“Can’t they be obliged to take an apprentice?”
“Yes, sir, or pay a fine; but the fine is so light they had sometimes rather pay the fine.”
Bertie found that by thus drawing a “bow at a venture,” he had struck upon a fruitful theme, and the evening passed so rapidly that it was nine o’clock before they thought it was eight, and when at last they came to separate, Mr. Conly made James promise that he would come again with Peter and Bertie. So much had his feelings and temper become modified by the discipline to which these high-minded boys, guided solely by their own instincts, had subjected him, that as Bertie told his mother when they got home, “James didn’t hang back at all when Mr. Conly asked him to come again with us, but said he would like to.”
“So that is the young man,” said Mr. Conly, to his family after the boys had gone, “that some of the scholars took a miff at as a redemptioner, and outlandish, and all that. I for one have got a good deal of information this evening, and I doubt very much if William Morse, or Riggs, or George Orcutt, could give so good an account of the methods of work here.”
“Father,” said Peter, “the master says James had better begin arithmetic at school.”
“I am going to the village to-morrow, and will get him a slate and a book.”
“There’s a slate in the house, only it has no frame, but make that do, and instead of a slate get him a large book to set down his sums in. He writes so well and makes such handsome figures, he will make it look nice to show at the committee examination.”
When Peter told James, the latter said he could make a slate frame himself, and did, of curled maple. Fondness for mechanical work grew upon James daily, and engrossed a portion of the time that had before been devoted to study. Peter had mechanical ability, and could make whatever he fancied. Not so, however, with Bertie, and thus an abundant opportunity was furnished to James to supply his friend. James made for him a sled, a crossbow, and a wheelbarrow, grandfather making the wheel; but James could hit nearer the mark with a stone, than Bertie could with his crossbow.
James now mingled freely with the other boys in their amusements at recess, and between schools; that is, he did not thus do every day. For some days he would not leave his seat, being inclined to study, but mingled with them sufficiently to produce the best of feeling, and distanced them all in lifting or pitching quoits, but in regard to wrestling,—a sport of which they never seemed to tire or get enough,—he was merely an interested spectator. One Saturday afternoon Peter said to him,—
“James, you do everything else us boys do, why don’t you wrestle?”