Ferdy had grown much older in the last few months in some ways. He had had so much time for thinking. And though he did not, as I have said, trouble himself much about his own future, he thought a good deal about Jesse's.
There was no doubt that Jesse was very clever at carving. Ferdy knew it, and saw it for himself, and Miss Lilly thought so, and the old doctor thought so; and most of them all, Mr. Brock thought so. But for some weeks past Mr. Brock's lessons had stopped. He had been sent away by the firm at Whittingham who employed him, to see to the restoration of an old house in the country, where the wood carving, though much out of repair, was very fine, and required a careful and skilful workman to superintend its repair.
So there seemed to be no one at hand quite as eager about Jesse as Ferdy himself.
"The winter is coming fast," thought the little invalid, "and they can't go on working in the shed. And Jesse may get into idle ways again—he's not learning anything new now. It fidgets me so. I'd like him to be sent to some place where he'd get on fast. I don't believe he cares about it himself half as much as I care about it for him. And he's so taken up with his 'pupils.' I wonder what could be done about getting some one to teach them. Barney isn't clever enough. Oh, if only mamma wouldn't be so afraid of my tiring myself, and would let me have a class for them up here in the winter evenings! Or I might have two classes,—there are only ten or twelve of them altogether,—and once a week or so Mr. Brock might come to help me, or not even as often as that. If he came once a fortnight or even once a month he could see how they were getting on,—extra coming, I mean, besides his teaching me, for of course the more I learn the better I can teach them. And another evening we might have a class for something else—baskets or something not so hard as carving. Miss Lilly's learning baskets, I know. And then Jesse wouldn't mind leaving his pupils. Oh, I do wish it could be settled. I wish I could talk about it again to Dr. Lilly. I don't think Jesse's quite am—I can't remember the word—caring enough about getting on to be something great."
Poor Jesse, it was not exactly want of ambition with him. It was simply that the idea of becoming anything more than a farm-labourer had never yet entered his brain. He thought himself very lucky indeed to be where he now was, and to have the chance of improving in his dearly loved "carving" without being mocked at or interfered with, neither of which so far had actually been the case, though there had been some unpleasant threatenings in the air of late. His efforts to interest and improve the boys of the neighbourhood had been looked upon with suspicion—with more suspicion than he had known till quite lately, when he and Barney had been trying to get some one to lend them a barn or an empty room of any kind for the winter.
"What was he after now? Some mischief, you might be sure, or he wouldn't be Jesse Piggot."
So much easier is it to gain "a bad name," than to live one down.
"Oh," thought little Ferdy, "I do wish something could be settled about Jesse."
He was growing restless—restless and nervous, which did not often happen. Was it the gloomy afternoon, or the being so long alone, or what? The clouds overhead were growing steely-blue, rather than grey. Could it be going to thunder? Surely it was too cold for that. Perhaps there was a storm of some other kind coming on—heavy rain or wind, perhaps.
And mamma and Chrissie would get so wet!