Jonathan Whitman, who had listened all this time without question, replied,—“I think father gave good advice, and James did well to take it.”
There the matter dropped. Morse, Riggs, and Orcutt were so ashamed, and so well convinced that nearly all the members of the school heartily despised them, and that if they made complaint at home the master and scholars would inform their parents of the provocation James had received, that they lied to account for their bruises, and made no complaint at home.
Jonathan Whitman and his next neighbor, Mr. Wood, were great friends, and had been from boyhood, though about as unlike as men could well be, and though, when his boys told him of the doings at school, Mr. Wood fell in with the general verdict of the district, “served them right,” he could but feel a little sore, that his neighbor should be so much more fortunate in his choice of a redemptioner than himself.
The first time they met he could not forbear remarking,—
“Jonathan, they say that you are finding out what’s in your redemptioner pretty fast; that he begins to feel his oats, and is showing a clean pair of heels. How do you like him now, neighbor?”
“Better and better. Old Frank is the best horse I ever had, and a little child might safely crawl between his legs; Bert has done it many a time, but a man would run the risk of his life who should abuse him.”
These apparently untoward events accomplished what nothing else could have done, and which all the efforts of his friends had utterly failed to effect, they broke the crust and shattered the reserve, hitherto impenetrable, that isolated him, and furnished a stimulant that urged him onward in a course of more rapid development.
Before the boys separated on the evening which they spent together at Mr. Nevins’, they were closeted an hour in Arthur’s bedroom. What grave consultations were held, and what profound ideas were originated in their teeming noddles, will probably never be fully known, save that as they parted, Bertie shouted back: “Good night; now we’ve got him a-going, let’s keep him a-going.”
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SCHOLARS SUSTAIN JAMES.
The next morning Peter, Bertie, John, and Will Edibean, the Nevins boys, and Edward Conly, by pure accident, entered the schoolroom at the same moment with James, and some little time before the master came.