“Why, Hal!” was all the lady could exclaim, as she turned to look closely in his face to see if he was really in earnest. “I wonder how you would have liked chess-playing if your uncle had taken that way to ‘feel fine’ as you call it, when he taught you? As far as I can recollect, he found his pleasure entirely in encouraging you, and helping you on over the rough places till you were able to stand by yourself.”
“Oh, that’s different,” said Hal. “Men don’t feel like boys. I suppose when I am a man, I shall teach my small nephews and nieces, and never see a mistake they make.”
“I don’t know about that,” said his uncle; “you’ll be pretty likely to find yourself a grown-up Hal Fenimore when that day comes, and your friends Tom Haggartys still, and nothing more or less. I give you fair warning. A good deal depends upon how you strike out with your pawns, in real life as well as in chess, my boy.”
“But men try to get ahead of each other, and they fight battles and get victories,” persisted Hal.
“I beg your pardon,” said his uncle, “high-minded men don’t like to fight battles with adversaries much weaker than themselves; and as for ‘getting ahead,’ that is a very different thing from standing still and crowing over some poor little companion that you have managed to push down.”
“Well,” said Hal, who found the discussion did not seem to turn very decidedly in his favor, “I only know how boys do; but one thing they have to look sharp for is having their lessons, and I must get to mine in a great hurry now, if you will excuse me.”
The library fire crackled and glowed in the grate until it almost seemed a pleasant thing that the evenings were getting frosty, and Hal soon forgot all questions of mutual rights, in the more pressing one of division of fractions, which took such complete possession of him that he started as if out of a dream, at the sound of his aunt’s voice saying, “I declare, Hal, I think I’ll invite Tom Haggarty here, and give him lessons every evening for a week. He’s a bright little fellow, and would be a match for you, if he didn’t beat you, in a very short time.”
Poor little Tom! If he could only have heard her say it, what a comfort it would have been! The miserable feeling that had come over him as he said Good-night to Hal, had stuck fast ever since, till he had fairly gone to bed to get rid of it, and was lying at that moment, with his little cold nose tucked away under the blankets, trying to smother the conviction that he was the stupidest and most insignificant fellow in the world, and that Hal would be sure to remind him of it at school the next day.
“Now, Aunt Melanie!” exclaimed Hal, “I can’t understand how you make so much of that game of chess. Tom will find a boy smaller than himself stumbling at his lesson to-morrow, and he’ll crow over him, as uncle calls it, and then that little one will find another pushed out at a game of ball and have his crow, and so they will all take their turns and come out even.”