# St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 2/Neil Morris

* related authors: C. D. Williams.
* sister projects: Wikipedia article, Commons category, quotes, Wikidata item.
The Squareness of Neil Morris.
By Henry Gardner Hunting.
“Mother I ‘ve got a job!”
Neil Morris burst into the little sitting-room from the storm outside like a small missile hurled by the wind itself through the door on that cold October day,
Mrs. Morris looked up with a smile. “A job, Neil? Who has hired you?”
“Dr. Ferris. He’s going away, and he ’s going to give me three dollars a week to sweep his barn floor every morning while he ’s gone. It ’s got to be swept every morning before seven o’clock, and I’ve got to sweep first east, then west, a’ternately.”
“Alternately, you mean, Neil,” said his mother. Then she smiled. “But what did you say? East and west alternately? Do you mean one morning east and the next morning west? The doctor has been joking with you, Neil, He’s always joking, you know.”
“No, he has n't, mother, He wrote it all down. He wrote it in dupercut. We signed two copies, I ’ve got mine here.”
Mrs. Morris smiled again while Neil pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket.
“Why do you attempt such big words, Neil? I suppose you mean duplicate, don't you?”
“Mm!” said Neil. “Dupereut.”
He stood on one foot and leaned against his mother’s chair while he and his sister Edith listened as Mrs. Morris read bis contract aloud:
“It is hereby agreed between John Ferris and Neil Allen Morris, signers hereto, that said Neil Allen Morris, in consideration of the sum of three dollars per week, to be paid only as hereinafter specified, shall sweep the floor of a barn owned by said John Ferris and situated upon his home premises in the village of Pentwater, each and every morning, excepting only Sundays, commencing the last Monday in October, 190—, and ending the first Saturday in April, 190—, inclusive; said sweeping to be entirely completed with thoroughness and neatness each morning before the hour of seven o’clock, and to be performed as follows: On the first morning he shall sweep altogether in an easterly direction; on the second, altogether in a westerly direction, and so on, alternately, each day (except Sundays) during the life of this contract.
“Said John Ferris hereby binds himself to pay the specified wages of said Neil Allen Morris, in a lump sum, within one week after the expiration of specified period, provided each and every provision of this contract has been carefully and exactly observed and carried out by said Neil Allen Morris,
“It is further agreed, however, that if for any reason whatever, sickness only excepted, said Neil Allen Morris fails to fulfil, in every particular and to the letter, his part in this contract, he thereby forfeits every right to and claim upon any remuneration whatever for his labor, without regard to any other consideration.
“In agreement whereto we have this day set our hands and seals,
“John Ferris. (Seal)
“Neil Allen Morris. (Seal)
“Oct 7, 190—
“Why, Neil,” laughed his mother, “how very businesslike! Dr. Ferris is the queerest old gentleman I know. But do you realize what you have promised to do?”
“Yes, ’m—sweep the barn every morning before seven o'clock, one morning east and the next morning west. And if I don’t do it just exactly so for the whole time, he is n’t going to pay me at all.”
Mrs, Morris’s face grew more grave, “I think you understand well enough,” she said; “but that is a hard contract, Neil. You very seldom get up before seven o’clock.”
“I will get up; I promised him, and I will.”
​“You ’ll find it harder than you think, and you can’t fail even once without forfeiting all wages. But what about this east-and-west nonsense? He could n’t have meant that seriously. And, Neil, three dollars a week is a good deal for just sweeping out the barn each morning. Are n't you afraid he’s merely giving you the money because you ’re a small boy and not because you will earn it?”
“No, mother; it ’s what he said. And he said I was to do my work just as I was told, and not to ask any questions.”
"Did you tell him why you wanted to earn money?”
“Yes, afterwards; I told him you said I might have a pony like Earl Foster’s if I ’d earn him, And he said it did n’t make any difference what I wanted the money for, if I would do exactly as the contract says.”
Mrs. Morris looked at her small son doubtfully, though she still smiled.
