Reaching the master's desk and the ministering presence above it, he stopped awkwardly, and with the rim of his soft felt hat endeavored to wipe from his face the meek smile it had worn when he entered. It chanced also that he had halted before the minute stool of the infant Filgee, and his large figure instantly assumed such Brobdingnagian proportions in contrast that he became more embarrassed than ever. The master made no attempt to relieve him, but regarded him with cold interrogation.
"I reckoned," he began, leaning one hand on the master's desk with affected ease, as he dusted his leg with his hat with the other, "I reckoned--that is--I allowed--I orter say--that I'd find ye alone at this time. Ye gin'rally are, ye know. It's a nice, soothin', restful, stoodious time, when a man kin, so to speak, run back on his eddication and think of all he ever knowed. Ye're jist like me, and ye see I sorter spotted your ways to onct."
"Then why did you come here this morning and disturb the school?" demanded the master sharply.
"That's so, I sorter slipped up thar, didn't I?" said Uncle Ben with a smile of rueful assent. "You see I didn't allow to COME IN then, but on'y to hang round a leetle and kinder get used to it, and it to me."
"Used to what?" said the master impatiently, albeit with a slight softening at his intruder's penitent expression.
Uncle Ben did not reply immediately, but looked around as if for a seat, tried one or two benches and a desk with his large hand as if testing their security, and finally abandoning the idea as dangerous, seated himself on the raised platform beside the master's chair, having previously dusted it with the flap of his hat. Finding, however, that the attitude was not conducive to explanation, he presently rose again, and picking up one of the school-books from the master's desk eyed it unskilfully upside down, and then said hesitatingly,--"I reckon ye ain't usin' Dobell's 'Rithmetic here?"
"No," said the master.
"That's bad. 'Pears to be played out--that Dobell feller. I was brought up on Dobell. And Parsings' Grammar? Ye don't seem to be a using Parsings' Grammar either?"
"No," said the master, relenting still more as he glanced at Uncle Ben's perplexed face with a faint smile.
"And I reckon you'd be saying the same of Jones' 'Stronomy and Algebry? Things hev changed. You've got all the new style here," he continued, with affected carelessness, but studiously avoiding the master's eye. "For a man ez wos brought up on Parsings, Dobell, and Jones, thar don't appear to be much show nowadays."
The master did not reply. Observing several shades of color chase each other on Uncle Ben's face, he bent his own gravely over his books. The act appeared to relieve his companion, who with his eyes still turned towards the window went on:
"Ef you'd had them books--which you haven't--I had it in my mind to ask you suthen'. I had an idea of--of--sort of reviewing my eddication. Kinder going over the old books agin--jist to pass the time. Sorter running in yer arter school hours and doin' a little practisin', eh? You looking on me as an extry scholar--and I payin' ye as sich--but keepin' it 'twixt ourselves, you know--just for a pastime, eh?"
As the master smilingly raised his head, he became suddenly and ostentatiously attracted to the window.
"Them jay birds out there is mighty peart, coming right up to the school-house! I reckon they think it sort o' restful too."
"But if you really mean it, couldn't you use these books, Uncle Ben?" said the master cheerfully. "I dare say there's little difference--the principle is the same, you know."
Uncle Ben's face, which had suddenly brightened, as suddenly fell.
He took the book from the master's hand without meeting his eyes, held it at arm's length, turned it over and then laid it softly down upon the desk as if it were some excessively fragile article.
"Certingly," he murmured, with assumed reflective ease. "Certingly.
The principle's all there." Nevertheless he was quite breathless and a few beads of perspiration stood out upon his smooth, blank forehead.
"And as to writing, for instance," continued the master with increasing heartiness as he took notice of these phenomena, "you know ANY copy-book will do."
He handed his pen carelessly to Uncle Ben. The large hand that took it timidly not only trembled but grasped it with such fatal and hopeless unfamiliarity that the master was fain to walk to the window and observe the birds also.
