Young Quincy wished a college education. To obtain admission it was necessary for him to attend a preparatory school, and, relying upon Mr. Gay's description of its advantages, Andover was selected.
While at the Cottonton High School, Quincy's chum had been a boy two years older than himself, named Thomas Chripp. He was the son of a weaver at Cottonton. Like Quincy, he had been born in England, but his father had been drawn to America by the lure of higher wages, nothing having been said to him, however, about the increased cost of living.
Thomas's father would not let him become a back-boy in the mill.
“I've breathed cotton all my life,” said Mr. Chripp to Ezekiel, “and I think too much of my only boy to condemn him to a life in a hot room, where the only music is the whizzing shuttles. No, my boy Tom shall breathe God's fresh air and become a big, strong man instead of a wizened-up little fellow like me. Why, would you believe it, Mr. Pettingill, I began work in a cotton mill when I was eight years old, and I've lived in one ever since—forty years! Sundays when I walk out in the fields I can't get the din out of my ears, and I told Susan, my old wife, the other day, that if I died before she did to have the lid screwed down extra tight so I could be sure of a little quiet.”
“My nephew,” said 'Zekiel, “thinks a lot of your boy and wants him to go to college with him.”
“But I haven't got the money to pay his way,” said Mr. Chripp.
“My nephew has plenty of money, and if he's willing to help your boy along in the world there's nobody to object that I know of.”
So it was arranged that Tom Chripp should go to the preparatory school and college with Quincy, the latter to pay the expenses of both. “'Twas a lucky day for Tom that sent that Sawyer boy to school in Cottonton,” said Mr. Chripp to his wife.
“It'll be the making of Tom,” he added, and the happy mother thought so too.
When Mr. Strout heard of it, he remarked to his partner Mr. Maxwell,