“Well,” she said at last, “I suppose it’s all right. But you must do your work well, Neil.”
“Of course; it would n’t be square if I did n’t, because I promised.”
It seemed an easy enough matter to Neil. How could it ever be hard to get up a little earlier than usual each morning and go and sweep a neighbor’s barn? And as for the queer instructions he had received about the manner of sweeping, it would be no harder to sweep in one direction than in another, while he could easily keep count by getting a little calendar on which to mark each day “E” or “W,” according to its turn. It was simple enough, surely, Of course he would do the work well, and his wages would amount to more than sixty dollars, And then, oh, that pony! It wouldn't be long to wait,—just through the winter, when he did n't want the pony so much anyhow,—and next summer he would be able to ride—everywhere! He could just see the very pony he wanted: an iron-gray little fellow with a black mane and tail—just such a pony as he had seen, and priced, at the county fair that fall, And he could just imagine how it would feel to have that sturdy little fellow under him and to go galloping off over the country roads with the breeze in his face and the gravel flying behind, and the jolly good fun of covering long distances, of running races, and of learning the hundred possible tricks of riding. Neil was delighted with the prospect. To him the pony seemed as good as his, for he meant to make light work of his daily task, and failure was as far from his thoughts as though it were quite impossible.
But the difference between daylight and darkness has made all the difference between hope and discouragement for many a man older and wiser and more experienced than Neil; and those first wintry mornings when he climbed out of his warm bed at the six-o’clock whir-r-r of his alarm-clock put quite a different face upon the matter. In the first place, it was dark at six o'clock; and then, it was cold, and lonely too, for even Mary the maid, the earliest person in the house, did not come down until half-past six; and the fires were low. Then, too, there was no breakfast to be had at that hour, and Nei] found it much colder to be out before breakfast than after.
But if his enthusiasm cooled somewhat when the real nature of his undertaking began to be known to him and its hardships fully understood, he made no complaint.
“I guess it is n't going to be a picnic,” he remarked to himself, once or twice; but to his mother he said nothing at all about it except that he was getting on all right. His father, who had never asked any questions since Mrs. Morris had told him of Neil’s contract, now treated the boy’s new promptness at breakfast—the only noticeable evidence of his early morning work—as a matter of course and in a way which suggested recognition of the work as a business affair, and one of importance, too. This helped Neil, for he felt that the work was very much a matter of business and very important indeed.
When the severely cold weather came, however, it began to be a veritable hardship to climb out of bed when the freezing air seemed to nip at nose and toes even inside the house, and when the two blocks’ walk to Dr, Ferris’s was a struggle against a stinging wind which made his very forehead ache under his cap, or a tramp through the uncleared snow, which sometimes overtopped his boots. Then, too, the barn itself was a gloomy, cold, cheerless ​place by lantern-light, and many a time Neil would have been glad to hurry his work to get away sooner and be back at his home, which was always warm and bright at breakfast-time.
There were mornings when the boy asked himself if it were worth while, and was disposed to laugh at the strict instructions under which he worked, There seemed little need, indeed, to sweep an unused barn floor every morning, and certainly there could be little reason why that sweeping could not be done as well after breakfasts before. Then this matter of sweeping east or west grew to appear more and more an absurdity as the weeks passed, and sometimes Neil thought no sane man could ever have required such a thing. Then again, he knew that the doctor, though having a reputation for odd ways, would hardly have hired him to do this without some good reason.
But what with working the harder to warm his blood, and whistling to raise his spirits, and determining not to question his employer’s purposes, the task was always done quickly and well and according to instructions, and the walk home nearly always found him in a wholesome glow of body and a cheerful frame of mind, and Neil learned by degrees that there is nothing like a bit of work well done to give satisfaction to the worker.
Of course he counted his earnings from day to day. If each new day brought a new fight, it also brought an addition to the sum in store for the purchase of the pony, and with each sweeping-time past he was one day nearer spring and the realization of his happiness.
