He wriggled somewhat at this, but at length confided in me.
"Well, there's a sell, you know, Uncle Maje. You say, 'They're goin' to tear the schoolhouse down,' or something like that, and the other boy says, 'What fur?' and then you say, quick as you can, 'Cat-fur to make kitten britches of,' and then we all laugh and yell, and I caught Ginger Potts on it, and he got mad when we yelled and come at me, and they pushed him against me and they pushed me against him, and they said he dassent, and they said I dassent, and then it happened, only when I got him down, he begun to say, 'Oh, it's wrong to fight! I promised my mother I would never fight!' but I wouldn't 'a' stopped for that, because teacher says he's by far the brightest boy in school—only just then Eustace Eubanks come along, and he laid down the meat he was taking home to dinner and jumped into the crowd and says: 'Boys, boys, shame on you to act so like the brutes! That isn't any way to act!' and he pulled me off'n Ginger, and—and that's all, but I had him licked fair."
"I shall not tell your father of this," I said sternly.
"He has enough to worry him," said my namesake.
"Exactly," I said. "But I advise you to cultivate a friendly feeling for Roscoe Potts. Boys should not fight."
"Well—now—I would—but he's a regular teacher's pet."
And remembering the letter that was not sent to Sam Murdock,—that the teacher was my namesake's love,—I perceived that this breach was not to be healed.
[CHAPTER XII]
TROUBLED WATERS ARE STILLED
It was spring again, a Sunday in early May, warm, humid, scented with blossoms that were bodied souls of the laughing air. They starred the bank that fell away from my porch to the clear-watered river, and they sang of the young spirit that lives in this old earth so deceptively, defacing it with false scars of age, and craftily permitting us to count years by the thousand, yet remaining always as fresh in itself as on the primal morning when the world was found good by that ill-fated but joyous first pair of lovers. I marvel that so many are fooled by the trick; how so few of us detect that the soul of it all is ageless—has never even wearied. The blossoms told this secret now in quiet triumph over the denials of ancient oaks that towered above them and murmured solemn falsities in their tops about the incredible oldness of things.