Whatever might be the meaning and derivation of this remark, the drift of it was evidently depreciatory, and it had the effect of putting an end to her husband's eloquence. Doubtless, Mrs. Moran had heard such announcements made before.
Bessie stole a little hand under her uncle's arm, and smiled into his face, and told him that she had given Jack the book, and soon made him forget his mortification. She knew that he was sometimes boastful, and that the great things he was constantly prophesying of himself never came to pass; but she knew also that he had a kind heart, and it hurt her to see him hurt.
That same book, which the girl mentioned merely to divert attention, was to be a matter of more consequence to her than she dreamed. It was more important than the wedding-dress and the wedding-cake, which occupied so much of her thoughts—more important than the jealous interference of Jack's mother, who did not like Bessie's foreign blood and religion, though she did like Bessie—more important than even her Uncle Dennis' actual flitting, when fall came—all which we pass by. Only one thing in her life then was of more consequence than that old school-book, which the pedler left because no one would buy it, and that was the earnest and sorrowing advice of good old Father Conners when, against his will, he united her to a Protestant.
John Maynard said later, that before he read that book he was like a beet before it is pulled out of the ground, when it doesn't know but it is a turnip, and firmly believes that it is growing upward instead of downward, and that those waving leaves of its own, which it feels, but sees not, exist in some outer void where nothing is, and that angle-worms are the largest of locomotive creatures.
It is doubtful if the artistic faculty is any more a special gift in the fine than in the useful arts, or if he who creates ideal forms, in order to breathe into them the breath of such life as is in him, is more enthusiastic in his work, or more fascinated by it, than he who, taking captive the powers of nature, binds them to do his will.
This enthusiastic recognition of the work to which nature had appointed him, John Maynard felt from the moment when he first knew that a crowbar is a lever. He read that book that Bessie gave him with interest, then with avidity, and, having read, all the power latent in that wide brow of his waked up, and demanded knowledge. He got other and more complete works on mechanics and studied them in his leisure hours, he made experiments, he examined every piece of mechanism that came in his way.
Coming home one Sunday from a meeting which she had walked six miles to attend, Mrs. Maynard, senior, was horrified to find that her son had paid her a visit during her absence for the sole purpose of picking in pieces her precious Connecticut clock. There lay its speechless fragments spread out on the table, while the yawning frame leaned against the wall. Bessie sat near, looking rather frightened, and Jack, in his shirt-sleeves, sat before the table, an open book at his elbow. He was studying the page intently, his earnest, sunburnt face showing an utter unconsciousness of guilt.
“Land sakes, Jack!” screamed his mother. “You've been and ruined my clock!”
A clock was of value in that region, where half the inhabitants told the hour by sun-marks, by the stars, or by instinct.
He put his hand out to keep her back, but did not look up. “Don't worry, mother,” he said, “and don't touch anything. I'll put the machine together in a few minutes.”