“But if you really mean it, couldn't you use these books, Uncle Ben?” said the master cheerfully. “I dare say there's little difference—the principle is the same, you know.”
Uncle Ben's face, which had suddenly brightened, as suddenly fell. He took the book from the master's hand without meeting his eyes, held it at arm's length, turned it over and then laid it softly down upon the desk as if it were some excessively fragile article. “Certingly,” he murmured, with assumed reflective ease. “Certingly. The principle's all there.” Nevertheless he was quite breathless and a few beads of perspiration stood out upon his smooth, blank forehead.
“And as to writing, for instance,” continued the master with increasing heartiness as he took notice of these phenomena, “you know ANY copy-book will do.”
He handed his pen carelessly to Uncle Ben. The large hand that took it timidly not only trembled but grasped it with such fatal and hopeless unfamiliarity that the master was fain to walk to the window and observe the birds also.
“They're mighty bold—them jays,” said Uncle Ben, laying down the pen with scrupulous exactitude beside the book and gazing at his fingers as if he had achieved a miracle of delicate manipulation. “They don't seem to be afeared of nothing, do they?”
There was another pause. The master suddenly turned from the window. “I tell you what, Uncle Ben,” he said with prompt decision and unshaken gravity, “the only thing for you to do is to just throw over Dobell and Parsons and Jones and the old quill pen that I see you're accustomed to, and start in fresh as if you'd never known them. Forget 'em all, you know. It will be mighty hard of course to do that,” he continued, looking out of the window, “but you must do it.”
He turned back, the brightness that transfigured Uncle Ben's face at that moment brought a slight moisture into his own eyes. The humble seeker of knowledge said hurriedly that he would try.
“And begin again at the beginning,” continued the master cheerfully. “Exactly like one of those—in fact, as if you REALLY were a child again.”
“That's so,” said Uncle Ben, rubbing his hands delightedly, “that's me! Why, that's jest what I was sayin' to Roop”—
“Then you've already been talking about it?” intercepted the master in some surprise. “I thought you wanted it kept secret?”