in awe of Mr. Blackman.
“Won’t you catch it to-morrow?” said they all; but the next morning Dick walked coolly up to the master’s desk and presented a note of excuse. And then what a glee he set the boys into, telling how he had to pretend somebody was driving cows and one ran down a lane, and there was nobody to help but Dick, although it made him late at school, and Mr. Blackman would insist on his bringing an excuse. Just a word and his father’s name would do.
O Dick! You would have scorned that lie a year ago.
But now it seemed quite the thing; and when a large circus was advertised in an adjoining town, it was an easy matter to persuade, not only himself but Joe Travers also, there would be some way of getting round “old Blackman.”