On this particular evening Billy seemed in the highest spirits. He leaped up joyously and hung from the branches of the tree. He was prancing about like a colt, when down the lane came a man, but not Peter. This time it was Squire Ellery, who owned the house in which Peter lived. He was a hard-working, quiet-appearing farmer, respected by everybody.
"I ain't going to do it," exclaimed the boy, hastily.
"What are you going to do instead?" asked the man. "Are you going to grow up a loafer and turn out a tramp?"
"No; I have got something prime on hand that suits me exactly."
"What is it?"
"Well," began Billy, "you know the Annerly Minstrel Troupe, don't you?"
"Yes, I know of them."
"They stay in the town all winter, but summers they go travelling around the country. I have been helping them for nothing lately—odd jobs off and on—and they like me. Once when the 'end-man' was sick I took his place at the last minute, and I made so much fun that the manager said he would take me along this summer and make a crack performer of me. He will give me some clothes, and when I get valuable to him he will pay me well. Ain't that something like?"
"Yes, Billy Knox, it is something like—something like a monkey, more like a fool—for you to smut your face, to tell silly jokes, to grin and giggle and dress up in petticoats at night, that you may learn to swear and drink and gamble by day. That is what it is like exactly."
The farmer laid his hard hand on the boy's red head, but his voice was soft as he said, kindly: "Take more time to think it all over, Billy. Remember, I promise to feed, clothe, and send you to school winters, and when you get valuable to me I will also pay you wages. Your work will be hoeing corn and potatoes instead of braying like a donkey or thrumming on a banjo; but you will respect yourself a good deal more. It will be better to wash the sweat of honest labor off your face than to be smearing it into a blackamoor's. I will help you make a man of yourself if you are only willing and ready, Billy."