"Peabody," she called, "this boy has worked like a beaver every minute since you left--ayes he has! I never see anything to beat it--never! I want you to come right out into the wood-shed an' see what he's done--this minute--ayes!" I followed them into the shed. "W'y of all things!" my uncle exclaimed. "He's worked like a nailer, ain't he?" There were tears in his eyes when he took my hand in his rough palm and squeezed it and said: "Sometimes I wish ye was little ag'in so I could take ye up in my arms an' kiss ye just as I used to. Horace Dunkelberg says that you're the best-lookin' boy he ever see." "Stop!" Aunt Deel exclaimed with a playful tap on his shoulder. "W'y! ye mustn't go on like that." "I'm tellin' just what he said," my uncle answered. "I guess he only meant that Bart looked clean an' decent--that's all--ayes! He didn't mean that Bart was purty. Land sakes!--no." I observed the note of warning in the look she gave my uncle. "No, I suppose not," he answered, as he turned away with a smile and brushed one of his eyes with a rough finger. I repeated the rules I had learned as we went to the table. "I'm goin' to be like Silas Wright if I can," I added. "That's the idee!" said Uncle Peabody. "You keep on as you've started an' everybody'll milk into your pail." I kept on--not with the vigor of that first day with its new inspiration--but with growing strength and effectiveness. Nights and mornings and Saturdays I worked with a will and my book in my pocket or at the side of the field and was, I know, a help of some value on the farm. My scholarship improved rapidly and that year I went about as far as I could hope to go in the little school at Leonard's Corners. "I wouldn't wonder if ol' Kate was right about our boy," said Aunt Deel one day when she saw me with my book in the field. I began to know then that ol' Kate had somehow been at work in my soul--subconsciously as I would now put it. I was trying to put truth into the prophecy. As I look at the whole matter these days I can see that Mr. Grimshaw himself was a help no less important to me, for it was a sharp spur with which he continued to prod us. CHAPTER VII MY SECOND PERIL We always thank God for men like Purvis: we never thank them. They are without honor in their own time, but how they brighten the pages of memory! How they stimulated the cheerfulness of the old countryside and broke up its natural reticence! Mr. Franklin Purvis was our hired man--an undersized bachelor. He had a Roman nose, a face so slim that it would command interest and attention in any company, and a serious look enhanced by a bristling mustache and a retreating chin. At first and on account of his size I had no very high opinion of Mr. Purvis. That first evening after his arrival I sat with him on the porch surveying him inside and out. "You don't look very stout," I said. "I ain't as big as some, but I'm all gristle from my head to my heels, inside an' out," he answered.