"I thought I'd speak to you first, mother. I wanted to know if you would be willing to let me go."
"If your father thinks it best, I shall be satisfied, Richard. Of course, I will miss you."
"I know that, mother," returned Richard rising. "But then I could come home once in a while. The city is not so very far away."
The plan of "striking out" had been in Richard Dare's mind for several months. The country school at Mossvale had closed for the season early in the spring—so as to allow the farmer boys to do their work, and Richard was satisfied that he had about learned all that Mr. Parsons, the pedagogue, was able or willing to teach, and saw no good reason for his returning in the fall. He would have liked to continue his studies, but there was only one other institute of learning in the neighborhood—a boarding academy, where the rates for tuition were high, and to this he well knew his parents could not afford to send him.
Mr. Dare was by trade a house painter and decorator. When a young man he had served three years in the army, during the great rebellion, from which he had come away with a bullet in his shoulder, and a strong tendency towards chronic rheumatism. Shortly after he had married, and now, twenty years later, his family included four children, of which Richard, age sixteen, was next to the oldest.
Mr. Dare was a steady, sober man, who disliked excitement, and the quiet plodding along in Mossvale just suited him. He was only a journeyman, and it is doubtful if his ambition had ever risen beyond his present station. By frugality he and his wife had saved enough to buy a half acre of land in this pretty New Jersey village, on which they had erected a neat cottage, and here apparently John Dare was content to spend the remainder of his life.
But Richard Dare partook of but little of his father's retiring disposition. He was a bright, active boy, with a clear heart and brain, and he longed to get at some work where energy would be the road to success. His comprehension was rapid, and beneath an outwardly calm spirit, lurked the fire of a youth well trained to grapple with noble purposes and bring them to a successful issue.
Richard's desire to go to the metropolis was a natural one. There was nothing in quiet Mossvale to entice any one with push to remain there. The entire population of the district did not number three hundred people, and the only business places were three general stores, a blacksmith shop and a cross-roads hotel.
A number of years previous, Mr. Dixon Maillard, a rich man from Newark, had endeavored to boom the village by starting a hat factory there, then trying to make his employees buy houses and lots from him on the installment plan, but this scheme had fallen flat, and the factory plant was removed to a more promising locality.
The Dare cottage stood some little distance from the village center. As Mrs. Dare had said, Richard had the garden in excellent condition, not only the larger portion devoted to the vegetables and small fruits, but also the front part, in which were planted a great variety of flowers in which his mother took keen delight.