“It makes his eyes red, if not his cheeks,” said Moses. “Where ye bound, Jack?”
“I’m going over to the Basin; Mr. Sellick asked me to ride,” replied Jack, with a smile. “They’ll tell you all about it at the house.”
“Can’t talk now; there’s Squire Peternot in the buggy close behind us,” observed Sellick. “He’ll complain of us for blocking the highway, if we keep two wagons standing abreast here when he wants to pass. Fresh for your school agin, hey, Miss Felton, this bright Monday morning? I wish we could keep you the year round. My little shavers never learned so fast or liked to go to school so well as they have this summer.”
“I couldn’t walk through the snow-drifts, to say nothing of governing the big boys,” replied Annie.
“I’ll resk the big boys!” cried Sellick. “You’d bring them to your feet, like so many whipped spaniels. Then you’ll have some smart boys on your side, to start with,—Moses, and Jack here.—You’ll go to school, I suppose, next winter?”
“If I am here; I had meant to,” faltered Jack. While Annie’s searching eyes seemed to look into his troubled heart.
“Jack! what is the matter?” she exclaimed.
“He may have engagements elsewhere,” said Sellick. “In fact, a little matter of business which he is too modest to mention,—that’s what takes us to the Basin, and it may lead to his accepting a situation. I haven’t time to explain. Good morning!” And the constable whipped up his horse just as the squire’s came close behind.
“Good by!” said Jack, as bravely as he could. Then, his grief mastering him again, as he thought how different life would be to him this pleasant morning if he had gone home with Annie in Moses’s place, as he might have done, he set his lips and teeth hard, pulled his hat fiercely over his eyes, and rode on, in his bodily form, to the Basin; while his mind travelled back, and witnessed in imagination the scene at the house, when Miss Felton and Moses should arrive and learn of his crime and his disgrace.