"Oh, I don't mind. I had a little rather drive Bess, but it's no matter."
As Henry was starting out his father said—
"See here, Henry, it is the day of the picnic, isn't it?"
"Yes," responded Henry; "but I don't care a great deal. It is a nice drive out to Crandall's. I think I shall enjoy it."
"Yell, I guess you can have the day's earnings for your lesson fund."
"Oh, that's grand! Thank you."
Henry Trafton cared very little for books; he hated study, and the weekly school reports showed a wretchedly low standing in his classes, but his knowledge of some particular branches was remarkable; for instance, natural history and physical geography. Some one once expressed surprise at this, when he responded, "I learned those things from pictures."
The walls of his room were covered with pictures; his table was strewed with them; his trunk and drawers were full; they overflowed and spread through the house; he carried them in his pocket and between the leaves of his books; pictures of all sorts and sizes, bought with his pocket-money, torn from magazines, cut from newspapers, and not a few drawn by himself, some in pencil and some in coloured crayons. It was plain that he was a lover of art. Whether he had a talent for picture making remained to be seen. He was anxious to take some lessons of an artist who had a studio in town, and his father, who thought it the merest nonsense and waste of time and money, had finally consented, provided Henry should save his pocket-money to pay for the lessons.
As the now delighted boy harnessed the spirited horse, he said, "Old fellow, the money you'll earn to-day will be a heavy lift for me. Five dollars! Whoa! You needn't prance about as if the ground wasn't good enough for you to step on. You're likely to get considerable of it into your shiny coat before night. I s'pect we'll make the dust fly, won't we, old fellow?"
In the course of that afternoon, a man came to the house to say that the horse which Henry had driven had just come panting to the stables without driver or carriage, and with part of the harness dragging, and that one of the men had gone out on horseback to look for the castaways.