Leander lifted his head suddenly. The amount of progress possible to this desultory and limited application he understood only too well. He had not learned so much himself to be unaware how much in time and labor learning costs. The others perceived no incongruity. Sudley's face was florid with pride and pleasure, and his wife's reflected the glow.
"Ab Sage at the cross-roads! Then he mus' hev tole ye 'bout Lee-yander hyar, an' his larnin'. Ab tole, I know."
Nehemiah drew his breath in quickly. His twinkling eyes sent out the keenest glance of suspicion, but the gay, affectionate, vaunting laugh, as Tyler Sudley turned around and clapped the boy a ringing blow on his slender shoulder, expressed only the plenitude of his simple vainglory.
"Lee-yander hyar knows it all!" he boasted. "Old Ab himself don't know no mo'! I'll be bound old Ab went a-braggin'—hey, Lee-yander?"
But the boy shrank away a trifle, and his smile was mechanical as he silently eyed his relative.
"Ab 'lowed he war tur'ble disobejient," said Nehemiah, after a pause, and cautiously allowing himself to follow in the talk, "an' gi'n over ter playin' the fiddle." He hesitated for a moment, longing to stigmatize its ungodliness; but the recollection of Tyler Sudley's uncertain temper decided him, and he left it unmolested. "But Ab 'lowed ye war middlin' quick at figgers, Lee-yander—middlin' quick at figgers!"
Leander, still silent and listening, flushed slightly. This measured praise was an offence to him; but he looked up brightly and obediently when his uncle wagged an uncouthly sportive head (Nehemiah's anatomy lent itself to the gay and graceful with much reluctance), thrust his hands into his pockets, and, tilting himself back in his chair, continued:
"I'll try ye, sonny—I'll try ye. How much air nine times seven?—nine times seven?"
"Forty-two!" replied the boy, with a bright, docile countenance fixed upon his relative.
There was a pause. "Right!" exclaimed Nehemiah, to the relief of Sudley and his wife, who had trembled during the pause, for it seemed so threatening. They smiled at each other, unconscious that the examination meant aught more serious than a display of their prodigy's learning.