I was disappointed at the caution of the answer; nevertheless my uncle did tell us something of the movements of the Duke during the past year. He had made another "progress" through Cheshire and the more northern portion of the kingdom, and this progress had been very jealously regarded by the court party. The Duke of York was always the enemy of Monmouth, as was perhaps natural, and the King, who loved them both, had often an evil time of it between them. Sometimes Monmouth seemed in the ascendant, sometimes his black-browed uncle; and the plots and machinations of scheming courtiers and ambitious statesmen were without end. I grew bewildered even trying to follow Uncle John's talk about all these fine nobles, whose names I scarcely knew. But when he pulled out from his capacious pocket two or three old "news-letters," as they were then called, and asked if I could read them, I soon became absorbed in the contents to the exclusion of all besides; for anything new to read was as an elixir to me. And when our father and uncle were smoking their pipes, and mother and the girls washing up and putting away, I began reading loud to them the most interesting bits of news that I could find, quite unaware that Uncle John had ceased to talk with father, and was staring at me open-eyed.
At last he broke into speech.
"By the Lord Harry," he exclaimed (a favourite expletive of his), "the boy reads like a parson! Where did he learn it all?"
"He has always been a scholar," answered mother, with some pride; "that is what I say to them that pity his crooked back. He has a better head than the best of them. He will be a fine scholar in time.—Dicon, go get thy writing-book, and show thine uncle what thou canst do."
Aunt Betsy had given me a neat book full of blank paper, and I had taken pains to write my best themes and most lengthy calculations and cipherings into it. I showed it to my uncle with some pride; and as he turned the leaves I saw him look astonished, impressed, and almost triumphant, and I wondered not a little what could be in his mind.
"Why, boy," he cried, looking up at me at last, "canst add up rows of figures like that, and bring the right total at the end?"
"I trow I can, uncle," I replied with some confidence; for by this time I knew that I could trust myself to get the right answer however long the sum might be. "Set me down a sum and I will show you. I can reckon in my head too, and I seldom make an error."
Well, not to be tedious in telling all this—for I find it hard to know just how much to say and how much to leave unsaid in this history—it appeared at length that our uncle's inn in Taunton was becoming so well patronized by all sorts and conditions of men, that he knew not how to find time to keep his books as well as to entertain his guests; and since neither his wife nor his daughter had any skill with the pen, he was looking about him for somebody whom he could trust to relieve him of those laborious duties of book-keeping which he had hitherto managed to overtake himself, though at the cost of much time and labour.
Seeing my aptitude at figures, and hearing my fluency at reading aloud, he had been seized with the idea that I should be valuable to him.