There had been no more expulsions from school and he was more than a fairly good scholar. The days when he covered all available surfaces with chalk or paint or pencil drawings were long since over. In fact it was not long after the running away that I came upon Estelle as she thrust into the blazing wood-fire her plump and precious, though dilapidated, Mother Goose book. I rescued it thinking the child would surely repent so dreadful a sacrifice.
“No, I mean it,” she said firmly, although tears were running down her cheeks. “I told Dave I would if he would not draw any more except the drawing-book lessons. See I—I did those.”
On the margin of the leaves of the Mother Goose book figures were drawn, droll little old women, bunchy babies, cats and dogs and hens. Only one thing struck me, then, that the drawings were very queer, that they were unlike the drawings of the Palmyra children.
She looked at me with a wistful inquiry as I turned over the leaves. When I had finished she gripped the fat little well-thumbed book firmly and laid it again upon the glowing coals.
“You like to draw then, don’t you?” I said sympathetically, for the struggle was pitiful.
She nodded, with firmly compressed lips. Then she turned her back upon the burning book and said in a voice sternly kept from shaking:
“It’s a waste of time; Loveday says so. And it may lead to worser things—smoking and cheating.”
“But you are not likely to do those things,” I said, struggling for control of myself between laughter and tears.
“Oh, I am thinking of Dave!” she said with surprise at my stupidity. “It is to stop him from drawing that I have given it up.”
This sacrifice had apparently produced an effect, for Dave’s good behavior and attention to his books dated from about that time.