“Tolerably well, General Wall.”
“Push him, Mr. Barclay, push him! I want my son to have a good education.”
“I will do my best.”
General Wall walked on with a self-satisfied air, as if he took a good deal of credit to himself for honoring the poor teacher with so much notice. He glanced at Walter, whom he recognized as his fellow-traveler of the night before, and concluded, from seeing him with Allen Barclay, that he was a friend or relative of the teacher.
CHAPTER V
A LATIN EXERCISE.
It was five minutes of nine when Allen Barclay, accompanied by Walter, approached the schoolhouse. It was a plain wooden building of two stories, painted white. Beside it was a good-sized playground, on which from a dozen to twenty boys were engaged in a game of ball. As Walter saw the ball flying across the field, impelled by a hard knock from the bat, he felt a strong impulse to join in the game. When a student at the Essex Institute he had played ball a good deal, and was considered quite a superior player. But since his departure he had not joined in a game. Now as he witnessed the game of the Portville boys, he wished himself again a scholar, and a sharer in their fun.
“Do you ever play ball, Mr. Barclay?” he asked.
“No; the physician has forbidden all violent exercise as likely injurious to my health. It increases my cough. For that matter, however, I don’t think I should play if I were able. I tried it sometimes as a boy, but I never succeeded very well. Do you play?”
“I used to play considerably, but for several months I have not touched a bat.”