[Begun in No. 46 of Harper's Young People, September 14.]
WHO WAS PAUL GRAYSON?
BY JOHN HABBERTON,
Author of "Helen's Babies."
Chapter III.
MUSIC AND MANNERS.
The boys at Mr. Morton's select school were not the only people in Laketon who were curious about Paul Grayson. Although the men and women had daily duties like those of men and women elsewhere, they found a great deal of time in which to think and talk about other people and their affairs. So all the boys who attended the school were interrogated so often about their new comrade, that they finally came to consider themselves as being in some way a part of the mystery.
Mr. Morton, who had opened his school only several weeks before the appearance of Grayson, was himself unknown at Laketon until that spring, when, after an unsuccessful attempt to be made principal of the grammar school, he had hired the upper floor of what once had been a store building, and opened a school on his own account. He had introduced himself by letters that the school trustees, and Mr. Merivale, pastor of one of the village churches, considered very good; but now that Grayson's appearance was explained only by the teacher's statement that the boy was son of an old school friend who now was a widower, some of the trustees wished they were able to remember the names and addresses appended to the letters that the new teacher had presented. Sam Wardwell's father having learned from Mr. Morton where last he had taught, went so far as to write to the wholesale merchants with whom he dealt, in New York, for the name of some customer in Mr. Morton's former town; but even by making the most of this roundabout method of inquiry he only learned that the teacher had been highly respected, although nothing was known of his antecedents.
With one of the town theories on the subject of Mr. Morton and Paul Grayson the boys entirely disagreed: this was that the teacher and the boy were father and son.
"I don't think grown people are so very smart, after all," said Sam Wardwell, one day, as the boys who were not playing lounged in the shade of the school building and chatted. "They talk about Grayson being Mr. Morton's son. Why, who ever saw Grayson look a bit afraid of the teacher?"