“I don’t want to tell you what to do. If you mean right, you can’t very well go wrong.”
“You will advise me, won’t you?”
“Certainly I will, if you wish me to do so.”
“What would you do now if you were in my place?”
The arrival of the Belle at Centreport pier prevented me from answering this question, though I kept thinking of it while I was securing the boat to enable Waddie to go on shore. But he was not willing to part with me, and insisted so strongly that I should go up to “his house” with him that I could not refuse. He clung to me like a brother, and I was confident that he intended then to mend his manners, whether he held out in the resolution or not. I lowered my sail, and walked up the street with him.
I went to his house, and the visit was productive of the most important results.
CHAPTER XI.
A STEAMBOAT STRIKE.
While I was walking with Waddie from the pier to his father’s house, I deemed it necessary to ask myself whether or not I was “toadying” to the son of the rich man of Centreport. I should have despised myself if I had believed such was the case. Both my father and myself were determined to be independent, in the true sense of the word. We had discussed the meaning of the word, and reached the conclusion that genuine independence was not impudence, a desire to provoke a quarrel, or anything of that kind. We agreed that the term was often misunderstood and abused.
But true independence was a genuine self-respect, which would not allow its possessor to cringe before the mighty, or to sacrifice honor and integrity for the sake of money or position. Doubtless both of us had been guilty, to some extent, of this subserviency; but we were determined not to fall below our standard again. Colonel Wimpleton and Major Toppleton had money and influence; but we had skill and labor. We could do without them quite as well as they could do without us. Avoiding all conspiracies, all impudence, and all intentions to quarrel, we meant to maintain our own self-respect. If neither of the great men wanted us, we could go elsewhere, and “paddle our own canoe” to our own satisfaction.
I may say that my father and I had made a kind of compact of this nature; and when I found myself, to my great astonishment, and almost to my chagrin, to be hand and glove with Waddie, I began to suspect that I had been sacrificing myself to the mammon of influence. But a little reflection assured me I was not guilty of the charge. I had saved my new friend from a disgraceful and humiliating ordeal only from a sense of duty, and not with the intention of “currying favor” with him. I had told him, fairly and squarely, what I thought of him, and what others thought of him. As I considered what I had said to him I found no occasion to reproach myself. On the contrary, so far as appearances went, I had converted Waddie from the error of his ways.