“H’m! Then what a stupid old leather-head you must be not to think of the College, where he’d be kept and fed and clothed and educated!—educated, man—do you hear?”
Simon heard, and his eyes again twinkled and winked at the new idea presented to him.
“And apprenticed!” he echoed, with a long-drawn, gasping breath.
“Ay, and apprenticed.”
The parson, cramming his pockets with apples, for which he had higgled with much persistence, handed one to Jabez with the question—
“How would you like to be a College boy, Jabez, and wear a long blue coat, like that fellow yonder” (pointing to a boy then crossing the market on an errand), “and learn to write and cipher, as well as to read?”
“If you please’n, aw’d loike it moore nor eawt.” And his animated face was a clearer answer than his words.
Joshua then read the lad a brief homily to the effect that only good and honourable boys could find admission, winding up with—
“If you’re a very good lad, I’ll see what can be done for you.”
He interrupted thanks with—