So November and December passed. Christmas had come and gone, With steady persistence Neil had kept at his work, and, oddly enough, he was getting happiness out of it. He began to be conscious now of a new element in his father's attitude toward him which showed in voice and look—something that filled his heart full of a pride and pleasure that was new to him, too, though he could not at all have defined it. His mother sometimes asked him about his task, and, though there seemed to be nothing he could tell her, the sympathy in her tone was like that in his father’s eyes, Once he had even overheard his father say something about being “proud of the youngstet’s pertinacity ”; and though he had not the vaguest idea what pertinacity might be, he could not doubt that he was winning some sort of approval.
But just at the beginning of the New Year something happened which cast a gloom over Neil’s whole outlook. On the last night of December a party of boys and girls met at the home of one of Neil’s friends to watch the old year out. It was a merry party, and a jolly good time they had—so jolly, indeed, that not only was the old year gone, but more than one of the early hours of the new year had crept away before the party broke up.
This was a very unusual thing indeed for Neil, who was an early bird at both ends of the day; and knowing how very sleepy he was likely to be when rising-time came before dawn, he set his alarm-clock on a chair beside his pillow, so that it might not fail to awaken him. And then he crept into his bed, a very tired boy indeed, and slept so soundly that he did not hear the alarm, after all, when it buzzed out its warning at six o’clock.
But a habit often has a surprising influence, and it was not long till, even against the weight of his weariness, which had been quite proof against the alarm, Neil’s habit of waking early was strong enough to open his eyes. The quick certainty that he must be very late filled his mind. He sprang out of bed and struck a light. It was twenty minutes after six, and he knew that he must hurry as he had never before been obliged to do if he were to finish his sweeping in time.
He dressed so fast that he forgot the chill of the room, which often made him shiver; and then, with a dash of cold water in his face and a very hasty effort to pull rebellious hair into order, he was away, out into the cold gray morning, and off to his duty.
By the light of the lantern he found hisbroom, and began sweeping away with all his might; and just as the mill whistles commenced to blow for seven o'clock, he was hanging up his broom again, with the satisfaction of having won his race against time.
His new little calendar for the new year, to which his account of the sweeping must now be transferred, hung on the wall beside the old ​one near the lantern where he had hung it a week ago. Neil went across to mark his morning’s record upon it. He had swept east that morning, and taking out his pencil he started to mark his “ E” in the corner of the first square on the new calendar. Then suddenly he stopped and gasped, his breath rising white in the frosty air, and his very heart seemed to stop beating, for he saw that the last mark on the old calendar, which he had been certain had been a “W,” was an “E” also!
It seemed to Neil as though the little penciled letters, the record of his work, stood out from the white sheets with a double blackness. The little calendar’s very face appeared to have suddenly grown cold and hard toward him. What had he done? How could he have done it? He had swept in the wrong direction! He had swept east out of turn. He had broken his contract—or at least the strict terms of its conditions, the fulfilment of which “to the letter” had been made as rigorous a requirement as any portion of it.
He stood and stared up at the fateful pencil-marks, scarcely crediting his eyes. He traced the record back through the days of December, and noted each alternation, Then he returned to the record which showed his error, and stared at it again till his eyes blurred suddenly and he had to gulp very hard and think fast to keep the tears from overflowing.
Suddenly he turned from his calendar, caught the broom from its hook, and swept the floor again, this time in a westerly direction. He did not reason out exactly why he did this. His mind was not wholly clear. There was a very heavy ache in his heart and in his throat, but he was not yet owning to himself the reason for it. He was trying to think, but only two ideas would come to him, and he did not like either of them, and he fought each off before it fairly formed in his mind. It seemed to him that he must have more time before he could judge just what he ought to do, yet he knew it was not time he wanted.
