WILLING HANDS
An unusually fine-looking man was George Brayton, only his full beard
and mustache, and his length and strength of limb, made him seem at
least three years older than he really was.
Perhaps Effie Dryer would have been less afraid of him if she had known
that he was but twenty-three, hardly more than four years older than
herself.
It was not so easy as the reverend doctor could have wished, however,
for him to look dignifiedly down upon a man who overtopped him by a
head and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds of clear bone and
muscle.
An evil-disposed person might have added:
“And who had forgotten more before he left college than the Academy
principal had ever known in all his born days.”
That was a thing, however, which Dr. Dryer could hardly have imagined
of any human being, even while he half-scornfully admitted his new
assistant’s greater familiarity with the chemical apparatus and “all
that new-fangled trash.”
Brayton had given a decidedly vivid account of Zeb’s valorous behavior
on the road, but he had failed to repeat that young worthy’s exact
statement of the relations between himself and “old Sol.”
Effie knew very well that he was keeping back something, but he was
altogether too new an acquaintance to ask any questions of, and she was
compelled to smother her curiosity in a general “wonder” what it could
be that made Mr. Brayton’s face look so very much as if he were trying
not to laugh.
As for Mrs. Dryer, that lady smiled all the evening on the handsome
newcomer, and every time she smiled it seemed to cost her more of an
effort. In fact, before the evening was over, George Brayton had one
thoroughly rooted enemy in Ogleport, and, when the doctor and his wife
found themselves once more alone, the first thing that smote upon his
ears was:
“Board with us? That fellow, with all his airs and graces? He board in
our house? No, indeed! Let him go to old Mrs. Wood’s, or to anybody
that’ll take him. My advice to you is that you get rid of that kind of
an assistant as soon as ever you can.”
“Why, Dorothy Jane, my dear----”
“Don’t talk to me, Mr. Dryer. Haven’t I your true interests at heart?
Don’t you s’pose I can see what’s coming? It’ll be just like a young
minister in a church. Everybody’ll go mad about him. All the girls’ll
be setting their caps for him. All the old women’ll be inviting him to
tea, so’s to give their daughters a chance. The young men’ll hate him,
that’s a comfort. Such a fellow won’t have any control over the boys,
neither. Why, he actually laughed twenty times this very evening.”
A very hearty and wholesome laugh, indeed, had been that of George
Brayton--not at all the sort to bring upon him the enmity of the young
men, but they were a part of the community which Mrs. Dr. Dryer had
never very thoroughly understood, and it might be she was as much
mistaken about them now as she had been in her younger days, if that
sort of woman ever really has any.
The next morning dawned peacefully enough upon the sleepy-looking homes
of Ogleport, but there was a general sense of insecurity pervading the
entire community. Perhaps, if anybody had succeeded in expressing the
common feeling, it would have been a “Wonder where Zeb Fuller won’t
turn up next?”
Old Mr. Parker came down from the East hill in the middle of the
forenoon, full of a wrathfully determined investigation of the raid on
his orchard during the day before.
He listened with half incredulous amazement to the account the miller
gave him of Zeb’s rescue of Dr. Dryer’s cows, and thus responded:
“Brother Todderley, if that’s true I begin to have my doubts. I don’t
see how any apple tree in these parts could well be robbed if Zeb
Fuller wasn’t there. It doesn’t seem to stand to reason, somehow.”
“Squire Parker,” replied the miller, “there’s worse boys in these parts
than Deacon Fuller’s son. He saved my life the other day, and I believe
he’s got the making of a great man in him.”
“There he is, now!” exclaimed Parker, pointing to a group of boys
gathered at the mill-dam. “I’d like to know what mischief’s on foot
this time.”
“You won’t learn by asking,” said the miller, but his friend exclaimed:
“Anyhow, I’m going to take a look at that crowd of boys.”
As they approached, Zeb arose from the log on which he had been sitting
and greeted them ceremoniously.
“Good-morning, Mr. Todderley. Glad to see you, Mr. Parker; I was
thinking of coming to see you.”
“To see me?”
“Yes,” said Zeb; “I was going to ask if you had any sweet apples to
sell.”
“You young rascal, what do you know about my apples?”
“Your apples?” cried Zeb, with a surprised air. “Why, has anything
happened to them? That was one thing I meant to speak about if I came
to see you. I noticed the other day that you are careless about them.
I’m afraid you’ve left ’em out over night, hanging on the trees. Have
any of ’em run away?”
“Run away!”
“That’s it. I was afraid it would be so,” moralized Zeb. “Just like
old Sol Dryer’s cows. There’s nothing sure in this world, Mr. Parker.
Nothing but death and taxes.”
“Brother Todderley!” exclaimed the angry old farmer, “I believe he
knows all about it. I’ll go right and see his father, at once. I don’t
believe a word of that cow business--not a word of it.”
“Look at his eye, Brother Parker,” argued the miller, as he hurried to
keep pace with his longer-legged friend. “Look at his eye. Didn’t get
that fighting with your apples. No use, Parker. Look at his eye.”
