“I wish they would; but whether they are or not, I’m not going to fight the battle of either one of them. Now, mother, I want to make a clean breast of it. What you said to me after the colonel went away wasn’t lost upon me. I was sorry I called Waddie a liar to his face, though all the world knows that he is one; and I was really sorry that I had said anything saucy to the colonel. When Waddie said he was going to lick me, I apologized to him; and I did to the colonel when I saw him. I think I did it handsomely, considering that they were going to lick me.”
“I’m glad you did, Wolfert.”
“It was like pulling out half a dozen of my teeth to do it, but I did it; and I was sincere in doing it, too. I won’t go down on my knees to any one, and I won’t confess a crime of which I’m not guilty;” and in my zeal I struck the table a blow with my fist which made all the dishes dance upon it.
“Do right, Wolfert, and pray to God for strength. He will help you, and all will be well in the end. Have you seen anything of your father?”
“I haven’t seen him; but he came over on the Ruoara from the other side. I supposed he was at home,” I replied.
“I haven’t seen anything of him since he went out this morning,” she added, looking very anxious.
I ate my supper, still discussing the exciting topic of the day. I felt better; for, if my mother was on my side, I could afford to have almost everybody else against me; and she was a Christian woman, who would rather have buried me than had me do any great wrong. Whatever my readers, old and young, may think of me, I feel bound to say that I had tried to do right. I had been goaded into the use of impudent speech by the intolerable tyranny of the magnate of Centreport; but I had apologized for it, and had been willing to make any reasonable reparation. My mother had taught me, as a child, to go down on my knees before God, but never to man.
I kissed my sisters, who were younger than I, and they went to bed about eight o’clock. My mother and I could now talk about the condition of my father, which neither of us was willing to do before them. We wondered what had become of him; but I was pretty sure that he was somewhere in Centreport. It was a new experience in our family to be waiting at night for him, for he always spent his evenings at home.
I told my mother of the offer which Major Toppleton had made me to run the dummy. For a boy of my age, and at a distance from the great city, the proposition was a liberal one, for my father only had sixty dollars a month. It is true I was to do a man’s work for half wages; but no boy in that region could make half the money offered to me at that time.
“I don’t see how you can take up with the offer,” said my mother. “Colonel Wimpleton would not have anything to do with us if we did anything to help along the people on the other side.”