Sea-gift: A Novel

by Edwin W. Fuller

I was too much excited to eat any more, but began teazing mother to begin right away on my school outfit.

“Mother, I want a satchel to carry my books in, and a basket for my luncheon; and, mother, please get me a string for my top, because all the boys play top, and I broke my string yesterday; and father, please sir, get me a knife to peel apples and to cut pencils with, and a piece of leather to make me a sling, and a——”

“Hush, Johnnie,” said mother, “be quiet, and I will be sure to have you ready. The school room is just around the corner, so you can come home for your lunch; and as your ‘books’ only consist of one ‘Angell’s First Book’ you will hardly need a bag.”

I gulped down a mouthful of food, then hastening from the table, I got my Reader and devoted the whole morning to picking out all the hard words and spelling them over. By dinner time I had mastered nearly all of them, and could read with considerable fluency the pathetic tale of retributive justice which befel the cruel James Killfly.

That evening when father came in he brought me a beautiful knife with a file blade in it. To possess a knife with a file blade had always been one of the unattained pinnacles of my ambition—this appurtenance, in my eyes, being the very toga virilis of cutlery; and as my property in this department had hitherto consisted of blunt pointed Barlows, and fatigued looking dog knives, with their edges purposely made dull, to be the undisputed owner of an exquisite pearl handled knife, with brightest blades, placed me at once upon the pinnacle, and I enjoyed the situation. I was never tired of opening and snapping the blades, and blowing my breath upon them, as the larger boys did, to test their metal. I trimmed my pencil quite away, because the cedar cut smoothly, and the chairs suffered as severely as Washington, Sr.’s, cherry tree did.

I rose next morning with the sun, and was busying everywhere in my preparations for school. Breakfast finished, with my book in my hand, and that adored knife in my pocket, I started with father for the school. I felt a little sinking about the heart as I kissed mother good-bye and descended the steps, and would, had I not been ashamed, have shrunk from the new life I was entering, and gone back to the old routine of play. As we turned our corner I looked back, and mother was still standing in the door, gazing thoughtfully after us. I could not then understand or appreciate her feelings, but I can now.

Miss Hester answered our tap at her door in person, and invited us in to a seat. I shrank closer to father as the curious eyes of the scholars were all turned towards me, and I found no kindly sympathy in the glances. Father took a seat and entered into conversation with Miss Hester, while I timidly surveyed the apartment where my ideas were to be taught to shoot.

Miss Hester Weck kept a small preparatory school for girls and boys, and ruled it with old maidish particularity. All the scholars had to sit up straight on three rows of benches, which were so arranged with reference to Miss Hester’s seat that she could have a full view of all. None were allowed to speak or laugh, and as for rocking backwards and forwards, a motion believed by children to be conducive to study and essential to retention, the thing was unheard of in Miss Hester’s school. Some, indeed, had tried it on first entering, but after one or two interviews with Miss Hester’s rod they had learned to study in one position. On one side of the room was a row of pegs for the girls’ hats and bonnets, and on the opposite side a similar row for the boys’. At one end of the room was the rostrum on which our monarch sat, and at the other was a long desk, covered with ink splotches, at which the scholars wrote. Having completed my survey of the room I turned my attention to the scholars, and scanned their faces closely, as I was to associate, more or less intimately, with all of them. They were all, with the exception of two or three, munching the corners of their books, and staring steadily at father and me. There were five occupants of the front bench, who, I thought, from their position, must be first grade scholars. The first was a tall, raw-boned girl, with sandy hair and freckled face, and light gray eyes, turned up at the corners, giving her a sinister and Chinese expression that assured me of victimization. Next to her was her brother, a small and sleepy second edition of herself, not at all revised or corrected. Then came a bright-eyed little fellow who was engaged in the pleasant diversion of making hideous faces at me. At his side was a fat, redheaded girl, who was the only one studying; and lastly, a stupid, tow-haired youth, whose straight flax hair looked as if it had been hung on his head to dry, and had dried stiff, and who was gazing at me as if I were vacancy.

The second bench held three girls and two boys, who resembled in many particulars those on the first bench. On number three I recognized, to my great joy, Ned Cheyleigh and Lulie Mayland, and to my annoyance Frank Paning. Before we had concluded our interchange of whispered salutations, father rose and said to Miss Hester: