and in the hour after supper, when the others play out of doors, he sits with me, telling about Nervesty and the four little children at home, and the spell of typhoid all the family had last year, when his father and little sister Dicey died, and how "Me 'n' Nervesty and Hen" have run the farm since then, tending fifteen acres of corn, besides clearing new-ground, and other labors. Poor little man, it is the knowledge that he is really needed at home, as much as homesickness, that preys on his mind,—his mother is making a noble sacrifice to let him stay in the school. It seems to comfort him somewhat to weep on a sympathetic bosom. Peppermint candy, too, is not without its efficacy.
To-day came Taulbee Bolling, a dignified boy of thirteen, with a critical eye, and later, Mr. Atkins again, with the "pure scholar" in tow. Iry is a thin, puny-looking mite of ten, much too small for his trousers. He said "Yes sir" and "No sir" most politely when speaking to me, and carried an old blue-back speller under one arm. So great was my curiosity that I opened the book at once. The result was amazing,—"genealogical" and "irreconcilable" were child's-play to him, "incomprehensibility," a bagatelle. It was interesting to see his scared little face brighten as he climbed up and down the hard words and beheld my growing astonishment.
This afternoon while I had the boys mending the back fence, Geordie, who had been left to scrub my floor with carbolic acid solution, came back to the stable-lot bringing a new boy, whom with a flourish of his brush he introduced as follows:
"Here's the boy that fit the marshal that kilt his paw. And one time he seed the world and rid on a railroad train. Killis Blair's the name he goes by." Killis is a handsome blonde boy of twelve, not unaware of his double importance.
To-night after study-hour there was another catechism by Geordie. "Tell about ridin' on the railroad train!" he ordered.
Killis began: "The month before paw got kilt last spring, the officers was a-watching him so clost he was afeared to sell any liquor round about home, so me and him we tuck a barrel acrost the mountains to Virginia, where there's mines, and it would fetch a good price. We loaded fodder on top. The going was awful sorry, and the steers was three days at it. When I got there, I seed men walking round with their hats afire, and went down to the railroad-train and rid on the engine."
"What did it look like?" demanded Philip, breathlessly.
"Sort of like a saw-mill sot up on wheels."