From this position Sister Martin could not move the lad, though she tried several times in the course of the next day. She knew her friends would be disappointed that Eric refused to cast in his lot with the people of God; for this was how they would regard his refusal to join their society, she feared.
But still, nothing she could say was sufficient to remove his objection to declaring himself a Methodist; and so they set out the next day on their long walk to the farm, that lay some distance beyond the city of Boston.
Eric, in a new colonial suit of clothes, looked very different from the lad who had come on board the Osprey, ragged and dirty and half starved; and as the two walked together along the country road, Sister Martin could not help feeling proud of her young pupil.
After an hour's steady walking, they came within sight of her friend's farm, and she told Eric that the fields they now saw belonged to his future employer.
"Oh, look at the horses!" exclaimed Eric, in a tone of delight; for here, in the place of cows and sheep, with which the other farms had been liberally stocked, horses seemed to roam about at their sweet will.
"You will have horses enough here to please you," said his friend. "Mr. Consett supplies all the country round with horses, and takes them in to nurse when they are sick or growing old."
Eric was obliged to stand still and admire this paradise for the creatures he was so fond of. "If only my poor old Peggy could be here now!" he exclaimed, with a sigh. And then he told Sister Martin how he had learned to doctor Peggy the previous winter, and the suspicion it raised against him.
"You had better not try doctoring the horses here without consulting Mr. Consett first; but I am sure he will be glad to listen to anything you may be able to tell him about the matter," she said.
They found Mr. Consett looking out for them, and he would have taken them at once to the house for a meal, but Eric had seen a foal in one of the fields that seemed to him to be ailing, and so he told the farmer about this, and then the two set off together to see what it was, while Sister Martin went in to rest and have some dinner.
"I hope they won't be long before they come back," said Mrs. Consett, looking from the window of the big kitchen where the meal was spread.