There were a few girls at the school as well--among the rest, Elsie Duff. Although her grandmother was very feeble, Elsie was now able to have a little more of her own way, and there was no real reason why the old woman should not be left for an hour or two in the evening. I need hardly say that Turkey was a regular attendant. He always, and I often, saw Elsie home.
My chief pleasure lay in helping her with her lessons. I did my best to assist all who wanted my aid, but offered unsolicited attention to her. She was not quick, but would never be satisfied until she understood, and that is more than any superiority of gifts. Hence, if her progress was slow, it was unintermitting. Turkey was far before me in trigonometry, but I was able to help him in grammar and geography, and when he commenced Latin, which he did the same winter, I assisted him a good deal.
Sometimes Mr. Wilson would ask me to go home with him after school, and take supper. This made me late, but my father did not mind it, for he liked me to be with Mr. Wilson. I learned a good deal from him at such times. He had an excellent little library, and would take down his favourite books and read me passages. It is wonderful how things which, in reading for ourselves, we might pass over in a half-blind manner, gain their true power and influence through the voice of one who sees and feels what is in them. If a man in whom you have confidence merely lays his finger on a paragraph and says to you, “Read that,” you will probably discover three times as much in it as you would if you had only chanced upon it in the course of your reading. In such case the mind gathers itself up, and is all eyes and ears.
But Mr. Wilson would sometimes read me a few verses of his own; and this was a delight such as I have rarely experienced. My reader may wonder that a full-grown man and a good scholar should condescend to treat a boy like me as so much of an equal; but sympathy is precious even from a child, and Mr. Wilson had no companions of his own standing. I believe he read more to Turkey than to me, however.
As I have once apologized already for the introduction of a few of his verses with Scotch words in them, I will venture to try whether the same apology will not cover a second offence of the same sort.