He finished his second sweeping, hung up his broom, and closed the barn as usual; and then, as he stood in the early sunlight outside and looked up at the clear, beautiful sky, he suddenly faced his question squarely. Had he failed to keep his contract? There was no doubt about it. Then he had forfeited all right to the promised payment for his work, even if his breach had been of the least important and most unreasonable part of the agreement. There could be no question of it.
He did not feel like crying now. A cold, heavy weight seemed bearing down upon his heart—a weight which made him ache all over with a weary helplessness. He did not know what to do. He dreaded to go home and meet his father and mother. How could he tell them? Yet he could not stay here.
He walked slowly down the path, his thoughts running on. What should he do now about the sweeping? Of course, as he had failed and forfeited his wages, there would be no use in going on with the work, He might as well stop and confess to his mother that he had failed. But if he did that the barn would not be swept. There was no one else to do it. Certainly he did not believe, as his mother had hinted, that Dr. Ferris had hired him for work that was quite unnecessary, and if the work was necessary, how could he leave it when Dr. Ferris had trusted him to attend carefully to it? Besides, he had promised.
Neil’s mind grew slightly confused, and he went over the ground again. Yes, he had forfeited all pay for his labor, and could not expect to receive a single cent for the whole winter’s work; yet he could not see how that fact lessened his obligation to complete the work as nearly according to contract as possible. His heart rebelled at the thought, but his sense of right was unclouded and he was sure there could be no alternative.
By the time he reached home Neil’s head was aching with the worry, the tumult of thoughts, and the consciousness of his failure; but he tried to make nothing of it, and met the others at breakfast with an attempt to cover his real feelings. But his mother saw the signs of pain in his eyes.
“What’s the matter, Neil?” she asked anxiously, as the boy tried to look at her bravely; but he was obliged to drop his eyes to his plate. “Are you sick? What is it?”
“Oh, nothing, mother, My head aches, that ’s all; but it ’s a bad headache,” he said.
​“You were up too late last night, dear, were n’t you?” she asked.
“I guess so,” returned Neil, “I think I ’ll sleep awhile after breakfast.”
He attended to his small tasks about home when breakfast was over, and then was glad to go to his room to be alone, if not to sleep. He threw himself upon the bed and tried to ease his now throbbing head. But all in vain.
“I guess I am sick!” he muttered to himself, as he tossed about restlessly; and then he lay suddenly still and thought about his own words. Sick? He certainly was close to it “Neil and his sister listened as Mrs. Morris read the contract” now. He tried to remember whether his head had ached when he first jumped out of bed that morning. No, he did not think it had. Still he must have been sick then—.or—or he would n’t have overslept—and the headache would n’t have come on so soon afterward. If he was quite sure he must have been sick. What was it the contract said? There was one excuse for failure to keep it “to the letter.”
He felt his cheek growing hot, and he turned the cooler side of his pillow up and buried his face in it. Was he not justified in reporting himself as having been sick that morning? Who was to contradict him if he did? Was he not himself the best judge? Who else was there to report to Dr. Ferris upon the matter, anyway? For that matter, how was Dr. Ferris to know anything at all about how he did the work, except what Neil himself chose to report? The matter was certainly in his own hands.
Neil was lying very quiet now, and looking up at the ceiling with eyes which were feverishly bright with excitement. Why not? Why not? Over and over through his mind ran that question. Certainly he had been—at least he was—sick enough to justify that excuse for his mistake. Then why not give it, or, for that matter, why report the mistake at all?
For more than an hour the boy thought the matter over, till his aching brain was tired out with it, and then suddenly his weariness overcame him and he dropped off to sleep.
It was nearly noon when he awoke. His first sensation on opening his eyes was the pleasant one that his headache was gone and that mind and body were rested and refreshed. Then almost instantly came recollection of the thoughts which had been in his mind when he fell asleep. With a start he sat up and looked around guiltily, and then suddenly a great repulsion for the idea filled his heart, and he sprang to his feet with an exclamation of disgust.
“How could I do such a thing? Would that be square?” he whispered. “Well, I think not.”
