“Well, get quiet as soon as you can. I want to sleep.”
And Jack went on up the dark stairway to his lonely bed.
CHAPTER XIX
HOW JACK WAS INVITED TO RIDE.
Jack was up very early the next morning; and having put fresh stockings and a pair of old shoes on his scratched and bruised feet, he went out, determined at the first opportunity to tell Mr. Chatford all that had occurred, and ask his advice.
It was a little after daybreak. Mrs. Pipkin was making a fire as he went through the kitchen; she guessed the deacon wasn’t stirring yet. Jack took the milkpails and went into the barn-yard. The cows got up, one after another, stretched themselves, flirted their tails, and waited to be milked. He placed his stool beside one of them; and there he sat milking in the cool of the morning,—keeping all the while an anxious lookout for the deacon,—when the large front gate rattled, and he saw a man trying to unfasten it.
“Lift it up a little,” said Jack.
“O, I see!” The man came into the yard; and Jack recognized one of the farmers of the neighborhood, named Sellick, rather popular among the boys as a joker and story-teller. “Didn’t know you had a new way of fastening your gates over here!” And he laughed, as he did at almost everything he said, drawing his upper lip up to his nose, and surrounding his little gray eyes with merry wrinkles. “Where’s the deacon, sonny?”
“My name ain’t Sonny,” replied Jack.