Running to Waste: The Story of a Tomboy

by George M. Baker

And so thanks to Mrs Thompson, and not her husband, Becky was to be turned from the error of her ways. The captain was a liberal man; his purse was always open to the demands of his wife. She might cover every bed in the parish with comforters, clothe the poor, and feed the hungry, to her heart’s content; he would never stop to count the cost. And so she often managed to repair damages his temper had caused, out of his own purse.

But the man’s obstinacy had brought one serious disaster, which she found all her woman’s wit necessary to repair. It had driven their only child from his home, and made a breach between father and son which might never be healed.

Harry Thompson, at the age of fifteen, was a leader among the boys of Cleverly. He was brave, skilful, and mischievous. He was looked upon as a hero by his playfellows, whom he could incite to the performance of wonderful gymnastic feats, or to the perpetration of boyish tricks hardly as creditable. Among his enthusiastic admirers was Becky Sleeper, then ten years of age, whom, being a special favorite of his, he took pains to train in all the sports with which he was familiar. He was then attending the school; no interested student, but very quick and apt to learn, standing fair in his class. The next year he was sent to the academy; and a suddenly-acquired taste for learning so fired his ambitious spirit that at the end of the second year he graduated at the head of his class, with the reputation of being a remarkable scholar. Then, hungry for knowledge, he wanted to go to college. But Captain Thompson had already planned a course for his son. He had book-learning enough; he wanted him to be a practical man. He should go into the yard and learn the trade of a ship-carpenter; in time he could be a builder; and then the son could build, and the father would fit out and send his ships abroad.

The son demurred. The father’s obstinacy asserted itself; he could not be made to listen to reason; and the matter ended by the boy’s proclaiming his determination to go through college, if he had to scrub the floors to get through, and the father’s threat that, if he left home, the doors should be closed against his return.

The boy went. The mention of his name was forbidden in his home by the angry father. He had been gone four years, and the captain seemed as insensible to his welfare as he did when he pronounced his dictum.

But the mother, she had not held her peace for four long years without knowledge of her boy. Snugly tucked away among her treasures were weekly records of her son’s progress, in his own handwriting—tender, loving epistles, such as make a mother’s heart warm and happy, telling of true growth in manhood’s noblest attributes, and showing in every line the blessed power of a mother’s influence.

Despite her cross, Mrs. Thompson was a happy woman, and the championship of her son by Aunt Hulda was a power to make her merry; for she knew how her Harry got through college. He didn’t scrub the floors to get through. O, no! Captain Thompson’s purse paved the way for a more stately march through the halls of learning.

And so, having had her laugh, Mrs. Thompson called, in a loud voice,—

“Silly!”

Silly, somewhere down in the tale of the kite, answered the summons with a shrill “Yes, marm,” and in a few minutes entered the room.