"Madam," said Old Master before I could reply, "the knowledge of the efficacy of angle-worm oil comes down from the ancients and I am astonished that you should impute it to negro superstition. Leander, before trusting himself to the torrent of the Hellespont, rubbed himself with it, and if you read closely, you will find that Byron went through the same performance before tempting the same feat. Haven't you read of the angle-worm oil bearer at the Olympian games?"
He slyly turned his face away to laugh, and Old Miss, like all pretentious persons, afraid of the weapon of wisdom, was willing enough to change the subject. "I am glad to see that you are learning," she said to Bob, "but I don't want you to learn things that will be of no particular use to you. By the way, General, I don't want you to school him into the notion of becoming a lawyer or a doctor."
"Surely not a doctor," Master replied. "We have one doctor in the family and he is quite sufficient—unto himself. What's that in the Bible, 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof'? That's it. Well it suits him any way."
Old Miss sat down, gathering her skirts that they might touch nothing. "General, that's no way to talk," she said. She looked about and cried suddenly. "Why, is that a poultice there on the mantle-piece?"
"Boxing glove," said Bob, and Old Master roared again.
"General!" she spoke up in sharp reproof, "I do wish you wouldn't stimulate disrespect by your constant tittering and teheeing. One would think that you had sent the boy here as a monster joke. To send a child away from home is no jest, I assure you."
"Madam," said Master, winking at us, lifting the tails of his long coat and seating himself on a corner of the table, "it makes me young again to come into a place like this, and being young I must be foolish. Well," he added after a pause, "do you want to stay here to-night, or shall we stop on the road?"
"We might as well go," she answered, getting up. "There's nothing to be done here. Bob, you must write to me every other day. And Dan, I want you to see that his shoes are blacked every morning." And here, remembering the disrespect that I had shown her in the road, she seized her parasol as if to strike me. But with hypocritical gallantry (shrewd rascal that I was) I dropped upon one knee, caught her hand impulsively and assured her that my young master's comfort and good appearance should be the study of my life. And in her eyes there was a light of real kindliness. "There, get up," she said. "I am glad to see that you are improving. General, we may make a respectable servant of him yet."
When the carriage had rolled away, Bob and I ran back to the room, locked the door, rubbed our joints with the fish-worm oil and wrestled with each other in ecstasy.