"Hurt? No, I'm not hurt. Gee-whiz, I'm glad the school girls weren't coming along about then. Say, Gordon, lets run for the brook and I will dive, head-foremost, right into the old deep hole, and when I come up I will be span clean."
"Gracious, Merrick, but there is ice floating down now and aren't your legs cold?"
"Cold? No. Pa says there are lots of people in the world who wear no pants—say, Gordon, now listen—if you won't ever tell of this to no living soul I will do all the chores: milking, feeding the hogs, cleaning the stables, building the fire mornings, and I'll be hanged if I don't help you lie yourself out of every mean scrape you get into in the next ten years."
ALWAYS WELCOME AT SISTER CAROLINE'S WABBAQUASSETT HOME.
LEFT TO RIGHT. CAROLINE, MARTHA, WALTON, WARREN, EVERETT, LUCIUS.
SCHOOL DAYS
Nearby was a backwoods school which was called the White Birch, where about eighty scholars met in winter to fit themselves for future eminence. Here it was that life's troubles began with me. The mode of punishment in those days for a boy was to draw him over the master's knee and spank him, and I am quite sure I got more floggings than all the other seventy-nine scholars together. Tom Wheelock often spanked me so furiously that the rising dust often made the other scholars think he was setting me on fire.