VI

ROB

Roy was not allowed to go to the Rectory the next morning as it was rather damp, and nurse was carefully trying to ward off a bronchial attack, but he was permitted to see Rob, and the latter came in looking rather sheepish and as if he did not know what to do with his hands and his feet.

"What are you going to do, Rob?" asked Roy, eagerly, after their first greetings had been exchanged; "you aren't going home again?"

"I'd sooner be shot," was the short reply.

"I've been talking to Aunt Judy about you again this morning, and she says if you would like to help our old gardener in the garden and could get a character from some one, she'd try you. I don't quite know what she means about the character. I thought that belonged to you and not to any one else. She says she doesn't know what you're like, but I told her I'd find out. I say, take a chair, won't you. Now then, you don't mind my asking you a few questions, do you? Are you a thief?"

Rob took the chair that was offered him, squared his shoulders, and looked up with a pleasant smile at this blunt question.

"No, I ain't that."

"Have you ever killed anybody?"

"No."

"Are you a drunkard?"

"I hate the stuff!"

"Are you a fighter?"

"Well, no, not a reg'lar one. I can't say I've never knocked a feller down, or squared up with him a bit, but I don't fight till I'm driven to it."

"Are you a liar?"

"No."

Roy drew a sigh of relief, then continued: "Well, if you aren't any of those, I'm sure Aunt Judy will have you, I told her I knew you weren't wicked."

"But I ain't no scholar," said Rob, doubtfully; "I can't write nor read, and that's against a feller!"

"Oh, well, you won't have to read and write much in the garden. Old Hal can't read either, and he makes a cross for his name when he has to write it. But I suppose you can learn, can't you?"

Rob nodded.

"You see I played truant mostly when I was sent to school, and then I began to mind the cattle soon after I were eight year old, but if any body would start me, I believe I could pick it up."

"I'll teach you myself when I've nothing else to do," said Roy, grandly; "for I want you to be clever. I want you to come with me, when I'm grown up, to my big house. You shall be my head servant, and live with me always. Would you like that?"

Rob grinned, and seemed to think it a great joke.

Roy continued: "Of course I shall want you more when Dudley goes away.

He has got a stepfather, so when he grows up he will go out to India, I expect, to live with him, but we don't talk of it, and we pretend we're never going to leave each other. Did you find Dudley very much heavier to carry than me?"

"Well, yes, he were a bit heavier."

"I'm afraid I shall never catch him up, he is nearly a head taller, and he seems to grow quicker every month. I grow so slowly. I think it is because I lie in bed so much more than he does, I'm always having to go to bed in the daytime when I'm ill, and that must keep you from growing, don't you think so?"

The conversation was here interrupted by Miss Bertram's entrance. She had a long talk with Rob, and in the end took him for a month on trial, as she had known his father.

The boys were delighted, but Roy still persisted in regarding him as his special protege, and more than once this had occasioned a heated argument between the two cousins.

"He doesn't belong to you. You order him about as if he were your servant," said Dudley, impatiently, one afternoon after Roy had sent Rob on more than one errand to the house for him.

"Well, so he will be one day," returned Roy, flushing up.

They were seated again in their favorite corner on the wall, some ripe plums having just been handed up to them by the obliging Rob, and Dudley having put an extra big one in his mouth was speechless for a moment.

"I suppose you'll get so fond of Rob, that you won't want me any longer," he said, after some consideration.

"Rob is my servant, but you're a friend and relation," a.s.serted Roy.

"He is an opportunity, and a pretty big one, isn't he?"

"Why, yes; I never thought of that! How splendid!"

Roy's large eyes were shining, and he gazed with tender pride at Rob who was now sweeping the lawn.

"We have done him good already, haven't we?" pursued Dudley, reflectively; "only he started by doing us good. I tell you what we might do for him. Teach him to read."

Roy looked very doubtful.

"It is so difficult, and he seems so stupid. I did try the other day, for he asked me to; but I never thought any body _could_ be so stupid! I told him we would have to give it up, for it made me lose my temper so.

I thought perhaps he could go to old Principle. You see he is too big for school, but old Principle is always saying he likes to teach people things."

"Well, that is awfully funny," said Dudley, pointing down to the pine woods opposite them. "Talk of him and there he is! Isn't that him walking along over there? Look--now he's stooping down to look at something. I'm sure it's old Principle; we'll call him!"

Two shrill boyish voices rang out, "Old Principle! Hi! We want you! Old Principle!"

Soon after old Principle was standing beneath the wall, having obeyed the summons.

He stood looking up at them with his straw hat pushed to the back of his head, and his keen, piercing eyes twinkling kindly under his thick, s.h.a.ggy eyebrows.

"Well, laddies, you're above me now. 'Tisn't often you can look down at old Principle from such a superior height."

"We want to ask you if we may send Rob down to you for you to teach him to read," said Roy, eagerly.

"And why have not two idle boys more time than a busy shopkeeper to do such a thing?" demanded the old man.

"Oh, well, you see," explained Roy, confusedly; "grown-up people know how to teach, and boys don't. Besides, we aren't idle, we work hard at lessons all the morning, and we have half an hour's prep after tea."

Old Principle shook his head.