"I'll do it, sir. I'll begin now. I have ten minutes before school."
"Score the number of bushels on the barn door," added the deacon.
Catching up the small basket, Dick ran to the barn, and filled it half full of ears. When he came home he went to finish the bushel before dinner. It was only by improving his odd minutes that he could do the work without neglecting his lessons. He smiled when he saw that the small basket had been taken away and a large one substituted.
He filled it and said nothing. Then he went on husking as fast as he could, waiting for the dinner bell, throwing the ears into a pile. He did the same after school at night,—until he had accumulated a good many bushels. Then with, a curious smile, which his mother would have well understood, he walked into the kitchen where the Deacon sat tipped back in his chair, talking with a neighbor, and asked:
"Have you done with that bushel basket, sir? I want it to carry away my corn."
"Why don't you use the one I put there?" inquired the Deacon, his face growing red. "It's exactly the size of the other."
"Yes, sir, but 'tisn't half so handy to carry; besides it doesn't fill up near so quick. You say, sir, they're exactly alike in measure; so I suppose you'd just as lief I'd use one as the other."
Richard looked straight into the Deacon's eye; but there was a comical smile playing around his mouth which told the other that his trick had been discovered. He hemmed a little, before he answered:
"Certainly! certainly!" and then turned the subject at once. So Richard husked two hundred bushels: of corn, and made, as nearly as he could calculate, about two dollars by a change of baskets.
While in New Hampshire Dick sung regularly with the choir, as he had done at home. He also took a class in Sunday school, though he would have preferred being a pupil. But as there was a want of competent teachers he reluctantly consented, if his mates would join him to act as teacher, though it soon became by his management a class for mutual instruction. The preparation for this exercise, aided as it was by books from the Pastor's library, freely offered for the benefit of the young men, was perhaps his favorite employment of the week. First he read the passage with some commentary; then he looked out in the Bible atlas, any place mentioned and found whatever he could in relation to it; and last of all, he examined Robinson's researches in the holy land in search of any thing in connection with the subject.