The negro shuffled off and I fancied that he looked rather resentful at being sent away.
“Father,” I said, when the creature was out of earshot, “you surely weren’t going to hire that ape to work here?”
“Why not?” answered father. “I have to have a man to help with the horses, and this fellow came up to the door and asked for work, so I promised him a job.”
“But he’s such a terrible looking thing,” I said.
Father only laughed and dismissed the subject with a wave of his hands. “I wasn’t hiring him for his looks,” he answered. “He said he could handle horses and that was enough for me.”
So Justice Sherman came back to us and the subject of military service was never broached again.
About a week after his return, and when Jim Wiggin was able to be about again, Justice Sherman walked into the kitchen with a mincing air quite unlike his ordinary free stride. He had been to Spencer for the mail.
“Tread softly when you see me,” he advised. “I’m a perfessor, I am.”
I looked up inquiringly from the potato I was paring.
“Behold in me,” he went on, “the entire faculty of the Spencer High School. I am instructor in Latin, Greek, mathematics, science, history, English and dramatics; also civics and economics.”