“While they all occasionally have kind words for others, they never have a word of encouragement for me, but I am glad that I did not deserve it. I should hate to feel that I deserve all the unkindness I have received here, and that I was as idle and unworthy as they seem to think me; but I never did, and I hope you honestly think so. You are the only one among them who was fair and just, and after I have gone away I shall only have you to remember pleasantly. I am glad that I am going to a place at last where I shall be welcome and useful.”
I thought that afternoon that all of them were unjust to Jo and steadily refused to give him the credit he deserved; I think so now, a great many years after, with a maturer mind and greater experience.
“We have been very ignorant here, you and I.” It was very disgraceful, but very true. “Your father is wise enough, but as he takes no pains to impart it to others, we have had little benefit of his wisdom. For the next two years I shall live with a man who is educated, and who will willingly teach me, and I intend to tax his patience with my studies. Barker is not only learned, but he is courteous, and I can learn something of polite manners. He bows like a king; only a very few men are able to make a really good bow. I asked him once where he learned it, but he only laughed, and said everyone ought to be polite without learning it anywhere. It made me ashamed, for politeness never came natural with me. Perhaps I am so awkward because I do not come of a good family.”
Certainly his father and mother were not polite to each other, or to their son.
“I have made many terrible mistakes from not knowing any better, and they will humiliate me all my life. Once I went with your mother to call at the new minister’s—this is in the strictest confidence, and never to be repeated—and I did a thing so dreadful that I am blushing now in thinking of it. I wore a little cap (I have since burned it), and although I know now it was hideously ugly, I thought then that it made me very handsome. I bought it of a boy who had lived in town, and I had seen town boys wear them. So I shuffled into their parlor wearing your father’s boots, with a pair of his pantaloons tucked into their tops, and the cap on my head. The Shepherds are very well-bred people, and after I had stumbled across the room, and fallen into a chair all in a heap, Mateel—how pretty she was that night, and how pretty she always is!—came over to me, and asked to lay away my cap. I thought it very amiable in me not to trouble her, so I refused to give it up. In fact, I said:—
“‘No, I thank you; I am very comfortable as I am!’
“And I sat the entire evening through with that cap on my head. Nobody had ever told me to remove my cap in the presence of ladies, and being of a poor family, I did not know it without being told. I know better now, for Barker laughed at me, and explained why it was wrong.”
Under other circumstances I should have laughed, but Jo was so serious that I did not think of it.
“They asked me to sing; simply to be polite, I am now certain. Your mother did not say for me not to, so I stumbled over to the melodeon, and sang nine verses of the ‘Glorious Eighth of April’ in a voice so loud that the windows rattled. They were all blushing for me, but I never once suspected it. I had heard your father sing the same song a hundred times, and I supposed it was all right. ‘Is that all?’ they asked when I had finished. I regretted that it was, thinking they were entertained, and I came very near singing it all over again. I told Barker about it, and he gave me lessons in propriety an entire afternoon. I felt coming home that I had in some way committed an indiscretion, but I could not tell exactly what it was until Barker pointed it out. He suggested that I write an apology, and as I have it here, I will read it, if you care to listen.”
He took from his pocket a neatly written note, and after I had signified an anxiety to know its contents, he read:—