"Well, everybody makes mistakes sometimes," said Eben.
"Eben," said Jeduthun, impressively—for the miller could be impressive in spite of his miscellaneous grammar and decided Virginia accent—"Eben, you are wrong, and you know you are. Your conscience tells you so this minute. You ain't being faithful to Mr. Antis, though he pays you large wages for a boy of your age, and though he has been very kind to you. You ain't doing your duty neither to God nor man, and unless you turn right round and go on the other track, you'll find yourself in more trouble than you know."
Eben was silent, and looked steadily out of the window. His conscience did tell him that Jeduthun was right, but his pride and some other feelings would not let him own that he was in the wrong.
"The fact is," continued Jeduthun, "you're a-trying to do two things at once, and that's what you can't do. You can't serve two masters no more than any one else. I've no objection to your reading your medical books in the evening if you like, though it must make it rather dull for Miss Flossy and the old lady, after they haven't seen you all day, but you have no business to be bringing them into the mill, and letting your thoughts run on them when you ought to be 'tending to your work. If you're going to be a doctor, why, be a doctor, and if you're going to be a miller, why, be a miller, but don't try to be both at once. That's being too much like my young missus when she emptied the camphire bottle into the mince pies, thinking it was rose water: it spiled the medicine, and it spiled the pies too."
Eben went home that night in a very uncomfortable state of mind. Mr. Antis had been very sharp with him about the letters, and had told him that the cost of the telegraphing which his neglect had rendered necessary should be taken out of his wages. But that had not hurt Eben half so much as the way in which Mr. Antis had said, "I really thought I had found one boy who could be trusted to do what he undertook."
Eben knew very well where the trouble was, but he was slow to acknowledge it to himself, because he felt that such an acknowledgment involved a great deal. He had found the physiology, as Dr. Porter had said, as interesting as a romance, and his head was running on it all the time. The book was in his hand the moment he entered the house, and hardly left it, even at meal-times, and he was impatient of the slightest interruption to his studies.
Flora, who had set out with being delighted with her brother's new employment, began to find that in the experience it was rather dreary. The evenings were now growing long, and she found that after a day of fine sewing, her eyes were too weary to read by candle light, while Eben was impatient of any conversation, even when nobody talked to him. Mary Clarke was bent upon making the most of her last year in school, and studied every evening up in her own room. Mrs. Fairchild dozed over her knitting and Flora sat silent with hers, while Eben pored over his big books without a word to say to anybody for as long a time as his mother would allow him to sit up.
"Where is my book?" was his first question to Flora as he entered the house and missed his beloved "Carpenter" from its accustomed place.
"I dare say mother laid it in the other room," replied Flora. "I had to use the whole table for cutting out and basting my work."
"I wish my things could be let alone!" said Eben, sharply.