Mr. Tomkins was older than Mr. Jeminy. His once great frame was dried and bent; his face was lined with a thousand wrinkles, and his lips were drawn tight under the nose, until nose and chin almost met. But his eyes were bright and active. Now he sat in Mr. Jeminy's study, his large, knobbly hands, brown and withered as leaves in autumn, grasping his hat.
"Another year, Jeminy," he said, in a voice shrill with age, "another year. Time to shingle old man Crabbe's roof again. I'm spry yet." And resting a lean finger alongside his nose, he gave sound to a laugh like a peal of broken bells.
In his old age Mr. Tomkins was still agile; he crawled out on a roof, ripped up rotted shingles, and put down new ones in their place. To see him climb to the top of a ladder, filled Mr. Jeminy with anxiety.
"You'll die," he said, "with a hammer in your hand."
"Then," said Mr. Tomkins, "I'll die as I've lived."
"That's strange enough," said Mr. Jeminy, "when you come to think of it. For men are born into this world hungry and crying. But they die in silence and slip away without touching anything."
Mr. Tomkins cleared his throat, and watched his fingers run around his hat's brim. He wanted to tell Mr. Jeminy some news; but it occurred to him that it was no more than a rumor. Finally he said: "There's a new school-ma'am over to North Adams." He cocked his head sidewise to look at the schoolmaster. "She knows more than you, Jeminy," he said.
Mr. Jeminy sat bowed and still, his hands folded in his lap. He remembered how he had come to Hillsboro thirty years before, a young man full of plans and fancies. He was soon to learn that what had been good enough for Great Grandfather Ploughman, was thought to be good enough for his grandson, also. Mr. Jeminy remained in Hillsboro, at first out of hope, later out of habit. At last it seemed to him as if Hillsboro were his home. "Where else should I go?" he had asked himself. "Here is all I have in the world. Here are my only friends. Well, after all," he said to himself more than once, "I am not wasted here, exactly." And he tried to comfort himself with this reflection.
He had started out to build a new school in the wilderness. "I shall teach my pupils something more than plus and minus," he declared. He remembered a little verse he used to sing in those days:
Laws, manuals,
And texts incline us
To cheat with plus
And rob with minus.