“My father—” he began, and stopped.
“I’ll see your father,” she said impetuously. “Only you must tell him you want to come, and ask him yourself. Promise me you’ll do that.”
There was no resisting her in her great earnestness.
“I promise,” he whispered, and stooped to pick up his cap, which had fallen from his trembling fingers.
“If he refuses, I will see him to-morrow myself,” she said. “Remember, you are going to learn to read and write and to do many other things. Good night, Tommy.”
“Good night, ma’am,” he answered with uncertain voice, and hastened away.
She watched him until the gathering darkness hid him, and then turned back, picked up her hat again, locked the door, and hurried down the path with singing heart. It was her first real victory—for she was certain it would prove a victory—and she felt as the traveler feels who, toiling wearily across a great waste of Alpine snow and ice,—shivering, desolate,—comes suddenly upon a delicate flower, looking up at him from the dreary way with a face of hope and comfort.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST SHOT OF THE BATTLE
Tommy Remington, meanwhile, trudged on through the gathering darkness, his heart big with purpose. Heretofore the mastery of the art of reading had appeared to him, when he considered the subject at all, as a thing requiring such tremendous effort as few people were capable of. Certainly he, who knew little beyond the rudiments of mining and the management of a mine mule, could never hope to solve the mystery of those rows of queer-looking characters he had seen sometimes in almanacs and old newspapers, and more recently on the circus poster he carried in his pocket. But now a new and charming vista was of a sudden opened to him. The teacher had assured him that it was quite easy to learn to read,—that any one could do so who really tried,—and he rammed his fists deep down in his pockets and drew a long breath at the sheer wonder of the thing.
It is difficult, perhaps, for a boy brought up, as most boys are, within sound of a school bell, where school-going begins inevitably in the earliest years, where every one he knows can read and write as a matter of course, and where books and papers form part of the possessions of every household, to understand the awe with which Tommy Remington thought over the task he was about to undertake. Such a boy may have seen occasionally the queer picture-writing in front of a Chinese laundry or on the outside of packages of tea, and wondered what such funny marks could possibly mean. To Tommy English appeared no less queer and difficult than Chinese, and he would have attacked the latter with equal confidence—or, more correctly, with an equal lack of confidence.