It was useless for Neil to try to convince himself that the morning work of those next three months was not one long hard strain. It was just that. But because it was honest work, well done for an honest purpose, and because it was backed by a simple determination to be “square,” it was somehow very satisfactory indeed when it was finished. Of course there were days, sometimes even weeks, when it was a veritable fight; but as he began to see that it ​was a fight for a real principle, and as he gradually grew accustomed to the lack of a selfish motive, he began to be very glad indeed that he had made the fight as he had, for its own sake and the content he felt in knowing that he had not been a coward and unfaithful.
April came at last, as long-looked-for seasons finally do, of course, and Dr. Ferris came back during the first week, as he had said be would. Saturday evening, therefore, Neil called on the old gentleman to make his report. He had not imagined how hard this little matter would Carrying out the contract. be, but he found it very hard indeed. He could never remember, in fact, just what he said about the day he had made his breach of contract, or why he had concluded that to excuse himself as sick would not be square. Neither could he recall what the doctor had replied; but it ended just as he had expected. He told the whole story of his failure, and then, when the doctor asked him a great many questions, he answered them, though he did not understand just why Dr. Ferris asked so many or such particular ones about points he had not thought important. Neither could he understand why he wanted to know whether Neil’s father and mother had been told of his failure to keep his contract, or if he had mentioned it to his sister, and a number of other questions that Neil thought had nothing to do with the matter. He did remember that he had considered the old gentleman a little mean because he had seemed to take a pleasure in having him give the particulars of his failure, which he might easily have seen was painful enough a matter to Neil. Then, at the end, the doctor was quite unnecessarily insistent, Neil thought, that he should sign a document which the old gentleman himself had prepared, acknowledging that he had forfeited all right to wages. But even this Neil bravely did, and did with all the show of proud cheerfulness he could muster.
And then he went home and told his father and mother about it all, and was a good deal embarrassed because his mother cried about it, and because his father, without saying a word, seemed to forget his paper for half the evening afterward to look across its top at his small son.
Before a week had passed, however, Neil had dropped into his usual habits, except that he was rarely late to breakfast, and that somehow it seemed easier now to do some of the duties about home and at school than it had once seemed. He thought this must be because he had found out more about what it was to work really hard. Of course his heart ached somtimes about the pony, but he only resolved that some day he would earn the money to buy him, and he determined to be patient.
Aud then, one Saturday morning, just a week after Dr, Ferris’s home-coming, Neil was bringing in the coal from the bin far the kitchen fire, when his mother called him to the front of the house, and, when he came, laughingly pushed him ahead of her out the front door to look at something before the steps. And there on the ​road stood an iron-gray pony, with a new little saddle on his hack and a grinning negro boy holding the bridle. And when Neil ran down the steps, with a shout of wonder and delight, the pony turned his head with just a little whinny of friendliness, and on the bridle Neil saw a little white note addressed to himself.
“On the bridle Neil saw a little white note addressed to himself.”
It was a wonderful little note. For some reason unexplainable it brought to Neil’s eyes, even at that happy moment, the tears he had kept back through three hard months past; and it made Mrs. Morris laugh and cry at once, and even Neil’s father coughed and wiped his glasses that evening when he read it. And although it was a very brief note indeed, it seemed to have a singular power of producing such emotions, for this was all it said:
My dear Neil: A contract ‘s a contract, and should always be binding to the letter. You may think I ‘m a funny old fellow; but I hired you, and made the conditious as hard as I could, because I love grit in boys, and wanted to see yours come out. It came, and I am well repaid. But this pony is for the boy who can keep the spirit of his promise better than the letter of his contract, and for one who cares more to be “square” than for any other consideration.
Your very true friend,Ferris‍ John Ferris.
P.S,—The pony’s name is “The Squire.” If you will look up this word in the dictionary you will discover that it has one meaning exactly the same as a favorite word of yours—and mine—which will tell you why I named him so, out of compliment to his new master.
J. F.