“Eye! Eye!” exclaimed Parker. “What do I care about his eye? What I
want to know is, what went with my apples?”
That was a question the fat miller could not undertake to answer, and
he had hardly breath left for any other by the time they reached the
mill.
Before noon half of Ogleport was disputing with the other half whether
Zeb Fuller could have been in old Parker’s orchard and up in Rodney at
the same time, for there was more than a little common sympathy with
the idea that no out-and-out mischief was probable in Zeb’s absence.
He had indeed been present in the flesh at but one point at a time, but
the general impression was hardly so far wrong as it might have been.
“Boys,” Zeb had remarked to his faithful followers, “we did splendidly
yesterday, all of us, but there’s troublesome times ahead. I understand
that that city fellow’s coming back to the Academy next term, and
there’ll be twice as many boarders as ever before.”
“Can’t we fix ’em just as we’ve always done?” asked Hy Allen.
“Either one of us can lick Val Manning,” said Bill Jones.
Several more of the larger boys added their confident self-assurance
that the boys of Ogleport were likely to be equal to any emergency
which could possibly arise, but Zeb shook his head wisely as he
remarked:
“That’s all very well, so long as we only had old Sol to handle, but
this new man’s a very different sort of a fellow.”
“I ain’t afraid of him,” said Hy Allen.
“Nor I.”
“Nor I.”
“Nor I,” responded half a dozen voices, but Zeb Fuller again shook his
head.
“That ain’t it, boys; the new man’s all right, and we must kind o’
stand by him, but there’ll be great times at the Academy this fall and
winter, and we must be ready for ’em.”
It was all very mysterious and oracular, nor could Zeb himself have
fully explained his prophetic meaning, but he related to his friends
how George Brayton had rescued him from the three vagabonds of Rodney,
and not a boy of them but dimly comprehended the possibility of
something new and stirring, if old Sol was to be reïnforced by a man of
that sort.
“I think, boys,” said Zeb, at last, “it’s our first duty to explore the
Academy. Not one of us has been inside of it for two months.”
There was no gainsaying a piece of generalship like that, and the
conclave broke up immediately, only to find its way, in squads of
various sizes, to the long double line of sheds at the back of the
village green.
Under cover of these, it was easy enough to reach, unseen, a point
directly in the rear of the barn-like white edifice which the wisdom of
successive generations had consecrated to learning.
But it was not the outside of the Academy building which Zeb and his
friends had come to explore.
Neither did they perplex themselves by fruitless attempts at any of the
well-locked doors.
A board of proper length was promptly placed below one of the
first-floor windows in the rear, not more than ten feet from the
ground, and Hy Allen was clinging to the window-sill in a twinkling.
“Fastened on the inside,” he exclaimed, after a fruitless effort.
“Come down, then,” said Zeb. “We must try another.”
And so they did, but with a result that was but faintly expressed by
Zeb Fuller’s final declaration:
“Something wrong, boys. Old Sol’s been plotting against us again. It
won’t do for us to go around in front. Not in broad daylight. But we
must look out for our rights. Next thing we shall have a rebellion
among the teachers after the school begins.”
The symptoms threatened something of the kind, doubtless, but just
then one of the smaller boys, who had been acting as a sort of scout
or sentinel, came up with the intelligence that a large wagon was
being hauled across the green, towards the Academy, and that it was
accompanied by the principal himself, with two or three of the trustees
and a stranger, on foot.
“Hurrah!” shouted Zeb. “That’s the new apparatus. Boys, we’re in the
right place at the right time. It would never do to let that stuff be
stowed away without our help. We’d never know where half of it went to.”
No wonder the boys of Ogleport had such blind faith in Zeb Fuller’s
leadership.
When the wagon was pulled up in front of the steps leading to the door
of the “lecture room,” in the rear “addition” to the main building of
the Academy, Dr. Dryer could hardly repress an exclamation of surprise
at the amount and energy of the “popular aid” which awaited the
unloading of that cargo of scientific goods.
Not that anything very remarkable showed itself through the numerous
pine-boxes, but Mr. George Brayton, in the simplicity of his heart,
deemed it a most encouraging sign that so many of his future pupils
should take so deep an interest in such a matter.
At all events, the strong and willing hands of Zeb Fuller and the rest
made the transfer of those boxes to the lecture-room floor a very brief
and easy piece of work.
“Now, Mr. Brayton,” said Zeb, “you’ll want to show what’s in them. I’ll
go for a hatchet and chisel, and we’ll have ’em open.”
“Bring a saw, too,” said Brayton, but Dr. Dryer wagged his reverend
head somewhat suspiciously. Never before had the boys of Ogleport taken
so deep an interest in the affairs of the village institution.
That was a great day for Zeb and his friends, nevertheless. They could
hardly be persuaded to go home to dinner.
The worst of it all, if Dr. Dryer had only known it, was the frequency
with which the keen eyes of his pupils detected him in turning over
to his assistant the various questions propounded by the excited
“trustees” as to the use of this, that, and the other contrivance of
glass or brass.