“I do,” said Uncle John, emphatically. Then, rising to go into the house, he added, “That’s exactly what I used to call Aunt Mary’s hair, yellow-brown.”
“Oh!” said Billy wonderingly. Then it was time for him to go to bed; but he lingered a moment to look at Aunt Mary’s hair that was dark brown, now, where it wasn’t gray. There was something in his “Good-night, Aunt Mary,” that made her look up from her paper as she said:
“Good-night, William Wallace.”
Anybody can see that William Wallace is a hard name for a boy to go to bed on. It was so hard for Billy that it almost hurt; but Billy had lived with Aunt Mary long enough to be sure that she meant to be a true friend.
Whether or not Mr. Prescott was his friend, Billy did not know. Mr. Murphy had told him one day when he was out by the door, waiting for the postman, that Mr. Prescott was a friend to every man in the mill. Billy supposed that every man was a friend back again. At any rate he knew that he was; and he hoped that, some day, he would be able to do something, just to show Mr. Prescott how much he liked him.
The more he thought about it, the more it didn’t seem possible that such a hope as that could ever come true.
But anybody who liked anybody else as much as he liked Mr. Prescott couldn’t help seeing that something bothered him. So Billy had a little secret with himself to try to look specially pleasant when Mr. Prescott came in from a trip around the mill. He had begun to think that Mr. Prescott had given up springing questions on him when, one very warm afternoon, Mr. Prescott looked up from his desk and said:
“William, if you were to have an afternoon off, what would you do?”
“I’d rather than anything else in the world,” answered Billy promptly, “go out into the country.”
“That being hardly feasible,” said Mr. Prescott, “what else would you rather do?”