The next half hour was one of mingled feelings. Why was my lot so hard, and that of others so easy? “He deals with us according to our needs,” Mrs. Harlan had said; and I tried hard to work cheerfully, though saying to myself now and then, “It is Saturday, and no more than fair had I gone home. How much good it would have done me;” and plunging my shovel into the yielding bank, I started my wheelbarrow.
“Do not work so hard, Marston; you look heated;” and Mrs. Harlan looked up approvingly.
“What a difference it makes,” said she as I scattered the gravel in heaps, and then spread it evenly.
“It will require two or three loads more,” I answered; and on I went, feeling that any thing was better than to stand still.
Again had I reached the gravelled shore, and was shovelling away smartly, when Harry Gilmore leaped down the bank with his merry laugh and cheerful voice.
“If I was to envy anybody at Rockdale, it would be you,” he said, after a few words about the fishing party.
“Me!” and I pointed to my bare arms and my face dripping with perspiration.
“Yes, I believe you have more real comfort than any one of us who have rich fathers. You prize every hour in school, because it costs you self-denial; while we have never learned to value privileges that cost us nothing. Now let me help you,” he said, taking off his coat, “for I am to have a drive in the evening, and I want you should get through in time to join me.”
“A drive! where?”
“Anywhere you please; to Claverton, if you will.”