The boys said nothing, but gravely, and in impressive silence, laid down their treasures on the doctor’s study table. It was covered with books and papers; but they were too oblivious of every thing, and too much absorbed in the contemplation of their own things, to think of that.
So Bruce entered first, and placed on the doctor’s table, right over some handsome volumes of Euripides, just received from London, the rusty, dirty old ploughshare.
“Hallo!” cried the doctor. “Why! what!—”
But before he could finish his sentence, Tom came up, and laid down a dozen old spikes and nails. Both of them turned and looked proudly at the doctor.
“Look here, boys,” cried the doctor, standing up; “what—”
He was interrupted by Phil, who came forward between him and the first boys, carrying an iron pot, which he triumphantly placed on a handsomely bound Hebrew Lexicon.
“What in the world—” began the doctor again, but was again interrupted by Arthur, who solemnly placed the colter on a new edition of Longinus, and then put the chain on some late English Quarterly Reviews. Just as the doctor was about to burst forth, Bart came immediately before him, and, with a face radiant with delight, laid down, right on the doctors blotting pad, that horrible, discolored, and disintegrated old bone.
For a moment it seemed that the doctor would burst forth in a fury. To him this behavior was the sublimity of unparalleled impudence; the act was so absolutely unequalled in its quiet audacity, that it actually made him dumb with amazement. The ploughshare, the colter, the iron pot, the rusty spikes and bolts, the old chain,—all these were so many stages up which his astonishment went to a climax which was fully attained when Bart put down the abominable old bone.